In 2016, amidst the biggest oil and gas downturn in recent history, Bilfinger Salamis set its sights on making greater efficiencies across its business.
As well as its core operation of providing skilled personnel to operate, maintain and decommission offshore oil and gas platforms and wind farms, the company operated an Aberdeen-based Skills Center, where its 1800 offshore workers and 200 onshore staff received specialist training.
In addition to training its own staff, Bilfinger offered commercial courses to external companies in a variety of skills such as scaffolding, painting and blasting, and working at height. When the oil and gas recession hit, Bilfinger decided to go back to basics and concentrate on its core offer of specialist offshore support services.
Although Bilfinger had a history of successfully running its own skills centres for many years, reinvestment was necessary to upgrade facilities and extend the portfolio of courses available.
Our solution
Outsourcing this in 2016, Bilfinger signed a new five-year Training Management Service (TMS) agreement with Group training provider AIS Survivex to manage all staff training requirements across the UK.
Taking over the operation of all training centres, AIS Survivex quickly transferred all existing training staff into its books before investing in a brand-new, state-of-the-art training facility in Westhill. Within this new training centre, AIS Survivex utilised its training portfolio – significantly larger than the existing Bilfinger portfolio – as well as the latest learning environments and cutting-edge technologies provided by the 3t Transform team. Combined, this offered Bilfinger personnel access to more than 400 industry-approved courses.
Streamlined operations, improved efficiencies, reduced costs, and the integration of cutting-edge training technologies are just some of the benefits that leading global engineering company Bilfinger Salamis enjoyed as a result of this unique partnership agreement with us and AIS Survivex.
Previously working with a wide range of training companies to deliver the various types of training that couldn’t be delivered in-house, Bilfinger’s training requirements were overcomplicated and overstretched. Time-consuming, costly, and logistically challenging, this agreement allowed Bilfinger to streamline its internal processes.
Through this agreement, Bilfinger’s workforce was also able to use a variety of AIS Survivex’s training centres across the UK, including state-of-the-art facilities in Newcastle and Grimsby, allowing personnel to be trained at whichever centre was closest to them, reducing unnecessary travel and related costs.
The outcome
“The cost savings were significant. We benefitted from a reduction of 18% on direct course bookings and this was in addition to logistical and staffing savings.”
Mike Henderson, Commercial and Business Development Director at Bilfinger