Marius Juelsrud Vebner

International Trainee

Main work areas: Dropped object prevention and safe lifting

My name is Marius and I am one of four international trainees in Axess. When I was a student and tried to decide what to do with my professional career, it felt like an impossible choice. However, after being introduced to Axess I had a strong feeling that this was the best option by far. This was due to the company’s attitudes, work ethics and the employee’s way of enjoying life! When I started in August, my expectations were high. As an appropriate start of this blog, I will therefore briefly share some stories from my first four months in Axess.

The start-up

After 5 theoretical years at NTNU (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), I was eager to get first-hand experience by using some of the knowledge I had gained. Not only by working from an office, but to actually see and follow up ongoing projects in real life. The first days of introductions were followed by internal and external training, including rope access techniques, dropped object prevention, safe lifting and general offshore preparations.

Learning by doing

After two months, I was hanging from ropes, 35 meters below a drilling rig in the middle of the North Sea. I was a part of a three-person climbing team. The scope of the trip was to secure potential dropped objects, but as climbers and engineers, we were given a wide range of challenges waiting for good solutions. When the actual situation seldom went together with the information we were given, quick and clever decisions were essential to satisfy our client’s needs.

I have been told that rapid changes and unpredictability is the standard rather than the exception in the offshore industry. This was quickly confirmed on my second trip, and became a true challenge on my third and latest trip offshore. I was sent out as the work-leader for a team for a quick trip that could be over within a few days. However, meetings with the rig management revealed that we had to go beyond our prepared work scope. When we left the rig a week later, we had not only been introduced, but mostly been working with a complete different segment of Axess’ services. Thanks to good colleagues, learning by doing turned out to give excellent results and valuable experience for me as a fresh work-leader.

Steep learning curve

The learning will continue for the following months as well. I have briefly been introduced to a project were I will work full time until the beginning of May 2014. I will join a competent technical group in the planning of a complex lifting operation beneath the Oseberg C platform. The operation itself will require ten persons working on shifts, day and night, over two full weeks. I am also intended to take part in one of these teams to get the practical experience as well. There are in other words exciting times ahead, before I will travel out to one of our international location with all my lessons learned…