In this powerful episode of The Safe Leader Podcast, Mark McBride-Wright sits down with Mark Wilson, HSE and Operations Director at Offshore Energies UK, for an honest and inspiring conversation on leadership, wellbeing, and the ripple effect of positive change. From giving up alcohol and caffeine to rising through the military ranks, from private soldier to major, Mark shares how personal choices and professional integrity shaped his journey into the energy sector.
Together, they explore what authentic leadership really looks like, why creating a culture of care matters, and how the power of positivity can transform safety and performance in high-risk environments. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or just starting out, this episode offers practical wisdom and real-world insight into what it means to lead with humility, purpose, and impact.
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:01
Mark, welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by another Mark, Mark Wilson, who is the HSE and Operations Director for offshore energies UK. So Mark Wilson is a highly accomplished leader with extensive experience across the military, energy and health, safety and environment HSE sectors, currently serving as HSE and Operations Director at offshore energies UK, Mark plays a pivotal, pivotal role in driving safety excellence and operational performance within the UK offshore energy industry, a former Major in the British Army, Mark transitioned his expertise into civilian leadership roles, excelling in high pressure environments with his transformational approach to leadership and a steadfast commitment to integrity, passionate about fostering positive workplace cultures and advancing safety innovation. Mark combines his deep technical knowledge with a practical focus on collaboration and continuous improvement. Now as the Interim Chair of the institution of directors Scotland Aberdeen and Grampian branch, Mark is dedicating to supporting the next generation of leaders and shaping a sustainable, safer future for the energy sector. Mark, hello,
Mark Wilson 1:26
hello. Great to be here. Thank you.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:28
How are you today? You good,
Mark Wilson 1:31
yeah. Very good, yeah. Thank you very much for the introduction there. I feel rather humbled.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:36
Wow. You know when someone else bigs you up and talks about it certainly makes you reflect. Very easy, isn’t it, to sort of live in the moment and just be in your day to day, and you sort of you forget about, sometimes the how you’ve got to where you’re at, and sometimes you just need to sort of recent yourself, especially this time of year. So we’re recording this in middle of January, so it’s the start to 2025, so how, how’s the new year been going for you? Have you set any resolutions?
Mark Wilson 2:06
I tend not to do too many resolutions. Actually. I tend to have an approach that I I live my life each day, but I tend to sort of have a healthy and good, well being approach to all I do. So my Well, I made some I didn’t make resolutions last last year, but made some life changing differences which which was good. So I stopped drinking alcohol, stopped drinking caffeine, and they made a monumental change in my life. But I didn’t have a resolution to do it. I just made a decision to actually make a difference for myself. I focus a lot on making a difference for the people, but looked at myself in the mirror and went, maybe you could, maybe you could live your own life a little bit better and sort of So, no resolutions, necessarily, but a continuation of that thought process to make a difference going forward.
Mark McBride-Wright 2:52
So you stopped doing caffeine. How’s that? Actually? It’s interesting,
Mark Wilson 2:56
when I chat to some people to say I could possibly do, I could possibly do the alcohol, but not the caffeine. So, but a lot of it was just how it was making me feel. I was drinking too much tea. I do a lot of exercise, and I was rehydrating using tea, which is clearly not, it’s a dehydrance. So it’s not, it’s not so good for rehydrating. So it made an instantaneous the cafe made an instantaneous difference in my life. The alcohol was a bit more. You felt more better after about a month to sort of three months. But, yeah, but big changes. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 3:27
I can relate to that. My husband, I weren’t really big drinkers, but for the last month or so festive period, we’ve gotten back into that, oh, let’s have a margarita when we’re out and oh, let’s do that. We’re going out on date nights more often. And I think my average alcohol consumption has crept back up to, you know, I’m in New York now as well. And what I cannot find over here, so we moved here in August is the alcohol free gin and stuff like that. I mean, we were going through bottles of that stuff back in London, it’s, I must have revolutionized the drinks market. It was so nice to still be able to feel like you’re having something fancy and posh on your Friday night to end the week, but not having the, you know, just the headache or the lethargy. I was never really drinking to the point of getting drunk and hungover, but just the lethargy that comes with alcohol. How are you because, well, that’s
