PRESTIGE stands for Practical Environmental, Safety and Industrial Guidance for Student Engineers. It is an educational community project for student engineers to be aware and appreciate HSE issues and challenges faced by modern engineer and to help them build a firm foundation for their future as engineers. The objectives of PRESTIGE are:
i. To create awareness and expose students to the whole value chain of gas industry.
ii. To create Health, Safety & Environment (HSE) awareness of the proper usage, delivery and application of gas products.
iii. To raise understanding of the HSE & Sustainable Development issues faced by the industry today.
iv. To enhance the students understanding in HSE by sharing tools and practices and its application.
v. To provide an overview of the career opportunities available in the gas industry.

The Malaysian Gas Association (MGA) has been organising PRESTIGE since 2008 as an annual programme.

PRESTIGE 2013 was successfully held at the Ramada Plaza Hotel, Melaka, 16th -17th November 2013. It involved 11 teams of 64 students and 9 lecturers from six universities in the central and southern regions of Peninsular Malaysia. The final and some third year students were from the chemical, mechanical, electrical, instrument and manufacturing engineering faculties, with majority from chemical engineering. The universities involved were:
1. Universiti Malaya (UM)
2. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)
3. Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
4. Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
5. Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM)
6. The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (Nottingham Malaysia).

MGA organized PRESTIGE 2013 with the help of an Organising Team drawing its members from MGA’s members: PETRONAS, SHELL, ExxonMobil, Gas Malaysia Berhad (GMB), Dialog, and Deleum.
PRESTIGE 2013 was similar to previous PRESTIGE programmes i.e. a two days programme consisting of presentation sessions by industry leaders and groupwork. Topics covered ranges from distribution and utilisation of gas products, HSE tools, risks assesments and sharing of experiences on HSE and environment. For the first time in the PRESTIGE programme, a plant visit and an HR Panel Session by representatives of 3 companies were incorporated into PRESTIGE 2013 programme.
PRESTIGE 2013 started in the evening of 15th November 2013 (Friday) after the participants checked into the hotel. A briefing and ice-breaking session was organized for the participants during dinner. The students introduced themselves and were grouped into teams comprising of students from different universities. Students remained with these teams for all activities except for the HSE Challenge where they were grouped with their own university teammates.
The students quickly warmed up to each other and also to the moderators and facilitators. The first task of the teams was to come up with a war cry for their team to be presented first thing in the morning the next day. Many teams were seen working through the night after dinner.

Day 1 of PRESTIGE 2013 began with a safety briefing and after that the teams went up to the stage to present their war cries. A lot of interesting war cries were presented. This was followed by a welcoming speech by the President of MGA, Ir. Pramod Kumar Karunakaran. He welcomed the students and lecturers and gave a quick overview of PRESTIGE and the gas industry in Malaysia and the important role played by PETRONAS to ensure proper development of the gas industry for the benefits of the nation.

YM Raja Dzulkarnain Raja Zainal Abidin, a Gas Marketer from the Malaysian Gas Management Unit of the Gas & Power Division, PETRONAS, gave the keynote address on “Introduction and Overview of the Gas Business and Industry in Malaysia”. He covered three major topics i.e. Natural Gas and LNG Fundamentals; PETRONAS in the Gas Industry; and Evolution of the Gas Industry in Malaysia.
Ms. Sulo Belawan, Head of HSE Strategy & Governance, Group HSE Division, PETRONAS, was the next presenter. She gave a presentation on “HSE and You” drawing on her experiences as a chemical engineer starting her career in PETRONAS as a young engineer in a fertilizer plant in Bintulu, Sarawak, 26 years ago. Her main topic of presentation was “An Engineer’s encounter with HSE” detailing the various HSE initiatives and systems implemented in PETRONAS including Zero Tolerance Rules (ZeTo Rules) whereby all PETRONAS employees must adhere to. She ended her presentation with the advice “No work is so URGENT that WE cannot take time to do it SAFELY”.

After Ms. Sulo, the lead facilitator of the HSE Challenge Session, En. Zulkarnian Mohd Said from SHELL Refinery, Port Dickson, took to the floor and introduced students to the oil & gas industry concept and practices of safety, health and environment. He also gave examples of HSE accidents worldwide including those in Malaysia. This session was also in preparation for the students visit to the PETRONAS Melaka Refinery (PETRONAS Penapisan (Melaka) Sdn Bhd (PPMSB)) which took place right after the first segment of the HSE Challenge session ended.

