Knowing
The full force of what it means to work offshore hits home as the helicopter swings across the grey wastes of the North Sea. Ahead lies a bleak oil platform, a solitary speck 135 miles north of the Shetland Isles. Three weeks of hard, dirty work in the biting cold await most of the passengers, and as Magnus Platform looms into focus they look increasingly resigned.
But morale is good. Having struggled across the wind-lashed helideck, the warmth of the accommodation block comes as a relief and the arrivals exchange banter with the homebound workers as they hand over their lifebelts. It's this relaxed mood that oil company BP, which owns the 12-year-old platform, strives for. Being far from home and with many of the 150 personnel on board working in back-breaking jobs such as drilling, scaffolding and maintenance, it is crucial to keep tension low and motivation high.
Making the job bearable
To some extent, the rigour of working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week for three weeks at a time is made bearable by the high wages, free use of the on-board cinema, sauna, gym and games rooms, and the anticipation of a three-week break. But after a tough day in bitter temperatures, a particular high point is food.
This is where contract caterer CCG (UK) comes in, because since 1 July its remit has been to look after the personnel on Magnus. Lindsay Tocher, managing director of the Aberdeen-based caterer, recognises that platform workers have no choice in where they eat and believes the service that caterers provide is fundamental. "Catering is high-profile," he says. "If we're not doing our job, it affects the mood of everybody. If the food isn't good, they're going to get fed up."
BP put the five-year catering contract out to tender last April. CCG (UK), one of Granada's contract catering businesses, found itself up against its main rivals in the North Sea - Kelvin, Eurest, Aramark and incumbent caterer Chalk. Sealed bids were submitted and in June, following a presentation, CCG (UK) heard it had been successful.
Tocher, who estimates that annual turnover will be £750,000, points out that offshore contracts are always fixed cost, but each client builds different requirements into them. So although CCG (UK) provides all the facilities management services on most of the 14 offshore installations it caters for, BP did not want this arrangement on Magnus. It also limited the number of CCG staff to 10.
Under the terms of the deal with BP, CCG gets a fee of £5.40 for four meals per person per day, plus 54p per person per day for room cleaning, which Tocher says is the industry norm. Out of this sum, BP expects CCG to provide catering staff and janitorial services as well as meet training, food and raw material costs.
The four meals include a midnight supper for the night shift besides breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus two tea and coffee snackbreaks, or "tabnabs". One of the stipulations which BP made is that there should be no portion control. Drillers, scaffolders and other manual workers need good food and plenty of it after a long shift. As the food isn't sold, everyone helps themselves to as much as they want.
Eat into profits
It could eat into CCG's profits - some of the drillers have been known to pile up three or four steaks at one sitting - but catering manager David Burns says he's learned to judge how many portions are needed. With 150 personnel on board, he cooks 180 portions. It takes a lot of planning, as five dishes are offered at each meal, but batch cooking ensures minimum food waste.
Conscious of its responsibility toward the well-being of the platform workers, CCG is striving to improve service on board. The 60-seat dining room is cheerful and brightly lit to counteract the gloomy light reflected through the windows - which in themselves are a blessing, as few platforms have windows. Building on this, CCG aims to increase its own popularity and keep the clients happy by heeding diners' comments and, more specifically, by organising theme nights once every three weeks.
A recent event focused on an Italian theme, complete with streamers, taped Italian music and, of course, lots of Italian food. Among the dishes on offer were chicken potacchio (chicken in garlic with white wine and broccoli sauce), beef Tuscany, and pasta partisan (pasta shells in tomato and vegetable sauce finished with Parmesan sauce). Alcohol is banned for safety reasons, but bottles of apple juice somehow managed to heighten the sense of occasion.
But it's all very well courting interest; CCG also has to keep BP personnel nourished. Offshore clients have become increasingly aware and careful of the health of their workforces, and BP has itself just achieved a gold Eat To The Beat award from charity Grampian Heart Campaign, awarded in association with Health Promotions, a division of the Grampian Health Board. The oil company is now ambitious for a national award.
Because of this wider awareness, CCG is required to provide healthy options, such as skimmed and semi-skimmed milk. Besides the well-stocked salad bar, the team also offers one especially healthy dish at each meal, flagged to indicate whether it is low salt or low fat. There's no calorie-counting, however.
Most of the menus are developed by the kitchen team. But to stimulate ideas and encourage them to think about nutritition, CCG sends a dietitian to Magnus every six months to work alongside the chefs.
One area that needs a lot of thought is supplies. Any offshore caterer's nightmare is to run out of food and, although deliveries arrive on BP's supply boat every five days, a rough sea can mean ships can't come alongside. To stay one step ahead, Burns ensures that there is a month's supply of food in the freezer.
Emergency stocks
All the milk, meat and fish is frozen anyway, but vegetables arrive fresh. To supplement emergency stocks, a proportion are frozen and kept in the outdoor freezer. For everyday use, there is an indoor freezer. As an indication of how much food would be needed in an emergency, about 600lb of steak, 300lb of leg of lamb, 900lb of chicken and 300lb of leg of pork are ordered roughly every three weeks - and that's a small selection.
