Penspen is a UK engineering consultancy company that specialises in the oil and gas sector. It also offers established training courses. We have provided technical and management training to hundreds of staff in Europe, North and South America, the Middle and Far East, and we are now the world leader in training in the pipeline industry.

We do far more than technical training courses: we can present courses on management and other business skills.

Penspen presents technical and management training courses all over the world. Our most popular courses are on pipeline integrity, but we are happy to present any course that a client needs. We offer:

• public courses (open to anyone),
• in-house courses (special courses for a client)
• lectures (from one hour to four hours, on a selected topic)
• workshops, seminars and meeting facilitation.

Why Train Staff?

• A review by the UK's Institute of Personnel & Development showed staff training to be the key to retaining skilled employees.
• A survey by the American Management Association showed that investing in employees skills through training is a more effective tool for retaining staff than purely financial incentives.

Training Adds Value - 'Intellectual Capital'

Many companies have values in excess of their earnings or values shown on their balance sheet. In some cases the company value is less than 10% the stock market value. Where does the other 90% come from?

We now have a switch from 'physical capital' to 'intellectual capital' (brand names, employee know-how and knowledge carried in their heads, etc.). This is because knowledge is now a major source of competitive advantage in all industries. World-class companies must operate in a continuous improvement environment - in such an environment, knowledge and brainpower are the company's greatest assets.

Training in the Engineering Industry

Good, forward-thinking companies invest in their people, and part of that investment is training.  This makes business sense, as it ensures the workforce have the latest methods and tools to use in their jobs, and it allows companies to maintain a leading edge.

The 'developed' western world populations are ageing as birth rates fall.  Massive skills shortages are looming which are already very evident in the marine industries.  The issue is not new, but becoming more important by the year.

For example, in the UK across all industries 25,000 engineers retire annually and only 12,000 graduates replace them. In one major contractor, for the past decade the average age of senior engineers and project managers has been moving upwards - it is now 49 years and increasing by about one year in every two.

In many industries there will be a legal requirement to train certain staff (e.g. staff involved in hazardous plant), and certainly engineering companies have a 'duty of care' to all parties who are affected by their services or products. For example companies such as oil and gas majors should ensure that their staff are aware of changes in technology and regulations relating to their operations.