Euro Standard for Chemical Plant Operator Training

21 organisations from 9 countries have been working together to develop a European Reference Model for the education and training of control room operators in the chemical and process industries

With 21 organisations from 9 countries working together, a new European Reference Model (ERM) has been developed for the education and training of control room operators in the chemical and process industries.

This ambitious project, funded at E750,000 under the EC Leonardo Scheme, is aimed at promoting transnational employment and training.

It is an important step in bringing down barriers to enable companies in the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and food processing industries throughout Europe to access qualified staff regardless of language barriers or country of origin.

The aim of the project was to develop a common framework for initial and on-going training of a control room operator in the chemical and process industries.

The target is to match this with existing national frameworks.

For example, in the UK the proposed new framework exactly matches the NVQ level 3 standard, whilst in Germany, the proposed new framework matches the German "Chemikan" qualification to within 99%.

Michael Bolton, Managing Director of Technical Simulation Consultants, said "The framework will become the first step towards wide acceptance of a common European training standard for all operators in chemical process plants.

It is an opportunity for everyone involved in training and competence assessment to review and refine their training objectives.

Our software will play an important part in making this happen".

Globalisation has increasingly led to common international competence requirements for process operators, especially within petrochemical, pharmaceutical and chemical companies and process industries.

Product quality standards have become international standards, but presently within Europe there is no common training or competence standard for the control room staff that actually operate the plant.

An ERM defines the total training and assessed competence requirement for an operator.

This shows the common national standards instead of the differences.

Specific competence or training shortfalls compared to a particular national requirement may be corrected locally to meet the standard in that country.

An ERM can also optimise formal vocational training by focussing on alternative acceptable qualification pathways.

These could include academic or industry based learning but also the recognition and validation of prior learning and informal learning..

A Nottingham based company, Technical Simulation Consultants are a partner in the project.

Supported by a DTI SMART Award for Innovation, they have developed a new dynamic process simulation product, named JaSim, which allows training and competence assessment using computer simulation.

This software will be an important tool to assist training providers in covering those aspects of the new ERM that include both background knowledge and practical operation of the process plant.

An additional goal of the project is the building up of a network of organisations that are actively involved with the education and training of operators for chemical process plants.

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