CCG's shopping list varies, avoiding a potentially boring cyclical menu. To simplify the system, CCG uses one supplier, Strachans in Peterhead, near Aberdeen, for everything from loo rolls to beef. To keep tabs on daily food costs, details of what is taken from the freezer are entered on a computer. The VDR (variable daily return) gives Burns an immediate picture of the daily usage measured against the personnel on board. He has to think ahead, however. Having gauged what's needed, he faxes his orders to Strachans four days in advance - allowing for bad weather. An in-depth stocktake is carried out once every three weeks.
Everything offshore requires more thought. For example, the accommodation section of the platform is pressurised to prevent any leaked gases on the platform from seeping indoors. This means that Burns must liaise with central control when the kitchen doors are open to bring in fresh supplies.
Waste is another consideration. To protect the environment, anything inedible that comes offshore has to be taken back. Waste is collected by the supply boats but in the interim it is processed by BP's compactor.
Offshore life has its compensations, however. Like the platform workers, caterers are more highly paid than their onshore counterparts. Wages alone come to about 60% of CCG's budget. In line with guidance from COTA (Catering Offshore Traders Association), a steward whose duties include looking after the dining room and accommodation earns about £18,000-£19,000, while chefs' and managers' salaries start from £20,000. There's no extra for night shifts, as the high salaries take this into account.
The caterers' shifts mirror the patterns of most other platform workers, spanning 7am-7pm or 7pm-7am. The 10 catering staff are, in offshore jargon, relieved every three weeks by their "back-to-back". So for instance, when Burns is on leave, his back-to-back Andrew Collie goes offshore as catering manager, performing exactly the same tasks. Making up the team are four craft staff, comprising a day chef, night chef, night baker and catering manager, four stewards, an administrative lead steward, who handles the helideck paperwork, and one night steward.
Maximising manpower is crucial if CCG is to make a profit and provide a valuable service. Cost control is handled by operations manager Ian Russell, who, as the equivalent of an area manager, pays frequent visits to all installations where CCG is involved. He also makes sure staff are working to effective schedules.
As there's a system of multiskilling to counteract the lean catering team, Russell checks that the stewards are able to perform all their duties. Apart from restaurant and cleaning work, for instance, they run the laundry and distribute mail and newspapers. One of the stewards also acts as the handyman, and Burns mans the shop selling duty-free goods.
To cope with the tight manning schedule, there's a policy of self-help. General cabin cleaning takes place once a week, unlike on other platforms where it is done daily, so some workers make use of the available vacuum cleaners. Similarly, workers change their own beds, usually once a week. As Russell says: "There is a smaller crew and at BP's request we have had to cut back."
As well as the cabins, CCG has responsibility for all internal areas in the accommodation block, including the main stairwell, locker rooms, leisure areas and eight tea points around the corridors. In a bid to create a better environment, CCG banned oily working boots and overalls from the block when it took on the contract.
Recognising CCG's commitment to improving standards, BP's daily fee makes provision for an eleventh member of staff to come on board every six weeks to deep-clean the 110 en-suite cabins. The regular stewards are too busy to perform this non-routine work, which takes about three hours per cabin. However, when each cabin has been deep-cleaned, they will be expected to keep them up to standard in less time.
CCG certainly runs a tight ship. The performance-related contract means that CCG and BP agreed targets to improve areas such as safety and healthy eating. CCG already works to ISO9002 standards and, on this visit, Russell checks that hygiene and safety suggestions have been implemented in relation to the unit operation manual, which is part of CCG's quality system.
"It's one of the most crucial systems we have," says Russell. "I nitpick over the rules with the catering manager and go down the list of problems. If they haven't introduced changes, I want to know why."
Hygiene offshore is monitored by the Health & Safety Executive, and CCG's own safety officer goes offshore regularly as an added benefit. "Hygiene and safety are probably of a higher standard offshore than onshore because the exposure to risk is far higher in that environment," says Tocher.
BP is particularly concerned about food safety, as a food-poisoning outbreak would mean temporarily shutting the platform. Magnus usually produces 110,000 barrels of oil a day, so the loss of revenue could be crippling. It's a heavy responsibility for CCG. To prevent such a disaster, every part of the food chain is analysed under HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) to identify risks and minimise the chance of cross-contamination. As an extra measure, food samples are frozen daily in case they are needed for analysis.
All staff have qualifications from the Royal Institute of Public Health and Hygiene and are trained under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations. CCG assesses the the risks of using certain chemicals offshore and passes to the medic on board a list of what is being used. This helps speed up treatment should an accident occur. So far, so good; as of November, CCG had a Lost Time Incident record of one year, which means work was not held up during the year to November because of staff injury. To keep staff on their toes, there is also a refresher course on each trip covering areas such as knife-handling.
So far, Russell is pleased with the relationship that has been built up with BP. Looking ahead, both he and Tocher hope to persuade BP to hand over facilities management responsibilities, as they see this as the way forward.
To this end, Russell feels they are moving in the right direction. CCG monitors BP's equipment for defects and has already persuaded BP to replace the old dishwasher, which wasn't reaching a high enough temperature. "We've come in with a vengeance," he says.
