Evaluating safety and competency: OPITO’s new Helicopter Administrator Workplace Competence Assessment standard

By Lucie Booth, Product Development Manager at OPITO

Developing the right training and standards for the energy workforce is critical to ensure safe and skilled operations, for now and in the future. That’s why OPITO’s new standard, the Helicopter Administrator Workplace Competence Assessment, has been designed to increase competency and safety around helideck activity. 

Enabling the global offshore workforce to have a comprehensive understanding of the risks and solutions for helideck activity, gaining this standard means, those reliant on safe transfers to energy installations in an open sea environment, can benefit from and operate in line with industry best practice.

By assessing helicopter administrators in their role, OPITO is enabling the energy workforce and industry to be confident in contributing meaningfully to safe operational activity in often challenging offshore environments.

What does this standard cover?

The standard assesses the candidates’ knowledge and skills in providing administrative support required to safely operate the helideck and manage helicopter movements. Undertaken in workers’ respective workplaces, the course entails five units:

• Legislative requirements and the role of the Heli Administrator
• Hazardous goods 
• Heli admin responsibilities during flight planning and manifesting
• Heli admin responsibilities during passenger and freight check-in and post check-in
• Heli admin responsibilities during post check-in

When designing this standard, we made sure to comply with the requirements for helicopter administrators, as detailed in Civil Aviation Authority’s Civil Aviation Publication CAP 437: Standards for offshore helicopter landing areas (CAP 437).

Where can this be done?

The Helicopter Administrator Workplace Competence Assessment is now available for OPITO-approved centres and others to apply for, and there are several ways that organisations can choose to utilise this new standard:

• Visit an approved training centre to assess competence, with records maintained through OPITO’s owned channels, HUB and Vantage
• Add this assessment to the scope of approval for OPITO-approved competence management system (CMS) organisations, with records maintained through OPITO’s owned channels, HUB and Vantage
• Employers building these assessments into their existing CMS, with organisations maintaining their own records.

Collaboration at its core

Created in conjunction with Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) and wider industry in response to a previous amendment to CAP 437, this standard follows the introduction of OPITO’s Helicopter Administrator Training standard, launched in March 2023.

During development of the new standard, OPITO and OEUK engaged closely with industry stakeholders, including Spirit Energy, Harbour Energy, HCA, bp, Repsol Resources UK, TAQA and TotalEnergies, to ensure employer needs were met. 

We look forward to working with our partners and the workforce to roll out this new standard which will assess such crucial safety and competency criteria and therefore reduce risk for the energy industry worldwide.

The standard requires the completion of the Dangerous Goods by Air training course, as well as training on a personnel tracking system, prior to undertaking. 

For a full list of the approved centres and their available courses, please click here.