“The Journey to my Passion: and Discovering Friends Along the Way”
“So what do you want to do or who do you want to be? “I was asked this question many times from the age of about 10 and I must admit I never knew the answer. I always said I want to enjoy what I am doing and left it at that.
During the 35 years I worked in the oil and gas industry, this question has come back to me in several forms:
- Do you want to become a manager or a technical specialist?
- Do you want to do projects or work in operations?
- Do you want to do personal safety or technical safety?
My answer has never changed. Choosing my next job was always solely based on if I would enjoy it and I never really committed to a single “career choice”. And as a side effect got to do them all.
So you could say it has taken me a lifetime to find the answer and I loved every minute of the journey so far. Step by step along the way, I have been making progress.
Let me share some of the milestones I encountered.
After having worked in refinery and chemical operations for 15 years in roles ranging from operator to training coordinator and shift manager, I was asked if I would want to become a HSE and Quality engineer. As this was a new role there was nobody to ask what this was all about. And given the fact that in those days the Safety department acted as the police force of the refinery, I asked for a trial period of 1 year. After this milestone, I never looked back and found my passion in safety.
For me personally there is no greater reward in life than preventing harm. And where can you do that better than on the interface of people and technique in a high risk environment?
Somebody from operations asked me in those days “What do you safety guys exactly deliver? Don’t take it personally but for safety doing a good job just means nothing (bad) happens.” (Yes, we are quite direct in the Netherlands and the word direct is spelled with Capitals in the Rotterdam area where I started back in the days) I explained that together at the refinery, we had improved the safety performance by a factor of 2 in a year. In those days that KPI stood for 20 people less getting hurt so badly that doctor treatment was required. Note that, all of them having at least 10 to 20 caring people around them like family, children, wife and colleagues etc. So I told him that, together in this year alone, we prevented harm to 200 – 400 people. That is over a thousand while I was in that role. Now, we will never know who those persons are, but we can be sure they are out there. And I don’t label all the extra fun and joy these hundreds of people had together as “nothing happened”. When you boil it all down to its essence, that is why I am still in the Safety domain as of today.
Although 15 years of hands-on practical plant experience certainly keeps you honest and pragmatic, studying industrial engineering enabled me to understand value chains and how to integrate solutions in business processes. This also enabled me to stay afloat in my first years in HSE Consultancy. And that was quite helpful as this is how it worked when I started: You jump in the plane and go all over the world, facilitating workshops, doing audits and giving safety advice with nothing more a phone number of a colleague as a backup. After 6 years of that I wanted to do more technical work again and took on a role as a technical safety specialist again building on my operational experience. Again all over the world, in onshore, offshore LNG facilities, refineries and chemical plants doing technical safety studies and all types of safety reviews.
After seeing enough planes and hotels for a lifetime and having tasted the energy and spirit in big projects I found my next challenge in Iraq. There we built NGL trains and compressor stations to capture associated gas that would be burned or, even worse, vented otherwise. Alongside we also got the opportunity to build schools and renovate water pump houses for the local community.
With investments of close to $1B per year, working in harsh climate, with a poorly developed local contractor community we not only achieved world class safety performance but also successfully developed a lot of local talent both inside the company as well as with our contractor partners. Something that I am still proud to have been a part of to this day. Shout out to my friends in the Basrah Gas Company!
Too many temptations that I could not resist followed when I returned back to the Netherlands. First developing new safety concepts for offshore Carbon Capture and Storage for Aramis, followed by joining a great team in a small O&G company as HSE Manager for Kistos.
However, my biggest adventure is just about to kick-off;
Starting my own consultancy business and working with trusted partners and friends from the past in places where we can truly make a difference by keeping people safe and preventing harm. Jointly we will apply all the lessons we have learned from working with the best in the industry. That will enable us as SnSD Consultants to “Safety and Sustainability Differently”
I am looking forward to supporting our clients in managing their key risks thus protecting people, communities, environment and assets. Together, we will make a difference by focusing on effective implementation and paper to people. We will not only create risk awareness but also enable our teams to build a “no harm” work environment where it is easy to simplify and comply.
As Partner and Delivery Manager, I’m fulfilling my dream of bringing together top experts to deliver transformative safety and sustainability programs, making us trusted partners – beyond consultants – in forging a safer, more sustainable future. I cannot wait to start exploring the next part of our journey together!
Marcel Steenhoek
