Subject Matter Expert Series - Director of Managed Services & Consultancy

Professional Background

Alan entered the field over 12 years ago as a Technician for a training company in Montrose.  His background in graphic communications proving invaluable to the design of simulations for Offshore Control Room Operator (CRO) and Offshore Installations Manager (OIM) training scenarios.

Moving to an offshore role in 2011, Alan joined a major drilling contractor as Deck Crew, and it was here he gained first-hand experience as a member of the response team in an offshore environment.

When a start-up company were looking for Emergency Management experts to deliver their Emergency Response & Crisis Management training, Alan took the opportunity to further his career and secured the role of Lead Instructor. In addition to training, the company had an outsourced Emergency Response centre and delivered consultancy services.

The start-up merged with a well-established ER and CM company and under this new leadership, Alan took on full responsibility for the training aspect of the business. In 2014 he became UK Manager leading all regional operations of the company before leaving as Head of Crisis and Continuity Management, looking after service line operations in the UK, UAE and Malaysia.

Alan joined RelyOn Nutec as our Operations Manager for Crisis Management looking after all crisis management related delivery within the UK. Now the Director of Managed Services and Consultancy, Alan continues to lead our Crisis Management team as well as having overall responsibility for the strategic direction and performance of our Managed Services and Consultancy service line.

Memorable/Challenging Project

In 2019, RelyOn Nutec were asked to deliver Emergency Management training for a Chinese Drilling Contractor based in Albania.  Alan had to produce a bespoke Emergency Management training programme which suited the very unique requirements of this particular client, taking into account the environment they operated within and the potential emergency scenarios that could occur.

The project saw Alan travelling into the Albanian mountains to conduct 3 days of Emergency Management training, culminating in a fully integrated Emergency Management exercise at the drilling site, involving over 100 personnel.

It was a challenging yet extremely interesting project which ultimately led to a very satisfied client with a highly trained and competent Emergency Response Team.

Personal Insights

When asked about his views on Crisis Management within the energy industry, Alan says it’s a mixed bag.  Some companies demonstrate excellent practice and are fully prepared and trained to respond to an incident, however, in some cases Emergency Response/Management is perhaps not as high up the priority list as it should be.

Alan hopes that companies increasingly recognise the importance of, and invest time and effort in Emergency Management, making their operations more resilient and ensuring they respond efficiently to an incident to minimise the impact to both personnel and business. Any company that involves people encountering some form of risk, even when that is something as simple as travelling between worksites, should strive to minimise that risk and ensure they are in a position to respond effectively should an incident occur.