On Tuesday 7th September, 2021, a team from SLIE/PERC led by Ing Louise Chaytor, lead on CPD, Thomas Michael Salankole and Abdul Kaadiru Kallon, Graduate Engineers, met with the management of Petroleum Directorate at the Petroleum Building conference room, Kingtom. Petroleum Directorate, an institution directly under the office of the President, is responsible to regulate companies that explore and develop oil and gas in Sierra Leone. The meeting was attended by Engineer Foday Mansaray, Director General, Sallieu Jalloh, Economist, and Ahmed Tejan Bah, Technical Head, Petroleum Directorate. The main reason for this ‘meeting was to introduce the new Continuous Professional Development framework and encourage management of Petroleum Directorate to work together with SLIE/PERC in upgrading engineering standards in Sierra Leone. In her opening statement, Ing Louise Chaytor stated “one of the requirements of engineering institutions throughout the world, is for engineers to keep up to date with the latest skills, technology and activities in their field of engineering”. In this light, the SLIE/PERC intends to improve the standards of engineering practice and training in Sierra Leone. Therefore, the team continues to engage institutions like Petroleum Directorate to encourage their engineers not just to be registered members, but maintain their professional status by participating in CPD training and activities. The team suggested that Petroleum Directorate can integrate this CPD framework into it’s performance appraisal system. Furthermore, the team urged Petroleum Directorate to ensure that foreign oil and gas companies bringing foreign engineers also comply with PERC act and register with the SLIE. Their participation in the CPD will enable them to maintain their professional status.

Presentation of CPD Booklet to Petroleum Directorate

The SLIE/PERC CPD framework introduced to the Directorate is very much welcomed as it aligns with the institution’s goals. CPD is an idea the current Director General had already proposed and had encouraged all employees to search and seek gaps where they feel untrained and submit training needs they would require. The DG is ready to support and align SLIE/PERC CPD framework with his institution’s CPD. However, the Director General was concerned that as a nation, we are under trained for oil and gas careers. He expressed fear that once there’s a boom in this sector and companies start coming in, there will be high numbers of foreign staff imported. He said there is a need for establishing Chemical engineering, Petroleum engineering, Reservoir engineering ,Process engineering and Production Chemist departments in our tertiary institutions. Mr Foday Mansaray explained that part of his vision as Director General of Petroleum Directorate, is to be reaching out to universities and institutions such as USL/ FBC to conduct trainings on oil and gas. He is also interested in inviting the public to in-house presentations at Petroleum Directorate, explaining who they are, what they do and oil and gas activities. He promised that the engineers at the Directorate would register with PERC/ SLIE and maintain their membership. He is familiar with similar requirements in Europe. Ing. Chaytor mentioned that SLIE is working on a curriculum of training for engineers and would like to know the training needs of their engineers. The Technical Lead, Mr. Bah agreed to fill out the training survey. The DG also expressed his concern that technicians may be left out of essential technical training. He said they were essential to the engineering profession and urged SLIE to include them. He expressed interest in also reaching out to Technical and Vocational institutions. He is willing to work with SLIE/PERC in offering his expertise in webinars, workshops and public lectures every 2 weeks. The Technical Lead said that the majority of their employees are Geoscientists registered with the Sierra Leone Institution of Geoscientists. He also indicated that a lot of support, equipment and training materials had been donated to the Geology department at FBC. Ing. Chaytor replied that similar support would be welcomed at the engineering faculty and some of the Geoscientists were also engineers. The SLIE team assured the Director General and his team that their concerns will be taken to council for consideration.