Dorman Long Engineering graduates trainees in Lagos

After 12 months of intensive training, Dorman Long Engineering Limited, a leading oil field equipment, structural steel, marine structures engineering and fabrication company has graduated 16 trainees under its tutelage.

The training is courtesy of Nigerian content law in the oil and gas administered by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) and Chevron Nigeria in compliance to the Nigerian content development regulation.

In the programme, the participants were to certified in project management, NDT, HSE and introduced to the concepts of entrepreneurship.

Speaking with The Guardian, Head Human Resources of the engineering firm, Nike Diyaolu, said, “the training is in collaboration with Chevron, so, as part of the Nigerian content development, it’s a requirement that we train some indigents, develop them for future so that they can give back to the society. That’s what this training is about; it’s an important part of the project. We’ve had on the job training and also practical, theoretical learning aspect.

“There are two categories, the professionals and the vocational; the professionals are trained in project management, Non Destructive Testing (NDT) as well as entrepreneurship and health and safety, whereas the vocational focuses more on welding, health and safety and entrepreneurship as well.”
Diyaolu continued, “this is the second batch of the trainees. We use a lot of in house facilitators because they have been trained on how to pass on the knowledge they have. Sometimes we engage external facilitators, but majorly, we use Dorman Long facilitators.”

On the selection process for the trainees, Diyaolu said, “we get the list of people recommendation from NCDMB, and we do a shortlist and invite them for an assessment where they undergo aptitude tests, the successful ones get interviewed to test their skills to ascertain the level of their fitness for the program. Usually, the training is between 12 to18 months, it is a combination of classroom training and on the job training.

On his part, representative of NCDMC, Moses Jonah who is in the department of the capacity building unit of the board, said; “NCDMC was created as an act of parliament to build capacity locally. The board is making sure that at every point in time, we don’t look for expatriate to come and do the jobs our people can do, as such we build capacity of Nigerians to do the kind of jobs we hire expatriate to do.

“In any contract above $1 million, there is a training plan on the backup. So, Chevron Nigeria is also helping our cause by meeting contractors to bring in training plans in any contract they get.

But the current challenge is that we have a lot of competent Nigerians who can do these jobs but there are no spaces for them to work. So, we are also looking at exporting our talents who have learnt these handwork.

Concerning the local contents, the level of compliance to my understanding is quite high, initially we struggled, because when people don’t understand your concepts, they will always argue with you. Now they understand the concept behind the act, they are also helping issues by meeting their contractors. It is not just in training, it is also in fabrication and in design. It is not just about building capacities, when you build people and there are no infrastructures to work with, they become useless. As long as it concerns the Oil and Gas sector, we want to train people who can man those sectors and work along with it.

On why there was only one female among the grandaunts, he said; “we had a selection test, whereby we had a lot of females, they were two outstanding females, but one withdrew a day after, but the grandaunt was the best during the selection exercise. You don’t bring down your standard except you want to run the business aground; you don’t water it, but keep a standard and maintain it.

Advising the participants, he said, “My advice to the grandaunts is that life does not end here, they had a plan even before they came here and my take of Nigerian content is not to train people and dump them, but to train people who will go back to this same industry and make sure that this industry is better. But if we train you and you still go back to the JKS to be trained again, you’ve wasted our money. We are training people who will go out and take up jobs and be able to do those jobs we’d expected expatriate to do. There was a time where we import toothpicks, tissue papers, but those things are gradually going down. We want to make sure that even rate of unemployment goes down, and that is the aim of the board.

Also speaking, one of the trainees, Solomon Hassan Kuta, while expressing his gratitude on behalf of others, said, “we are here as better Nigerians ready to play our part in nation building and to the betterment of the world at large.

We therefore would like to express our profound gratitude to NCDMB, Chevron and Dorman Long for making this experience worthwhile. It was not all smooth and calm, there were ups and downs, there were actions and in actions, there were expectations met.We can now say even as Julius Caesar would say after his quick victory at the battle of ZelaVinividivici, ‘we came, we saw, as for the conquer part, we look into the future poised and confident that we are better placed for greatness as a result of the skills acquired here. Therefore we look into the future confident and determined for success.”