DOT Operator Qualifications Gets Wet!
The Commercial Diving and in general Oilfield Industry, as a whole, has had to succumb and comply to the regulations set forth and put into effect by the Department of Transportation regarding personnel being trained and qualified to perform tasks on DOT pipelines. At the time of the enactment of this rule, the only tasks available for use to qualify any individual were procedures performed by topside personnel. This put the Diving Community at a substantial disadvantage. In order to comply with the DOT regulations we had to train / qualify our personnel on tasks they have never, and will never perform while working as a diver.
A few months ago, the ADC, OQSG, EPIC Divers & Marine, and four major Diving Contractors put their minds and abilities together to accurately generate training modules that are associated with underwater diving procedures. These modules, fifteen all together, range from Handjetting on a pipeline to Pipeline Abandonment. Each module was constructed and evaluated by highly trained personnel in the Diving Community. The final versions of the Subsea Modules are complete, and the training / qualifying of our personnel in these tasks has begun.
Our efforts to comply with the Department of Transportation regulations until this point had been frivolous and costly, but with the new Subsea Modules we can effectively inform our personnel the correct procedures and any hazard they may encounter while in the water.
by: Kimberlee Townsend, Diving Operations
back to Past Events page
