Sharing Good Technical Practice throughout the Response Community

Abstract

The IOSC and other triennial-series conferences are great opportunities to share knowledge and learn of new developments from our peers in the response community. But with such high societal expectations in the post-Macondo world it is now incumbent upon all stakeholders to use every available platform to ensure we are all working on the same page. The wide range of measures and actions demanded by industry work groups such as the API and the OGP/IPIECA Joint Industry Projects on Oil Spill Response needs to be shared effectively with a broad church of organisations which may have direct responsibilities arising from these programmes. Other organisations such as governmental bodies, academia, the oil industry, and OSROs may need to be consulted or simply informed of technical enhancements in the oil spill world. With this in mind Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL) re-launched the Industry Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) in 2012 with the aim of providing the platform to bring together a broad group of invited stakeholders to share knowledge and good practice in the (non-commercial) spirit of enhancing response. ITAC now convenes a face-to-face meeting every year at different regional locations which reflect its global membership. All participation is self-funded and the hosting and the minor administration costs are borne by OSRL. The agenda is typically shaped by the members and will include a round-up of the many of the industry-funded R&D projects being undertaken by research institutions and relevant universities. The two-day meeting will typically include a social event, recognising that some of the most effective networking occurs informally in the margins of the formal programme. For OSRL there is an added benefit from facilitating and hosting these meetings through integrating many of its own “grass-roots” operational responders into the very heart of the technical debate which shapes the response community. This interface not only helps the individual responders develop their own network of contacts of technical expertise but more generally can influence the strategic technical direction of the company as a whole. This poster illustrates the stakeholder mapping supporting the current model under which ITAC operates, graphically depicting the different relationships between the constituent parts of the response community from the perspective of OSRL. It shows the various linkages and flow of information to and from the various parties as the impacts of the post-Macondo technical revolution are communicated and disseminated to the wider response community.