TankTerminalTraining

In the first of a new regular column, Arend van Campen of TankTerminalTraining emphasises the importance of teamwork When a football team wants to win the championship it will spend a lot of time, many hours per week, preparing for the next game. This is what training is. The team needs to form a strong connection, unity and cohesion to operate as a machine; in systems thinking terms, this would be a system that constantly improves itself. The training programmes use feedback as a method of controlling a system by re-inserting into it the results of past performance, which in fact is called learning. The team then functions as a living system, adjusting to opponents, adapting to circumstance and always learning from its environment in order to stay flexible, resourceful and finally victorious. TankTerminalTraining (TTT) incorporates a similar line of thinking in its training programmes and this improves the overall results dramatically. In order to understand how systems opera...

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, tweeted recently: ‘Wake up world. We are killing our planet. Climate Action now!’ He meant that our economy, industries and politics are not exactly cooperative in regard to changing pace and curbing climate change in time to avoid entropy and ultimately chaos. The way our banks use algorithms to outpace human trade drives everything else towards maximum financialisation, literally using up future resources for the sake of profits now. This obviously cannot last and, according to recent article in the  New York Times , jeopardises humanity’s very survival. As a researcher on what can be sustainable, durable and can be continued, I developed a method to measure sustainability. This valuable tool allows an organisation able to predict the future and therefore can adjust its course timely. As I am writing this for you, readers of  HCB  magazine, I’d like to propose that you apply this tool to your company’s products and services...

Last month I talked about teams and feedback. The last two weeks I have been working in south-east Africa teaching and training petroleum people how to build a safety culture. Much has been written on HSE but, as far as I am aware, cybernetics has not yet been applied as a useful tool for governance. Risk prevention and risk management are methods to control risks, but often do not consider the cybernetical law of requisite variety or philosophical solutions such as a science of ethics. To prevent and control HSE risks, we have to first know ourselves. Who am I? How do I react? How do I communicate? These so-called ‘Human Factors’ are, in my opinion, insufficiently explored and understood. In Africa we spoke about narcissism, arrogance, recklessness and other human character traits and concluded that they are always dependent on the interaction with others. On an island alone, people would not have much use for such traits. Let me first explain the Law of Requisite Variety, which ...

About a year ago at the Storage Tanks conference in Rijswijk, Holland I spoke about the long term future of the tankterminal industry. I specifically mentioned that investing in the storage, provision, decontamination and distribution of clean, potable drinking water would be a future trend, not only from a sustainable world' perspective, but also it would make good business sense. The expected yield would be 3000 percent on investment (according the WTO). Therefore I am herewith launching a new campaign called 'Drinking Water for All' and seek support and participation of all the players in the storage industry and shipping supply chain. I invite Liquid bulk and gas Traders, Storage Terminal Operators, Ship Owners, Governments, NGO's, Financial Institutions, Private Investors, etc. to help us use the existing infrastructure and add fresh / drinking water shore tanks, pipelines, jetties and other needed facilities at or near their terminals to make sure diseases such ...

Recently we were invited to give our modernised and upgraded BBS course for a client in Saudi-Arabia. We were much suprised that this method of learning was much better received than we had been anticipating. People were taught that behaviour, social circumstance, upbringing, character traits or attitudes are having impact on the safety culture within companies. 80 percent of incidents or accidents are statistically attributed to human behaviour. Because it was designed as a continuous learning process, management and staff were given the tools to use and build a safety culture by shared observation and correction of behaviour. We would like to show you how the training program has been designed as follows: Our Behaviour Based Safety and Human Factors Program focuses on the following: 1.      Safer work environment 2.      Frequency and severity of injuries decreases 3.      Safe behaviours increase 4.  ...

Risk Blindness – a Roadblock to Sustainability Introduction If you want senior management to pay attention give them something that challenges their focus - and understand that their focus is on the growth and sustainability of their business; not necessarily on compliance issues.  It is on business survivability – will we be in business tomorrow given the issues that we face today?  What is more important to your organization’s compliance with the myriad of regulations faced or where your competition will be coming from in the next five years? Some definitions will help to form the basis for why we face a roadblock to sustainability and the potential crisis that leadership faces: Risk Blindness: Looking at the parts not the whole, resulting in less precise measurement of risks.  This includes not recognizing risk, discounting risk and the influence of bias that precludes acknowledging risk. Situational Compliance: Complying with regulatory standard...