Members of professional associations of design and survey engineers for the oil and gas industry summarized results of their first 10-years’ anniversary after shifting from building licensing to self-regulation, and outlined some vectors for further development.
During the 9th St. Petersburg International Gas Forum, arranged at ExpoForum Convention and Exhibition Centre, on October 3 the All Russian Conference 10 years of self-regulation of design and research activity in the oil and gas industry took place. The event was organized by Associations of Design Engineers and Survey Engineers.
The discussion was moderated by Alexey Petrov, Director of Associations of Design Engineers and Survey Engineers.
As the event started, Rashid Artikov, Representative of the State Duma Energy Committee, gave a welcome speech. He addressed the guests: "We need your experience and your knowledge to change the existing legislation, to amend it, and to establish new standards. This is important in times of the Regulatory Guillotine (profound review of existing statutory and regulatory acts – Editor’s mark), and we hope that you will cooperate enthusiastically."
Andrey Samsonenko, Deputy Chairman of the Association Board, Head of Department at Gazprom, summarized the first ten years of self-regulation. "The law on self-regulating companies was approved in December 2009. At the same time, we established the Association of Design Engineers. Today, it comprises all the major market participants, including Gazprom, Novatek and many more. Looking back, we can say that our standards and the transparent mechanism for control and assessment turned out to be appropriate, and we’ve managed to follow them. High quality of our Association members is the basis of our confidence in the future work," said Andrey Samsonenko. According to him, today the Association of Survey Engineers comprises 106 members, and the Association of Design Engineers – 125 members. Mr. Samsonenko believes that further development of the Association lies with delegation of powers, shifting from membership regulation, from legal to natural entities, expert project support and digitalization.
Vladimir Vagarin, CEO at Gazprom proektirovanie LLC, mentioned in his report that there is a need to change the way how construction processes are regulated. "As we know, we have structural changes on the go. They’re intended to establish a mechanism to control the construction and investment procedure, a model with a transparent system of management at every stage of the production cycle. Digital transformation stands for fundamental experience review, a business process in cooperation, a way to efficiency enhancement," Vladimir Vagarin resumed. According to him, a digital model will enable creation of a seamless procedure for design and estimate documentation issue, as well as manage costs and streamline resources not at the human, but at the data level.
Igor Mescherin, President of the National Association of Engineers of Russian Federation, touched upon the issues of legislative amendments. He believes that the role of engineers is underestimated, being a pressing issue for the industry. "According to the current regulations, designers hardly ever come in touch with the project, which is bad not only for the construction facility itself, but for price formation and qualification, too. Today, document development procedures are too much formal, just to check the box. In the future, we need designers to take part in the engineering process. This is why participation of natural entities in self-regulation is the future that will help to change the situation in the construction sector. We’ve proposed a law on engineering activities, and we’ve already managed to establish an engineering and industrial design board for the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. Now, we just have to work further towards that end," he said.
Alexander Vronetz, Member of the Board of the Russian Union of Survey and Design Engineers in his report "About Pricing and Estimate Regulations in the Design and Survey Sphere" mentioned the issue of pricing in this sector. "To abandon design costs reduction, we need to end up with some adequate assessment of design after interviewing companies and collecting statistics. Currently, the mechanism for transformation of this structure in case the laws change is already provided, and it causes some changes in costs of works," the expert reported. He suggested that the professional community should more accurately approach organization of the national register and use independent assessment of employee skills.
During the discussion, Yury Spektor, CEO at Gazprom Promgaz JSC, proposed switching to the resource-based method for determination of cost estimates of construction resources, as regards to construction of the gas industry facilities. "Various trends in the costing standards operation in the oil and gas sector are associated with development of new sites, with new construction resources and technologies," he emphasized.
Alexander Apostolov, Director of the Self-Regulated Company "Association of Builders for the Gas and Oil Sector," spoke directly on the employee skills. He told the guests about results of the Association’s operation, which for 10 years had been supporting legislative amendments. "By now, we've assessed about 3 thousand specialists, and as a result, 50% don’t qualify. Now, we’re going to discuss how it came. One thing is clear: we have to pay special attention to experts, as without them no tasks can be solved," Alexander Apostolov commented. In his report, he mentioned a contest for emerging scientists in the oil and gas sector, too, which helped to choose the best professionals.
Marina Grimitlina, Deputy Director of the Self-Regulated Company "Engineering Systems – Project," in her report on the staff qualification assessment system for the design and survey sphere, offered an industry-specific qualifications framework and some approved occupational standards. "Today, professionalization of companies is beyond the legal terrain. The only way that can be used to realize the strategy as regards to the construction market access, is determining the field of concern and skills of every professional. We need occupational standards, independent assessment which a self-regulated company will establish on its own," Marina Grimitlina believes.
Mikhail Bogdanov, President of the Coordination Board at the Association "Engineering Survey in Construction," specified certain pressure points as regards to self-regulation of the industry and criticized the existing rules for organization of the national expert register in the field of construction. According to him, because of low-quality engineering customers spend additional 200 to 250 bln rubles annually. "This is what happened while we had no control over the market access," said Mikhail Bogdanov. He is sure that this problem can only be solved through involvement of the state. "The state shall control the market access. We vote for return of licensing, we’re for tightening the screws in the industry in two ways: by establishing a professional community of natural entities, and by providing federal licenses to specialists," said the expert.
Alim Ganbarov, Senior Engineer at Gazprojectengineering LLC, explained to the audience some prospects of BIM technologies use at every stage of oil and gas facilities’ lifecycle. He emphasized importance of digital technologies, in particular, 3D modeling at design and survey, and the "digital copy" model at operated facilities. He believes that technologies ensure efficient work with data assemblies and cost reduction.
In the end of the conference, Alexey Petrov announced a certain resolution on the discussion results, determining top-priority trends in self-regulation of the design and survey business by 2030. "We need a regulatory guillotine as a part of the reform within Russia’s technical regulation system; registration of industry-specific specialization of self-regulated companies, both operated and going through registration procedures; we need to fill legal gaps in regulation of independent professions, and to introduce law on engineering business and activities; moreover, we require some unified procedures for expert assessment, based on occupational standards; and yet another thing is digitalization for project management experience integration," the moderator resumed.