Case Study
Location – Nigeria
Partners involved – Falck Safety Services, CISRS, Buildskills
Background
The initial concept for a training centre in Africa was hatched back in 2013 when we became aware of the demand for a recognised qualification for scaffolders from international oil companies and the Department of Petroleum regulators in Nigeria.
We often received enquiries from African based companies and individuals who wanted to travel to the UK or Dubai to undertake one of our CISRS training courses.
There was clearly a high level of demand for professionally delivered training which would lead to an internationally recognised qualification. To create a training centre in Nigeria seemed the obvious solution, we knew there was demand and we were confident we could have a positive impact on productivity and health and safety standards.
The project
Simian Directors Simon Hughes and Ian Fyall visited Nigeria and made several presentations to petrochemical leaders, Exxon, Total, Shell and The Lagos state safety commission, in order to gauge industry support for CISRS should a local centre gain accreditation.
The response was positive and following extensive discussions with CISRS work began to create a centre in Southern Nigeria. Two containers of scaffold training material left the UK for Lagos in order to stock the training centre and construction of the facility began in the autumn of 2015.
The centre was completed in early 2016 in time for an accreditation audit visit from CISRS in February 2016. It is the first OSTS training provider in Africa, something we at Simian are incredibly proud of.
The first CISRS OSTS Level 1 course has since been completed at the centre with all delegates passing the courses and they have now obtained their CISRS OSTS cards.
In addition to our work on the new training centre Simian International has been working with partners Buildskills in Lagos since 2013. Our work has involved training scaffolders for Shell and Total in Lagos and Port Harcourt. We have trained over 200 locals in the past year. Now the centre is up and running we expect to train hundreds more.
