Colonial Pipeline has committed to safe operations that enable the transportation of fuel in the most efficient, reliable, and responsible manner. To sustain this commitment, Colonial Pipeline embarked on a two-year goal to overhaul its existing gas field operations training. The company needed a more formal training program for 400 Controllers, Operators, and Technicians to fulfill regulatory requirements and ensure competency within its largest workforce classifications.
Due to a geographically dispersed workforce and decentralized operations across their 266 field offices and 11 control centers, Colonial Pipeline relies heavily on on-the-job training to teach new employees the knowledge and skills needed to perform work. However, the lack of structure around training content and evaluation criteria led to limited defensibility with regulators and wavering confidence by company leadership that employees were equipped to consistently do their work safely and correctly.
To address these needs, Colonial Pipeline partnered with Mosaic to conduct an in-depth analysis for each job role and develop training solutions that build structure, consistency, and defensibility into the facilitation and evaluation of on-the-job training components.
Each structured on-the-job training program includes the following elements:
Evaluations must be passed for all knowledge and skill components of the structured on-the-job training program before employees are deemed competent. Once all elements are completed, the training guide is uploaded to the organization’s LMS and serves as a defensible record. These critical adjustments to Colonial Pipeline’s on-the-job training have left the company better positioned to build the knowledge and skills of the workforce before legacy subject-matter experts retire out, and ensure both competency and OQ requirements are met—resulting in more successful job performance and increased reputability with regulators.