FEATURE NAME


WORDS MOLLY DYSON


TIME TO EVACUATE?


Evacuation procedures are not always about extracting employees from a dangerous situation. There are many other factors to take into consideration. For example, such procedures don’t just include crews and transient workers, but also any ex-pats and their families who are living in the affected location. “This covers who you are moving – from employees


and their families right down to their pets,” says Ed Clark, a senior security consultant at risk management specialist Worldaware. “We have had people who have refused an evacuation service because it did not involve their pet. We do that level of planning and also come up with the best place to send them to. For example, if there was an emergency situation in the Philippines, we may look to evacuate people to Hong Kong.”


18 BBT ENERGY, MARINE & MINING SUPPLEMENT 2019


for more than one-third of the world’s total incidents of piracy and armed robbery against the marine industry during the first ten months of 2018, with the vast majority of them taking place in and around Nigeria. The country has also seen a spate of kidnappings of oil workers by militant groups. But these types of risks are not just confined to Africa, says Worldaware’s Ed Clark. “One of the challenges is that you have a dynamic where Western countries or businesses are coming into places in West Africa or the Far East to harvest natural resources,” he explains. “But while the government gets its cut, the people often don’t feel the benefit of that. “There are threats, hazards and barriers that impact all three of these industries. You have to analyse the risks at all of the client’s assets at each location. Companies send people to countries where they don’t speak the language and don’t fit in.” With all of these risk factors in play in some destinations, it’s often up to security companies to arrange appropriate transportation to get workers from the airport to the energy installation or mine. In this situation, the TMC would typically handle booking flights into the airport and then hand over to the security company for the riskiest part of the journey. Accommodation can also often not be up to standard from a security point of view, and that’s why many companies in the mining and energy sectors may choose to set up their own secured accommodation camps for workers – this is often the case in more dangerous locations, such as Iraq. Clark says the most important factor is to assess the potential risks to employees and contractors before an organisation even sets up a base in a country or location. “Risk needs to be assessed from both the standpoint of safety and security,” he


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