Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA), in collaboration with the Royal Commission for Jubail (RCJ), organized a workshop on the sustainability and quality assessment system (SQAS) in Jubail Industrial City earlier this week.

The event, attended by more than 150 industrial experts, aimed to educate participants working in ground petrochemical and chemical transportation about the benefits of the Gulf SQAS program, including the assessment of sustainability and quality levels.

The speakers at the workshop included Abdulwahab Al-Sadoun, GPCA secretary general, and Allen Izzard, SQAS’ chairman in GPCA, who stressed the importance of implementing the program.

Samir Abbas of Bureau Veritas (BV) spoke about the Gulf SQAS program in GPCA and how the assessment and certification is acquired.

Abdullah Al-Eid, director of RCJ’s industrial integration department, concluded the workshop with a presentation on the future plans for Jubail logistics.

Al-Sadoun said: “This workshop held for the first time in Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY), targeted companies and sectors that deal with the storage and transportation of chemicals and petrochemicals.”

He added: “The event aims to educate operating companies about the storage and transport controls of chemicals, with an assessment of work system at these companies to ensure the highest safety standards in this field.”

Al-Sadoun pointed out that this system has become a fundamental requirement for maintaining environment safety and reducing transport costs.

“The workshop also aims to specify levels of security and safety at companies and factories.”

Invitees for the workshop were the companies that transport and store chemicals inside factories or ports, as well as traffic and Civil Defense, and transport at companies.

They were urged to give consideration to implementing this system as it has become one of the basic requirements for working with the Gulf petrochemical companies.

Al-Sadoun said that GPCA wishes to organize similar workshops in Yanbu as well as in Kuwait and other GCC cities as it is a regional system.

QAS is a system to assess performance of logistics service providers in the environment, health and safety, security and quality (EHSS&Q) using evaluating standardized questionnaires conducted by independent and certified estimators.

This system helps avoid multiple assessments by individual chemical companies and encourages dialogue between logistics service providers and manufacturers depending on evaluation results.

It also assists producing companies in the selection of logistics service providers with a tool for continuous improvement evaluation.