DHAHRAN, 30 May 2004 — Saudi Aramco continues its commitment to improve the Kingdom’s work force with the opening of classes in its Professional Engineering Development program to thousands of contractor employees across Saudi Arabia.
The classes will be offered at discounted rates and encompass more than 120 courses across 11 major engineering disciplines.
“We require certain standards and procedures,” said Sami Al-Khursani, coordinator of the program. “People who enter into our courses will better understand facility operations. We want to stimulate the local economy and increase the technical competency of a lot of young engineers who join the Saudi Aramco work force as contractors.”
A variety of courses are available, from plant engineering and rotating equipment to engineering aspects of concrete failure and repair, and data networking technologies. All the classes are taught either by Saudi Aramco experts or instructors brought in to teach specific courses.
The classes are offered for a nominal fee so that contractors will be able to afford the courses, which are required by the national oil company.
A pilot program is already under way, with engineering drafting as its focus. Saudi Aramco maintains specific requirements for its engineering drawings and blueprints, and there was interest among the contractor community to increase their compliance with those standards.
“We recently conducted a workshop in which we entertained 350 participants, many of them contractors,” Al-Khursani said. “That was the first time we offered a course to such a large number of contractors.”
Al-Khursani said preparations were being made to offer the class to contractors in the western area of the Kingdom, probably in Jeddah.
“We interact a lot with the Contractor Saudization Task Force Team and the Project Support and Controls Department,” Al-Khursani said. “That department is like the custodian of all contractors doing business with Saudi Aramco. We also allow direct communication between the contractors and our registrar. Since this initiative is new, we’ve sent our policy statement, our enrollment procedure and our course catalogs to the Project Support and Controls Department, which will be mailed to the contractors, or they can also call us directly and enroll their employees.”
The program’s spin-off benefits include enhancing the private sector’s industrialization efforts and technical expertise.
“Since they are working for Saudi Aramco facilities, their training and development is both a priority and concern,” Al-Khursani said.
