Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) is a joint venture between the Government of Brunei and Shell, which has been active in the region since 1929. With a daily production of 350,000 barrels of oil and gas, BSP is the largest oil and gas company in Brunei, a sector which contributes 90% of government revenue.
BSP’s department for learning & social impact employs 28 people to serve 4000 employees and 10000 business contractors. Since 2021, digitization is a major strategic theme for the company. As a result, traditional training methods like video, interactive Q&A and PowerPoint are complemented by - or replaced with - modern methods like immersive learning and adaptive content creation.
BSP’s training approach used to be focused on traditional classroom training with about 25 learners, two facilitators and very little interaction and discussion. The learning and development team was continuously challenged to get priority and budget.
Regional trends and developments within the global Shell organization influenced investments in digital forms of training. Several tests with video and interactive quizzes weren’t successful, so BSP looked further into more immersive ways to learn that are more engaging to trainees, and get a discussion going.
The pandemic helped the team to move forward, as it became harder to organize in-person classroom training. At the same time, there was a lot of legislation and regulations around training that need to be met in order to operate. This was also true for all their contractors who needed HSC training to even to be able to go on site.
This raised the challenge for BSP how to facilitate a large number of trainees in a short period of time, with only limited available classes and facilitators.
BSP looked for a solution that is immersive — in order to play in a classroom and trigger discussions. And the learning and development team should be able to create their own training scenarios.
The company started with VR training with 360° video to improve workforce confidence — knowing what to do and what the risks are when working at a site. The first series of trainings around safety are held in central classrooms using tablets. Soon, other areas of work procedures will be included and trainings will also be organized on-site.
VR training proved a great addition to BSP’s learning program. Learning developers liked the user-friendly and adaptable platform to easily create and customize training programs, and the flexibility in scenario playback (as immersive as you want depending on the type of scenario and conversations, and cultural differences within Brunei). The company also realized significant cost savings, as training days were cut short to just 1 day for certain types of trainings as participants are no longer required to commute to different physical locations.
Overall feedback of the participants was positive with many trainees showing excitement after using this new way of learning, and 95% passing their exams (which is impressive considering that some of the trainees didn’t have any field experience prior to following the course).
”I just finished my 2nd homework for review tomorrow with the support team. This helps me to imagine how trainees would respond and what questions we can best ask them. Warp VR’s support team did a terrific job in explaining this to us. Much appreciated!” - Adinin Talip, Head of HSSE/SP Learning, Brunei Shell Petroleum
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