Two buses (with safety belts – as per HSE requirement) were used to ferry the participants from hotel to PPMSB and back. At the Refinery, after a quick lunch hosted by PPMSB, the participants were given an introduction and HSE briefing (verbally and via video show) before being taken on the two buses to view the plant located in the process area. A visit to the Main Control Room (MCR) was also arranged, allowing students to see and experience for themselves the working life inside the MCR and to talk to some of the technicians on duty. All the students expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to visit a working oil refinery.

Back at the hotel, En. Zulkarnian continued his facilitation of the HSE Challenge session explaining in more detail subjects on personal and process safety, PPEs, roles of behavioral safety, Life Saving Rules, Golden Rules, Goal Zero, Chronic Unease, Safety Pyramid, etc. He emphasized on the importance of SHELL’s Life Saving Rules (LSR) to all employees of SHELL as those who choose to break these rules choose not to work for SHELL. He explained in detail the HSE Golden Rules of ‘Compliances, Intervene, and Respect” and the Goal Zero of “No Harm. No Leaks”. And also the concept of ‘Chronic Unease’ whereby all employees are expected to be ‘pre-occupied’or ‘be mindful’ of risk/failure i.e. to change from the mindset of “We haven’t had an incident, we are doing well’ to “We haven’t had an incident, what are we overlooking and what else do we need to do”. The plant visit and the presentation during the HSE Challenge sessions were used as the background materials and activities for the first HSE Challenge case study that the facilitator gave to each university team to solve and to make a presentation the next day, on their findings and solutions.

Day 1 ended with a welcoming dinner where each team (the teams that comprised of students from different universities that was formed during the ice-breaking session) gave a 5 minutes performance on areas related to Malaysian cultures e.g. songs, dances, etc. It was quite an eventful night as various teams gave their performances which included group singing, dikir barat, dramas and sketches. After dinner the university teams get together to continue preparing for the HSE challenge case study given to them.

Day 2 began with a presentation by Mr. Alex E. Guiscardo, the Deputy Production Manager of ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc. He shared his experience and commitment to HSE working in 5 different continents since he joined ExxonMobil in 1989 in USA. His topic of presentation is entitled “My Commitment to Safety – Operations Integrity”. He briefly laid out the ExxonMobil journey to a safety culture of “Nobody Gets Hurt” at the workplace touching on the Operations Integrity Management System (OIMS) and the importance of Incident Investigation and Analysis which is one of the elements of the OIMS.

In the video sharing session facilitated by En. Megat Muzafar M Mokhtar of PETRONAS Group HSE Division, three videos were shown to the students. After each video, the students were asked to discuss the key messages from the video based on what they had learned from the HSE session presentations and activities. The three videos shown were: “Explosion at BP Texas Refinery, Texas City”, “Formosa Plastics”, and “I choose to look the other way”.

After lunch, a panel session by HR representatives from PETRONAS, SHELL and Dialog were convened. PETRONAS was represented by Ms. Napisah Ahmad Radzi, SHELL by Ms. Sheila Bala, and Dialog by Mr. Qayyun Mohd Adnan. The three panelists briefly laid out the activities of their companies, the opportunities opened to engineering students and how to apply for positions in their companies. Among the questions asked by students were opportunity and how to apply for industrial training and attachment and whether jobs and training attachments are opened to foreign students.

In the final HSE Challenge session, students were briefed on the HSE’s Bowtie tool and given case studies to practice and solve. Later the university teams were each given final HSE Challenge case study to solve and to present their findings and solutions on stage. Each team was given 10 minutes to make their case and presentation. All 11 teams gave spirited presentations of their findings and solutions using a mixture of slides, props, sketches, and dramas, involving all team members. A lot of creativity and ideas could be seen in the presentations of all the teams. In the end the judges had to select two best teams for awards based on marks scored during the final and previous HSE Challenge case studies. The overall winner of the PRESTIGE 2013 HSE Challenge was Universiti Malaya (Team 1) and the runner-up was the Team from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The two winning teams were awarded certificates of Excellence and each student in the two teams received an external hard disk as prizes.

The closing speech was given by En. Ahmad Hashimi Abdul Manaf, a council member of MGA and the Senior General Manager (Operations) of Gas Malaysia Berhad. As a token of appreciation, all students and lecturers were awarded certificates of participations and AEON gift vouchers of RM100 each. Certificates of appreciation were also presented to the 6 universities for their participations and to the PRESTIGE 2013 Organising team members who had volunteered their time and efforts to organize the event.

The students and lecturers were very appreciative and grateful for the opportunity to attend PRESTIGE 2013. They had learnt a lot about HSE concepts, tools and applications. The exposure and the plant visit, in particular, enhanced their understanding and appreciation of HSE that they had learned from their lectures at the universities. The lecturers hope that their universities will be invited again to participate in future PRESTIGE programmes.

End. 11/12/13