An Angolan innovator in training services

Angola

Gourgel Neto, managing director of Resilience 360, talks to The Energy Year about how the company’s footprint has evolved in the past years and the importance of private offshore training initiatives in Angola. Resilience 360 provides professional training, HSE consulting, workforce management, security services and business consulting services.

How has the footprint of Resilience 360 been evolving in the past years?
We started activities effectively in 2021 with our security division. We initially focused on attending to some private clients, and we are now trying to solidify that same division to eventually attend to larger industries, not only the oil and gas industry but the mining sector too.
We also now provide consulting services in the fields of quality, health, safety and environment. Simultaneously, we started providing manpower services. We are proud to say that we are one of the very few companies in Angola that’s actually certified by the Ministry of Labour to provide these services.
We support our clients by identifying the best professionals to conduct services for them. We have started our professional training centre, a centre where we have more than 100 professional training courses, which are mostly focused on the disciplines of quality, health, safety and environment and dedicated to the oil and gas sector’s requirements.
This training covers aspects such as working at heights, which we do a lot of for the telecommunications companies here in Angola. We do a lot of firefighting, first aid training as well. We are licensed by the National Fire Protection Agency.

How important are offshore private training initiatives for Angola?
In March 2023, we obtained our licence for maritime training. Offshore training is a very strategic segment for us. We are actually one of the four companies in-country who are STCW certified to deliver this specific offshore maritime training.
Since we started delivering our offshore training, we’ve also been able to attend to several private customers, attending to the high market demand. The training itself is expensive, and it entails a lot of resources.
Because there were few options, people were being forced to join companies and then obtain training abroad. That gap was made apparent to us by the National Maritime Agency, and we therefore decided to attend to this situation. Every now and then, we open a class specifically for these private clients, and we have established a promotional price so that they can easily access that training.
In terms of corporate clients, we are now working with Prezioso. They have committed to train more than 900 of their employees with us following a very aggressive schedule.

How can new technologies help local service companies compete in the Angolan oil and gas sector?
We are also looking to use technology and innovation to grow our footprint in the industry. We have started working with drones – we call this segment Resilience Air – and trained private drone operators by partnering with a Portuguese company called HP Drones. This segment can provide a lot of value to the oil and gas sector, as well as to the Ministry of Energy and Water for surveys of the country’s power infrastructure.
ROV inspection services represent another segment that we would like to enter. We have received requests from clients in this area, and we believe we can offer competitive, high-standard offshore ROV inspection services.

What are your key priorities for 2024?
We want to continue growing our training portfolio, specifically in the maritime sector, to deliver specific training to the oil and gas companies and marine service companies, but for that we will need to make significant capital investments, which we are willing to do.
It is also very important for us to create synergies and growth with our partners such as MX2 Radiation and SEISA – Serviços Especializados, for example. We want to be a strong manpower company that can attend to the industry, and we especially want to prepare local Angolan professionals, young university graduates that can go through our technical training programmes and be prepared to support the industry.
Our mindset makes a big difference. We are here to offer alternatives and further options to the industry in general. We differentiate ourselves significantly in terms of our training. We also pride ourselves on providing some very specific training that has not been provided locally before for specific disciplines. For example, we are the only company in Angola who delivers snake handling and wildlife training, which is important for mining operations and onshore oil and gas.

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