Mark Wilson 4:22
the interesting thing, because it was, I read a few interesting books recently, and I guess to say, stop drinking alcohol. You could say, Yeah, physically you’ve stopped drinking, but actually you have substituted alcohol and substituted with alcohol free. But what happens eventually you don’t drink so much alcohol free stuff, because you can only drink so much alcohol free lager, for instance, etc, but yeah, I’ve substituted it with something else, and it’s there if I want it. But yeah, but I’m pleased also in terms of come out through this sort of discussion. But that making a difference is that close family member who was drinking too much having some life changes in at. Recently made redundant and could actually have disappeared down a different route completely, had a discussion myself, looked at what I done as a bit of a role model, and made the decision, okay, I’m out of work. Now is not the time to be drinking. I’m going to take Mark’s lead here and stop drinking. They’ve now got a job. We’ve got a job offer in February, and thankfully, I’m really pleased about that, as you well imagine, but they’ve made a decision not to drink again, because they’ve substituted their alcohol with alcohol free and clean. So it’s a bit of that making a difference, a positive influence on not just myself, not just those people that I interact on a day to day basis, but my family and loved ones as well, is really important.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:40
Yes, I guess it’s the guess, it’s a sort of ripple effect that you you have around you. So, so if we were to what I like in the podcast, kind of going back in time and revisiting, you know, what built us up to make us who we are today. And you’ve had a bit of an interesting career, you know, moving from the armed forces and then into into the energy sector. So how would you say your experiences and what you’ve gone through have helped shape your leadership style and your approach to to safety and to operations?
Mark Wilson 6:14
So I think so. One of the things, as you mentioned there is, I left the I left the Army as a major, I would stress, I also joined as a private soldier. So I actually rose all the way through the ranks, and that’s important when I look at and I class that as my first career. And my second career is my energy career, the oil and gas career. But the first one, because I rose through the ranks, that you your leadership roles and responsibilities grew. You did courses, you you learned from experience. And that was that that was really good and fantastic. First career as I, as I call it, and then in the second career, I sort of took the same approach. I sort of knew that I’d have to, in theory, drop down a few rungs of the ladder to then be able to climb back up again. I think that was important, because you’ve got to learn the new skills, and you in theory, it’s a new trade, a new industry that you’ve got to learn but, but because you’re going to go quicker, because you’re mapping in previous skills and previous experience that I had from the military. So I left the military in 2011 after a fantastic career, as I say, but then took those transferable skills, but decided and made a conscious decision to start lower down the ladder and then move at pace through those new career steps. And it took a while for me to find the career path as it was, but, but they are there. You can find, you can certainly find the way, but I was able to map across very quickly, those those those leadership pieces. A lot of it, I find, is, think of you as to, if I was a sticker rock, and you as to to open up the sticker rock and it was a Mark Wilson sticker rock inside it would be integrity, that, that that resonated in the military. If I, if I said I was going to do something, I did it, and if I couldn’t do it, I’d say why I couldn’t do it. And I think that I’ve carried that forward into this career, from a from a pickup pick, from a leadership perspective, because it gives it gives you credibility. And one of the things I really wanted to do in the in the energy career, is I, yes, I wanted to go and work in an offshore environment, in terms of visit offshore, but I actually took the decision I wasn’t, and I’ll be transparent, I didn’t work for long offshore, but I actually did take the decision to go and live and work offshore on rotation, because I wanted to experience what those many 1000s of people experience day in, Day Out. Of what is it like to wait for a flight to take you home, to miss your loved ones, to be working in that environment and say, I only did it for a year, but and then I moved on to another opportunity, but it was enough for me to sort of feel I had a bit more credibility from having been out there and been in the boot locker room, not just visiting, but actually living there as well. So that was part of and I took that from the military, rising through those ranks to get to major which is a pinnacle of that career, but building in such a way that you’ve experienced, it was important for me this industry, to experience what people are going through and be able to talk from a credibility perspective.
