2 years ago, Apollo hired a new graduate Technical Safety Engineer, Bart Gosk. Since then Bart has spent his time working on many varied projects in our technical safety team and taking on secondments within two of Apollo’s biggest operator clients.
We caught up with him to find out a bit more about his background, why he chose Apollo and the experiences he’s had as part of the team.
What was your background like before Apollo?
I received a masters in chemical engineering at Edinburgh University. I then entered employment after graduating in my first engineering role at Add Energy in Aberdeen as a technical assistant. I was promoted soon after to an assistant engineer. I mostly did work regarding asset integrity and maintenance, from marking up P&IDs to data analyst work. I was then successful in gaining employment at Apollo as an Engineer, focusing on technical safety and process assurance work.
What makes you passionate about your job?
I love the variety and breadth of work at Apollo, it keeps me motivated and interested, from different disciplines, technical safety and process, to different sizes and scopes of work.
Why did you choose to work for Apollo?
Being exposed to the variety and breadth of different work is amazing, but more importantly:
It’s the people that I get the pleasure to work with and learn from and the general attitude and camaraderie in the company on all levels, people being there for others. Also, the size and growth are great, knowing that you have a genuine impact and you are listened to.
Can you tell us a little bit about the secondments you’ve undertaken through Apollo’s technical placements business unit?
They were both amazing experiences, I was mostly supporting the technical safety team, updating or writing reports, creating and fixing tools (software) and facilitating risk assessments/ORAs and closing actions. It was great to see things from the operator’s perspective and the kind of work they do.
What sort of things did you support on?
I supported the technical safety team through writing reports, developing tools, updating and releasing documents and various other ad-hoc work, such as updating TRIF reports along with updating and releasing other various documents such as EERAs, safety cases and technical notes, analysing and updating bowties and riser leak consequence modelling. I also developed a consequence analysis and ignition probabilities estimation tool.
At the other operator, I did similar work. I supported the safety and integrity team regarding evaluation and reassessments of existing safety threat cases in Synergi, prioritising major integrity threats regarding their FPSO day to day running and working on closing out high threat cases prior to another FPSO sale and department integration. Some of these involved, assessing the need for operational risk assessments (ORAs) for and carrying out those identified as required to progress and closeout cases, updating cases as these were progressed and aiding in preparation end of year major integrity threat cases report.
What was the feedback like?
It was very positive. Both technical placements were extended, and they have been in talks to get me back for some more support!
One client commented, “I have personally thanked him for his work here which has been of the highest quality and has been undertaken with great commitment and professionalism. He has represented Apollo well.”
Why do you think the technical safety department adds value to the industry?
It’s for everyone’s benefit so that at the end of the day people can return home safely.
The main purpose is to prevent and mitigate against hazardous events, so in a way you can’t see tech safety’s impact directly, it’s the lack of events that shows that it’s doing its job (kind of similar to IT, hard to see its importance if everything runs fine until it doesn’t).
We are looking to grow our safety team footprint as we expand beyond traditional energy sources as we navigate the energy transition journey.
To find out more get in touch with our team at consultancy@apollo-oe.com or for information related to the secondment of technical authorities, engineers, designers and project personnel it’s people@apollo-oe.com