Fiona Ogilvie details why some North Sea commercial divers are turning to Australia for training in their demanding profession.

These days, you can fly to Fremantle in Western Australia and obtain an internationally recognized diving qualification at one of the best diver training schools in the world - and still pay less than you would for a similar course in the UK. But it wasn't always necessary to travel quite that far to get a good diving qualification. In the early days of North Sea hydrocarbon exploration, the fatality rate among divers was appalling. It was at its worst during the mid-seventies when around 10 percent of the offshore diving workforce died in work-related accidents. At that time, divers received virtually no training and effective regulation was a joke. Something had to change.

The British government's Health & Safety Executive (HSE) finally introduced diving qualifications, regulations designed to mitigate the awful attrition rate and protect the safety of divers working in the North Sea. All companies undertaking diving operations in the United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) were obliged to employ only divers who had been trained to these new HSE guidelines. For a while, UK diving operations, safety record, and training standards were the envy of the world. But now, sadly, the international spotlight is again turning upon us, and this time it's focused on the quality of diver training standards.

ADC's International Influence
However, other countries continue to excel. In the United States, the Association of Diving Contractors International's (ADC) Diver Certification scheme is evolving into an internationally recognized standard of competence. Unlike the government-controlled diver training standards in the UK and Australia, the ADC is essentially a collective of commercial organizations. Nonetheless, ADC diver training standards are rigorously controlled and monitored, and errant member companies are severely castigated. The ADC scheme meets the voluntary American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard. The country whose training system most closely mirrors the UK's HSE scheme is probably Australia. Twenty years ago, Australia's offshore safety culture was driven largely by what was happening in the North Sea. Today, Australia has its own internationally recognized training standard.

It is important to look at this in a historical context. The British government has no jurisdiction or authority to enforce its HSE standards outside British waters, nor has it ever sought to do so. However, until recently, a number of major international offshore operating companies insisted on divers having a British HSE diving certificate to the virtual exclusion of other qualifications and regardless of the geographic location of specific diving operations. The only place to obtain an HSE qualification was at a UK school.

So, for a time, administrative convenience superceded common sense. In effect, the operating companies promoted the British government's HSE diving qualification as an international industry standard and, in so doing, suppressed the development of more appropriate regional alternatives.

Australia's High Safety Standards
Things are very different now. The international offshore industry's safety culture has thankfully changed beyond recognition. Competence in diver training standards, as in all human operational tasks offshore, usually takes precedence over administrative convenience. Professionally trained, safe, competent divers save money - and reputations. The UK could learn much from the standard of diver training available at some foreign training schools.

Paul Butler, the Commonwealth Government of Australia's Director of Offshore Safety, is determined to preserve Australia's safety record and diver training standards. "The ADAS diving qualification is the mechanism through which we regulate, operate and monitor diver training standards in Australia," he says. "The fact that ADAS-qualified divers are now internationally regarded as among the safest and most effectively trained in the world is a source of great pride to me and my department. Moreover, it is also a testament to industry's confidence in the ability of ADAS-qualified divers and an endorsement of the Australian schools which train them."

Butler regards the control and oversight of Australia's rigorously high standards of occupational diver training as a critical element in maintaining its overall diving safety record. "The safety record of diving operations in Australia's offshore petroleum industry is one of the best in the world. Preservation of that enviable record and the appropriate discharge of its responsibility to protect the health and safety of those individuals under its direct care, requires the Commonwealth Government to monitor and regulate for the ever-changing demands and activities of industry. This is especially true in the case of occupational diving, where the training for and execution of work tasks requires exposing the individual to extreme yet controlled risk."

Butler concludes, "Therefore, in an effort to improve the regulation of offshore diving safety and to foster an industry culture of continuous improvement in the standards of best practice, the Commonwealth Government will shortly be replacing the old prescriptive Standing Directions on diving safety with new Objective Based regulations."

UK Training is Lagging Behind
Kevin Lloyd is a British diver who elected to do his diver training in Australia rather than at home in the UK. "I couldn't find anybody to say a good word about the standard of commercial diver training in the UK today. People train here because they think there's no choice and they're led to believe that employers worldwide will only accept HSE qualifications - they're wrong on both counts."

Lloyd says the diving business has changed. "UK and international employers now recognize the superior training delivered overseas. I did my training in Australia and I've never come across a situation where the Australian ADAS certificate is considered unacceptable by an employer. In fact, most international employers and students know that some countries now have significantly higher diver training and standards than those currently available in the UK."

According to Lloyd, companies are beginning to doubt the credentials of UK-trained divers. "A lot of divers reckon that we're approaching a situation where presenting a recently obtained UK diving qualification to a potential employer exposes the holder of that qualification to the very real risk of making an admission of sub-standard safety and capability, rather than evidence of competence and professionalism. What can we do about that? It's no wonder employers are beginning to express a preference for overseas qualified divers - faced with the choice between certainty and doubt regarding a newly trained diver's safety and competence, who can blame them?"

Lloyd received his commercial diver training at the Underwater Centre in Fremantle, Western Australia. "Ian Milliner, the guy who runs the Fremantle school, is a consummate professional and his dedication and competence inspires every individual in his team - especially the students. I'm obviously biased, but I genuinely believe that I left Western Australia having received the best diver training currently available anywhere in the world today. I've experienced no difficulty getting UK work with my Australian qualifications and I know that employers on the Pacific Rim accept ADAS qualified divers without hesitation."

Colin Murphy is a Director of Australia's fastest growing commercial diving company, Allied Diving Services. With over 25 years of experience employing divers for Australian and international diving operations, Murphy knows more than most about the evolution of occupational diving and the genesis of diver training standards in both Australia and Britain.

"Our clients here and overseas are as determined as we are to preserve Australia's safety record," he says. "I've seen the Australian ADAS diver training standard evolve over the last two decades to achieve the international acclaim that it richly deserves. As an Australian, I'm immensely proud of that. As a businessman, the reputation of our company depends on the competence of the divers we employ. These days, with newly trained divers, we're not just interested in what certificates they have but where they trained at; it can make a huge difference." UW

Fiona Ogilvie was a founding director of the Underwater Centre Fremantle. In 1996, as an executive director of the UK's Stenmar Group and a founding director of Stenmar Australia, she acquired the Australian National Underwater Training Centre in Tasmania from the Commonwealth Government. She is also a consultant for the British and Australian oil and gas and defense sectors.

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