Mark McBride-Wright 9:19
So how is that? So my mind, so a few questions I’ve got going through my mind is work. So from the safety dimension, were you involved in safety in your military career? And I’m curious how what you’ve just described is now flowing up into your role at offshore energies, UK, as leading on HSE, yes,
Mark Wilson 9:41
it’s interesting, because in the military, when I was in the military, when I joined, I joined too much the way I joined the Army in 1987 and in those days, we had a thing called crown exemption to things like certain regulations. But so safety was actually in all of us. There wasn’t a safety advisor, there wasn’t a. Safety Manager wasn’t a safety director. It was turning those early stages. It was in each and every one of us. We was trained to do things in a safe manner, and so particularly as I sort of came towards the end of the career, we started more talking to about the health, the safety and the environment of being a sort of unique in barracks capability, where you’d have an HSE manager, if necessary, or somebody would have that role. So it was, it was in, it was in each and every one of us. So that when I came into, into the the oil and gas industry as it was, it was, although I’m mechanical engineer, I’m a child engineer. My background is mechanics. That’s what I do. I like fixing things, but when I came into this industry as health and safety and environment and quality, seemed to be a natural fit, because the people skills and the leadership aspects. And when I first came in, I sort of moved more into the human performance area. So human Fauci was called because, because I was able to take those skills that I learned from the military and map them in quite nicely. So it was a nice fit to be able to go from something that’s been ingrained in me through 24 years in the military to something that remained ingrained in me, but I had to sort of somehow ensure that you can, as you mentioned before, that ripple effect, how do you get it out so that everybody gets it as well?
Mark McBride-Wright 11:26
Do they? Do they? Well, another two questions. So you mentioned 1987 did the Piper Alpha disaster and then the subsequent Lord Cullen inquiry, and all the recommendations that came out of that, that then shaped the offshore sector in the UK, did that then back influence the military at all, and with regard to then having sort of separate safety focus areas?
Mark Wilson 11:53
No, not so much. I mean, I was aware of the Piper Alpha disaster by virtually the fact that my my parents lived in Aberdeen at the time, so it was very much. And obviously it was in the media, in the news, etc. But no, it’s sort of the it was just purely in the same way that this industry has got that license to operate, that social license to operate, the military has the same it had to be seen to be acting within regulations, acting within credibility, and as such, the the regulations had to apply and see that that element of Crown exemption had to move on. There was, there was a change in the thought process of individuals in terms of, we had to be seen to be liable, to liable. There had to be an element of culpability. So as leaders, your decisions had to, there had to be some consequence for getting it wrong. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 12:48
absolutely, I know what you’re Yeah, no, yes, I’m showing my age. Yes, the and then, and then you touch there on. So that mapping exercise like transferring out of military life into city life, as I hear it, gets called into civilian life, like, do you get supported in that exercise in terms of identifying potential careers and language translation? Because I know that’s a big barrier something former veterans and is moving into, like, business language and, you know, just, just translating what you’ve been used to in terms of how you talk to one another and the language and the terminology, just even understanding that, decoding business and applying for jobs if you’re if you’re not helped in that process, sometimes you can, you know, miss out on opportunities that you would be perfectly suited for.
Mark Wilson 13:43
Yeah, I mean, it certainly you do. I mean, depends on the level of service that you’ve done in terms of the years served, in terms of what level of career transition support you get, whether it be two weeks or whether it be six weeks. Myself, it was six weeks. But fundamentally, for myself and I sort of put this recommendation to other service leavers, because we’re still engaged as an industry. We’re still active with service levers to sort of look to actually bring them into the industry as well, recognizing skill shortages. And why wouldn’t we tap into those? But it’s just about recognizing how best for them to sell themselves and don’t if you’re an infantry sniper, you’re going to have to adjust your CV to actually be able to be able to be sort of make sure your skills are mapped across. And I use that as an extreme sort of example. But however, it’s one of those. I’m sure there’s a role for that type of individual by virtue of the leadership and the management skills they’ve had, but it might be rope access technician that requires some further training. And how do you map that across and as fundamentally, what the way I looked at it is from a personal perspective, I really started my transition out of the military, maybe somewhere in the region of eight to 10 years before I was leaving. So think i. But yeah, I wanted to get charted engineer status. I wanted to do I wasn’t degree educated. So how do I get a degree so that I can be coming out and be at the age I was be equivalent to my peers in some of those so if a CV goes in front of somebody in this industry and it’s got a degree on the left, and I was able to at least get through any filter, because there was a degree on mine. And then the CVs are written in such a way that the the hiring manager can look at it and go, okay, yeah, I get what skills the individuals can bring into the organ, into the organization in the industry. And
Mark McBride-Wright 15:36
so you mentioned there about skills shortages and skills needs, I guess, across different sectors as we go through the energy transition. So what? What talent sources do you see there being out there, and even in the offshore sector, moving to decommissioning, and then, you know, other sectors that need the talent that oil and gas has had? What, what’s being done to sort of migrate people, where we don’t get a massive cliff edge of experience going into retirement?
