WIG Members

Dave moved to Aberdeen from university in 1991 to work as a geologist and finance the write up of his PhD. He worked with a number of geological consultancy companies and spent a year at Heriot-Watt University's Department of Petroleum Engineering. As a geologist, Dave specialised in characterising the reasons for permeability heterogeneity in reservoir rocks at both macro and microscopic scales.

In 1995 he joined the Health & Safety Executive and spent 5 years regulating a range on onshore industries. On moving to onshore major hazard work in 2000, he then dealt with a variety of COMAH sites including refineries, oil terminals and whisky distilleries.

He joined OSD in 2005 and worked in an inspection management team (IMT) leading interventions on a range of duty holders. He currently leads an IMT that has OSD's lead for a number of major production & MODU operators. He has worked on major projects including decommissioning and dismantling and carbon capture and storage. He has a particular interest in focussing on duty holders that appear to have deficiencies in their organisational capability for managing major accident hazards as revealed by the HCR performance or other performance indicators.

Russell has been employed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for over 20 years and is based at HSE’s headquarters in Redgrave Court, Bootle, Merseyside.

Over 14 of these years where spent giving full administrative support to HSE’s Nuclear Inspectors responsible for regulating the United Kingdom’s Civil Nuclear sites.

During this time, he was heavily involved in the International Regulatory Review System Project which included the collation and preparation of the advanced reference material which was to be presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency, who, at the invitation of the Her Majesty’s Government visited the United Kingdom to review HSE’s Nuclear Directorates’ systems and to follow up the progress of previous recommendations.

He became involved with the Workforce Involvement Group in 2009 and provides full and comprehensive administrative support in all areas to the group, and specifically to the Chairperson, along with over looking the content and maintenance of the WIG website.

A native of Aberdeen, Lisa has over 20 years oil industry experience in logistical and support functions.

Since joining HSE in 1992 she has built up a vast knowledge of the offshore oil and gas industry.  In her capacity as Drilling Secretary/Admin Support, she was instrumental in developing the Wells I.T. System, Research/Technical Library, and has organised several high level cross border stakeholder events.

Since being attached to WIG in January 2010 as ‘Group Administrator’, she has put this experience to good use, organising the two previous very successful Workforce Involvement events in March 2010, and applying her knowledge of the offshore industry during the rebuild of the WIG website.

HSE Petroleum Specialist Inspector for the past 17 years during which he has regulated many of the major operators and drilling contractors on the UKCS. Had a three year spell in OSDs SMS Topic Specialist Team, before returning to OSD Inspection Management Team, his present position.

Before joining HSE OSD he spent 20 years with the National Coal Board and British Coal Corporation in Production Management, starting as an apprentice at Mines around Castleford and leaving as Colliery General Manager of Sharltson and Nostell Collieries near Wakefield.

Mikey Craig is a Rig Safety & Training Co-Coordinator for Transocean, he currently works offshore on the Transocean Sedco 704. Before embarking upon a full time role in offshore Safety, Mikey was a Radio operator for 21 years - serving predominantly on drilling rigs. Mikey also served for 10 years as an elected Safety Rep, and was very active within that function.  In addition he was formerly the elected Chairman of the offshore workers union - OILC, before stepping down in order to devote more time to his role offshore.

Mikey is very energetic with respect to Safety, his particular passion being the development of better safety involvement from the drilling sector workforce.  He has been an active member of the W.I.G. since its rebirth in 2007, and gave a very passionate presentation with respect to Developing a Functioning Safety Committee at the first WIG event in Edinburgh, where he drew parallels with his experience of the Piper Alpha disaster and how that disaster might have been averted - had better workforce involvement in Safety been more prevalent at the time."

Started work offshore in 1985. Deck Crew and HLO. Safety Rep when the Regs came in 1989 until 1998. Asked to take up a six month secondment to Shell’s Workforce Involvement Team working with Aberdeen University.

I carried out Safety Climate Surveys throughout Shell Locations and was involved in the “Accountability for Safety” work launched in 2001, followed by “Performance through HSE”.

I became part of Shell Behavioural Team as part of EP Europe.

In 2004 I joined the Step Change in Safety Support Team and was involved in making Step Change the leading Industry Safety Body, (now the Safety Arm of Oil & Gas UK). I looked after the Elected Safety Reps Network. I have been involved with many Industry bodies mostly related to Workforce Involvement in Safety.

In 2008 I returned to my own Company PSN and am currently with Corporate Safety, with some responsibility for “Aristos” our Behavioural Programme which I help to look after and facilitate with an international remit.

Les has been in the offshore industry for some 35 years starting as a contract electrical technician. He has been an OIM for the past 23 years, 11 of which have been with the Rough field.

Having been the duty OIM when the Marbella factory ship collided with 3B and for the Feb 16th incident he has practical experience of emergency response which has been used in developing the field’s response plans and training programmes.

He is involved in developing training and competence within CSL that is both targeted on an individual’s needs whilst requirement for training during leave periods.

He has been involved in many different workgroups from dealing with Management of Change, Permit to Work, Competence and training and emergency preparedness.

Employed by Wood Group Phil has worked in the Oil & Gas Industry for over 30 years.

