The WAT Group

E-platforms

Pier van Spronsen’s career as a business owner started in the 1990s with his own graphic design agency in South Holland. Over the years, he developed a solid customer base that includes well-known names from the oil and gas industry. When a customer came requesting him to map out a company’s 6,000 employees to create an overview of who they were and what they did, his business changed course. Pier and his team mapped out the entire organisational structure and then made matching arrangements through self-thought-out games to bring the right people together within the organisation. This approach caught on and formed the basis for what The WAT Group does today.

The assignment was expanded upon with the creation of an e-platform on which visitors could follow the required safety training for visiting onshore and offshore production platforms and other petrochemical facilities. Pier is proud that his 25 years of experience in safety training for the petrochemical industry is now bundled in an online platform that ensures a significantly cost reduction and, more importantly, creates more safety on the work floor. There is still much work to be done. According to the International Labour Organization, over 7,500 employees worldwide lose their lives, and over 1 million employees globally are injured following work-related incidents. This number must and can go down!

In the Netherlands, 420 companies and 45,000 employees make daily use of the platform. This has led Pier and his team of almost 30 professionals to build the world’s first complete Health, Safety, Environment and Quality (HSEQ) e-learning system. After two and a half years of pioneering work, the platform was launched in the autumn of 2021.

What makes this system so fantastic is that students worldwide will have free access to the platform. Pier: ‘We believe that sharing knowledge with regards to safe working conditions is critical. That’s why we have taken this step. The added advantage is that students can upload their resumes to the platform if they wish, making them visible to interesting – and interested – companies.’ Two weeks after the platform was launched, the initial results looked promising. With the help of intelligent online campaigns, requests are coming in from Greece, the United Kingdom, Italy, and countries as far away as Australia. The system is highly scalable, making fast growth possible. The short-term goal is to grow to a customer base of 700 to 1,000 participating businesses.