Mark Wilson 16:10
Yeah, there’s a there’s a number of initiatives that are evolving and moving forward, things like the skills passport, where we’re looking at what skills individuals have right now and how they can map those across. That passport allows them to move from one energy type, so from oil and gas to offshore wind to carbon capture and storage, and move backwards and forwards. And we’re seeing that already when we look at things like some some of the drill rigs, for instance, where they’ll be, they’ll not be just doing the typical oil and gas drilling activity. They’ll be doing future carbon capture and storage wells. We’ve got some some decommission activity, where you might be seeing a vessel that is at one moment of time, is being used as storage facility for doing keeping equipment on that is doing plug and abandonment on small offshore installations, and then maybe two weeks later, is installing wind farms. We’re seeing that movement across already. And I think one of the certainly, one of the positives, is the the skill sets of the offshore workforce have got the ability to migrate across, and we’ve been doing some work as offshore energy UK, about just how, how, how easy is it for somebody to migrate across with those core skills from oil and gas into wind? For instance, your offshore as I mentioned, rope access technician? Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it as well, we need to remember is the that the oil and gas industry the heritage of 50 to 60 years and that ingrained approach to health, safety and environment that they’ve got so that safety approach that they’ve got the ability to challenge poor work practices. There’s a there’s a real there’s a there’s a an increase in impact that the current industry workers can have on generally, on safe performance, generally as they go out to other areas of industry, whether that be another energy industry or going to work for Tesco, Amazon, that can take that thought processing about keeping people safe, which they do, day in, day out. And do you
Mark McBride-Wright 18:17
think, do you think we’ve what is the workforce profile on average like? And I know in kind of, my age group, there’s a bit of a gap, you know, there’s a real sort of, the average age of the offshore workforce is, what about 47 or something? I think, yeah,
Mark Wilson 18:33
it’s in that. It’s in that area as a sort of, but we are getting, we’re getting the work is coming through. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve got to go to heliport and you see the diversity of the workforce, and it’s about promoting future careers in the industry. I mean, there’s a future for oil and gas in the industry. We only got to look at the trend. It’s out to 2050 that will still be using oil and gas. The statistics that I put, we put to people. You know, there’s, there’s 38 million vehicles on the road that are powered by diesel and petrol in the UK. And there’s 23 million gas boilers in our homes in the UK. Now, we’re not going to, we’re not going to turn them off overnight. That’s going to be a phased approach. And then then there’s decommissioning, as you mentioned before, what a great career opportunities that’s got for the next 20 years as well, and then, and then after that. And even whilst that’s going on, you can go into carbon capture storage. There’s lots of there’s lots of opportunities and options available. And
Mark McBride-Wright 19:37
do you think, I mean, what is the tone in the workforce, in that more senior, established, long tenured individuals. Are they? Are they? Do they want to hang around and impart that knowledge and wisdom to the generation coming in? Or I feel, I feel like, from what I read, sometimes we’re on a sort of cliff edge in the next five. 10 years, where we’re then not going to have the the experienced ones to then work learn off of, and so we’re going to have, we’re going to miss a window, basically, unless we take significant action now. Or are some of those people willing to hang on and still be about and work into the traditional retirement age? Yeah,
Mark Wilson 20:18
I think there’s, there’s there’s a there’s a bit of both. There’s those people who have worked for a long time in the offshore environment and to sort of take the opportunity to move on, enjoy their that maybe early retirement for those but we’re not seeing from what I’m sort of seeing, I’m not seeing a cliff edge. I mean, we will naturally, because the the base, the United the UK continental shelf, will naturally decline. We want to, obviously want to maximize as much as we can, but we’ll see that natural decline. We will see people moving and migrating from one energy type, oil and gas, to another, actually. And it could work quite well, but certainly all the experiences I’ve seen has been, I’ve not, I’ve not had engagement or not, not seen anybody who is not willing to engage with you know, what I find as well is because the in a lot of cases, the culture we have is it’s not just the where I’m and probably that that older hand, that more mature individual, but it’s also what we’re finding is the that those people that are new to the industry are actually asking real, searching and challenging questions well as well. And it’s something we was always keen to do through behavioral based safety programs, is, you know, always ask the question, Well, why do you do that? Not just what are you doing, but why do you do that and challenge? And I think as an industry, we’re very good at doing that. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 21:43
definitely, definitely, yeah. I’ve got a massive bias, because I grew up in this industry. So you know, now, working more cross sector, given what I do now, I see how unique that is, sometimes in safety based environments or sectors where safety is a more like a stronger part of the culture than, than, than, you know, other aspects. So that ability to question why and really push is, is so, so important. Where, where do you see the do intergenerational biases create any barriers to proper cohesion and culture building in the workforce?
