SPDC records 6.3m man-hours in Bonny
Terminal upgrade
By Charles Okonji
Senior Business Correspondent, Lagos
Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria
Limited (SPDC) has recorded about 6.3 million man-hours for the upgrade of
Bonny Terminal.
The Projects Development Bonny (PDB) of SPDC, the
department that is handling the upgrade of Bonny Terminal, said the man-hours
were the cumulative number of hours worked by staff of the department and its
contractors since the upgrade of the terminal began in October 2002.
Of this achievement, Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI),
the major contractor in charge of the civil, mechanical and electrical works of
the upgrade, alone contributed about four million man-hours. Manager, Major Projects Bonny, Mr. Ted
Ene, who handed out a certificate of achievement to HHI, commended the company
for the milestone, stressing that the rehabilitation of Nigeria's first oil
export terminal at Bonny was a complex operation, which gave rise to several
Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) challenges.
Two other companies, ZakhemOilserv and Dec Oil and
Gas, Ene said, had started rehabilitating and building crude storage tanks
respectively, adding that taken together with the personnel of local
sub-contractors, “it means more than 1, 300 workers are active on site at
any one time.”
Head of Health, Safety and Environment, Mr. Ian
Thompson, also said: “The major challenge is how to manage the interface
between the several contractors and their staff and making sure that SPDC's HSE
guidelines are not only understood but implemented by all of them.”
He attributed the HSE achievement to “team
work, rigorous application of HSE management systems, constant training and
monitoring and consequence management both on the positive and negative
sides.”
Thompson, who disclosed that the upgrade of the
terminal would be completed in 2008, also said that SPDC had made “it
clear that consequence management does not always entail wielding the big
stick. It can also mean commendation and awards, such as we did to HHI for the
four million man-hours milestone.”
The upgrade of Bonny Terminal, he explained, will
enter a crucial stage this year, as the contractors move from periphery to the
main project.
