An award-winning Oil & Gas HSE project at the world’s largest gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar will demonstrate the importance of a caring organisational culture when the Middle East’s first BOHS Worker Health Protection Con-ference to open in Abu Dhabi on Monday, October 20th.

A case study presentation of Qatar Shell’s Pearl GTL Worker Welfare Programme will show how fostering a culture of care can enhance workforces’ health and mitigate risk, while also increase productivity and performance.

Organised jointly by Epoc Messe Frankfurt and BOHS (The Chartered Society for Worker Health Protection), the targeted summit will highlight key issues that affect worker health and wellbeing, applying world-class principles on a regional level.

The conference will discuss the main challenges facing successful implementation of worker health protection programmes, examine worker wellbeing issues, and discuss the latest regulations governing workplace health and safety.

Ahmed Pauwels, CEO of Epoc Messe Frankfurt, said: “The BOHS Worker Health Protection Conference will present an excellent networking platform for regional occupational health and hygiene professionals, managers, industry leaders and worker welfare experts to interact with leading international experts and gain valuable insight into HSE best practice and the latest developments in the field.

"This becomes even more vital as the Middle East rapidly gains in stature as a growing industrial and commercial hub that employs a vast multi-national workforce across a wide spectrum of industries."

Dr. Israr Ahmed, Country Health Manager at Qatar Shell, will deliver the presentation on the opening day of the four-day conference, which takes place from October 20-23 at Abu Dhabi’s Beach Rotana.

With ramp-up reached by the end of 2012, Pearl GTL required 50,000 workers and 500 million man hours to complete. The US$19 billion Doha facility, which converts natural gas into cleaner burning fluids, was one of the world’s largest and most multifaceted construction sites, presenting similarly complex occupational hygiene challenges.

Before construction began, a Pearl GTL Workers Welfare Commitment Charter was developed to lay the foundations for the first-of-its-kind welfare programme, and in particular to invest in resources for the mitigation of Non Accidental Deaths (NADs).

“Recently NADs have been the subject of considerable focus in Shell operations globally, especially in the Middle East”, said Dr. Ahmed. “Based on World Health Organisation statistics, it was predicted that Pearl GTL would suffer a minimum of 190 NADs for the estimated 500 million man-hours of work required to construct the facility.

“The Project Leadership Team felt that accepting such a loss of life was not consistent with the message ‘no harm to people’, and mitigations had to be implemented to reduce this figure.

“As there was no benchmark in the Oil & Gas Industry to mitigate NADs, Pearl GTL’s Non-Accidental Death Programme applied a creative approach to manage this concern. As a result, the number of NADs at the end of the project was 58 compared to 190, under a third of the number projected.”

Pearl GTL’s Non Accidental Death Programme, which won the Best Gas & Oil HSE Initiative at the 2013 ADIPEC Awards, is just one of many examples of best practice in worker health and safety that will be highlighted at the BOHS Worker Health Protection Conference.

Mike Slater, President of BOHS, said that having the first ever BOHS Worker Health Protection Conference in the Middle East was a significant milestone toward helping organisations in the region implement improvements and standards in occupational hygiene.

“One of the key goals of BOHS is to share the knowledge and experience we’ve gained over many years to help organisations across the globe to establish and implement good occupational hygiene management practices,” said Slater.

A similar view was expressed by Steve Perkins, CEO of BOHS, who added: “With the rapid economic develop-ment in the Middle East we feel that it is particularly important that organisations in the region develop local ex-pertise that can help them to implement occupational health and hygiene programmes based on global good practice adapted to local conditions. We see the BOHS Worker Health Protection Conference as a small, but important, step towards achieving that objective."

The event will include an extensive two-day conference programme, as well as two days of professional devel-opment courses.

Other experts joining the speaker line-up include Dr. Nada Al Marzouqi, Deputy Director of the Preventive Medi-cine Department at the UAE Ministry of Health; Dr. Luay Badran, Senior Medical Officer of Qatar Petroleum; John Ewing, Section Manager for the Inspection & Auditing Section at OSHAD; and Kären Clayton, Director of Long Latency Health Risks Division at HSE.

The conference will be particularly valuable for HSE Directors and Managers; Occupational (Industrial) Hygien-ists; EHS Professionals; Chief Medical Officers; Occupational (Industrial) Health Managers; Occupational Physi-cians and Nurses; Wellness and Wellbeing Professionals among others.