GE Oil & Gas Tackles the 'Great Crew Change'

While GE Oil & Gas' immediate concern is around finding mid-career people (with perhaps five-to-10 years of industry experience) who can be converted to work in the upstream oil and gas sector, the company is also continuing to develop young talent.

The Subsea Systems business is working to encourage interest in the sector among school children and university students.

"To do this, we're engaging some of the learned societies that we have in and around subsea. For example, we're getting more involved with the SUT (Society for Underwater Technology) and the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). Both of those organizations are trying to figure out how they can appeal to the young element, so we're working with them to do that," Saunders said.

"We've got pretty good engagement with some of the more traditional universities in the UK. For example: Newcastle, Cranfield and Heriot-Watt. And we have good engagement with universities in the U.S. and Brazil. More recently, we've developed a better connection with some of the academic organizations that exist in West Africa, such as Angola. So, we're bringing a younger workforce into the family there as well."

The Subsea Systems unit may also develop an Angolan apprenticeship scheme, where school leavers move directly on to technical colleges to learn a variety of practical skills useful for oil and gas.

"We've already got a long-standing, very successful apprenticeship scheme that feeds our Montrose [Scotland] facility, with the apprentices coming through Angus College. And we're very proud of that population of apprentices: we have ex-apprentices out of there who now hold very senior positions within the business. So, we continue to support that."

"Probably the only other location where we are looking to have something very similar is Angola," Saunders said, adding that Subsea Systems is also involved in training apprentices in Australia.