He has a degree in Agriculture and took a career change by joining Wood Group in 1979 on the Sullom Voe contract in Shetland as Administration Manager. After a short spell with their Gas Turbine Division came into the HSE function in 1988 and his first offshore visit was to the Piper Alpha platform.

He sits on various representative bodies - was a past Chair of IOSH in Aberdeen, Chair of the OCA H&S Committee and a member of Step Change.

Phil holds NEBOSH Diplomas in Occupational Health & Safety and Environment and is a Chartered Member of IOSH and has been a member of OIAC for over 15 years.

Born in Swansea his hobbies are golf, badminton and watching rugby.

Frank has been in the oil industry since leaving school at the age of 17, completing 20 years with Shell prior to joining Petrofac 9 years ago.

After 26 years working offshore in numerous positions, most recently as OIM on the Kittiwake for 8 years, he now holds the position, since May 2012,  of HSE Manager (Operations), with all Duty Holderships, and Operations & Maintenance contracts in the UK for Petrofac within his remit.

Frank says of himself “I am an individual with high safety standards, and I expect the same from my work colleagues. Most importantly,  I’m in touch with the current offshore environment, and what the real safety issues are at the coal face. I am focussed on improving safety performance for the betterment of the workforce, as well as reducing bureaucracy. For this reason I was attracted to the WIG forum, and what the group stands for.

Jake began working in the construction industry before his first engagement offshore in 1980, that of installation plumber in the Ninian Field. Multi-discipline roles soon developed and he quickly learnt new skills, including fire and gas system testing, process assistant, then lifting and heli-deck operations, ending up on the Brent Field in 1986.

February 1990 saw him elected as an offshore safety representative, a role he combined with that of Helicopter Landing Officer for almost 7 years. It was early ‘97 when he stood and won another election, to the post of OILC General Secretary. OILC then merged with RMT and Jake became responsible for the union’s offshore energy branch.

Mark joined the Oil & Gas Industry in 1984 working as a Roustabout for Houlder Marine Drilling on MODUs. He progressed through the drilling ranks to the position of OIM prior to moving onshore in 2003.

After a brief spell working within the Transocean QHSE dept he was seconded to the Step Change Support Team as a representative of IADC where he spent 1 1/2 years working on various industry lead initiatives and as Chairman of the Step Change OIM's network group. On returning to Transocean Mark took on the role as Training Manger for Transocean's Europe and Africa business and then moved into the position of Global Training Manager where he was based in Houston for three years.

Returning to Aberdeen in 2009 he was appointed Rig Manger Performance where he managed various rig operations in the UKCS prior to accepting the position on QHSE Manager for Transocean's North Sea Operations in November 2010.

I was born 1952, London and moved to Dundee in 1963.  At the age of 15, I joined the Merchant Navy.  In 1975 I began work at the Michelin tyre company in Dundee, became a shop steward for the Transport and General Workers Union and in the same year joined the Labour Party.

For the past 19 years, I have served as a Regional Industrial Organiser in Aberdeen with the Transport and General Workers Union, now known as Unite.  My job is varied with responsibility for social workers in local government and members in the aviation, nuclear, textile, food drink and tobacco, petrochemical and offshore industries.

In relation to the offshore industry, I have been a member of OPITO’s board for 19 years and at present, I am chairperson of the Offshore Training Foundation.  Along with other Union officials, I have represented the TUC on the Oil Industry Advisory Committee and the Helicopter Liaison Group.  I am the current chairperson of the Inter Union Offshore Oil Committee and a member of Step Change.

I went to sea at 16 as deck boy and joined Maersk in 1990 as third officer. I worked my way up through the ranks and became a master mariner in 2000. I was also promoted to Captain of my own ship in 2000. To spend more time with my family I left the sea and became a Humber Pilot in 2001.

I was not happy with the way the service was run when it was taken over by the harbour authority and so left in 2005. I became a marine operator onboard an FPSO for Maersk Contractors.

With steady progression upwards I became stand-in OIM in 2009 and remained there until 2011 when I took a position with Teekay Petrojarl as full time OIM.

Austin has been in the Oil industry for over 16 years, starting as an electronics technician with a Drilling instrumentation design and service company and moving in to operations as a trainee production operator, with Petrofac on the Ninians.

In his offshore career, he has progressed from a trainee process operator through the roles of, Control Room Operator and Production Supervisor, over the 3 Ninian installations and the Tiffany. In his current role, since 2010, as OIM on the Tiffany Platform with CNR International, Austin has experience in a wide range of projects from shutdown planning to plant commissioning and maintenance structuring. He has also been involved with workforce led Behavioural Safety and reinforcing a safe safety culture in achieving safety excellence and being part of a just culture implementation as OIM.

Having started as a technician in the nuclear industry, Les Linklater has been working in the oil and gas sector since 1989.  Les has knowledge and experience in a number of key areas ranging from technical writing, engineering, operations and project management. His technical experiences cover both topside and subsea instrument and control systems, in operator, engineering contractors and service company environments.

Les has held a number of roles focussing upon people and organisational development with the ECITB and latterly within Aker Solutions.  Les draws on his depth of technical experience and passion for developing people to build practical, sustainable training, development and competence solutions.  Having recently joined Step Change in Safety in January 2012 as Team Leader for the organisation, Les is responsible for coordinating Step Change in Safety’s work programme, operations and support with the goal to make the UK the safest place to work worldwide in the oil and gas industry.