Leading figures in the region’s oil, gas and power industries will assemble in Kuwait next month to exchange knowledge and expertise on emergency response.

The Second Annual Crisis & Risk Management Summit will be held in in Kuwait City from May 4 to May 7 May.

Emergency response experts will exchange knowledge and expertise, focusing on critical topics such as risk management, fire safety, computer-aided emergency dispatch, loss prevention, and PTSD recovery, said Khaled Al Mansouri, president of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) and International Center of Business Resilience (ICBR).

“As long we operate in a risky working environment, such as the oil and gas industry, incidents will happen, and we will see our share of them. The outcome will depend on how well our emergency responders, employees, and contractors respond, manage, and learn from them,” said Nasser Al Buhairi, chief security officer and head of the emergency coordination unit, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC).

“Kuwait has had its own challenges—not the least of which was recovering from the invasion in 1991—and we have our methodologies for dealing with them.”

During the conference, Al Buhairi will present a case study that illustrates how managers can prioritise emergency response plans according to the criticality of different equipment.

Commenting on the significance of crisis and risk management in Kuwait, Peter Johnson, HSE Trainer at Chevron, Kuwait, and former incident commander of the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA, US), said: “Risk management is a discussion that occurs each and every day around the world in all sectors. We are having this discussion in Kuwait because the oil and gas industry here is seriously committed to worker safety, asset protection and environmental stewardship.”

Johnson, who will chair the two-day event, will also deliver a lecture on how best to involve senior management, EPC contractors and solution providers in comprehensive response systems.

Al Mansouri will speak to the changing nature of crisis and risk management systems in his keynote speech.

The conference, being organised by IQPC, is held under the official patronage of Kuwait Fire Service Directorate, and has been supported by Rimsco, the official strategic consulting partner of the event. - TradeArabia News Service