Mark Wilson 22:32
Again, I’ve not seen a lot of that. I mean, certainly for the time that I’ve been offshore and the interactions I’ve had with the offshore workers when I’ve been this, this, yeah, there’s always the typical one when the other the role of technology in safety, but in the main, that doesn’t tend to be a barrier in terms of, we don’t have huge amounts of tablets on the platforms, and so that’s that but, and everybody seems to adapt to that technology, but I tend to see, because of the nature of of how we live offshore, it becomes a bit of a family feel to it. And we tend to find that, yeah, the green hat approach, and where people are wearing this green hat, if they’re new to an installation for a period of time, we should be adopting sort of this yellow hat approach, where you’re new to the industry or what as well. It enhances this, this, this culture of care, you know? This, this whole making sure that, okay, that person’s green heart may not know where the eye wash point is, may not. May ask a question that somebody who’s been there for 20 years might seem as a well, why is Why are you asking that? But you know it’s going to come from this individual, but there’s also, in the main, I mean, yeah, there’s, there’ll always be individual challenges there. But in the main, the industry seems to have this approach where they look after each other because they’re all in the same situation offshore. And I saw a lot of that in the military, when I go into the locker room offshore, the language that’s been used in terms of the words that are being used, not necessarily the language by bad language, but the words that are being used are very similar to what I used here in the military, when you go on operational tours, or how long you’ve been, when, when you’re going on, when you’re going home next, what’s your plans? What do you do on your last break? And stuff like it’s all so that the Psych is still there, but it’s all about building trust, and then trust, once it’s built, reflects into their safety performance and indeed their products. If you look at what has been achieved for this industry in a high hazard environment, it is, it is, we’re not complacent, of course, but the performance that we’ve we’ve achieved over the years has certainly been positive, and we continue to have that, that approach, where we’re not complacent, and we’re very much in that continual improvement loop, and making sure that we we do learn, and we pass those learnings on to other. I think that’s what you get from that intergenerational piece. Is that there’s a bit that you mentioned Piper Alpha, for instance, is about making sure. Sure that we can still replay that awful experience and make sure that people understand that those hazards are still in place at their work sites. And although we haven’t, I mean, or do we want to do an event, event like that for many, many years, it’s still there that sleeping Tiger still exists, and we do not want to be poking or waking the tiger. We want to be conscious of it and respectful of it, but actually making sure that we’re we know that it’s about consequence management, for me, about understanding consequences.
Mark McBride-Wright 25:34
And so one of the, one of the things that I’ve really evolved my thinking on since we, I think we first met five or six years ago, the the sort of concept of masculinity and men working in a male majority working environment, I think there was, there’s this brilliant reference that I use in my book called unmasking manly men, which is a study that was done by Harvard Business Review. It was covered in Harvard Business Review, and essentially it was they took they took all these offshore workers in the Gulf of Mexico, and they took them through this leadership program, and they metaphorically broke down these big burly Louisianan Texan men, made them be vulnerable and cry in front of one another, and then built them back up again with resilience. And you know, all these like more things that we associate with, inclusive leadership, empathy, centered leadership style. And they so they challenged what was a culture of dominance, power, fear, control, and built back up to a different um leadership style and performance across the assets went up, and that was put down to this, this investment, this retraining that they’d done. There wasn’t any enhanced oil recovery. There wasn’t any improved turnaround reliability interventions, or that it was simply put down to better performance. And so I compare that, I think that that’s on my mind when I think about male majority workforce of of engineering with a lack of diversity. So therefore, how as men, we’re not often conditioned to really connect interpersonally or be vulnerable or let our guard down. And in this sort of statistics of suicide and suicidal ideation, you know, engineering, the process manufacturing, the process sectors, construction, manufacturing process sectors have the highest of any sector, and we we saw this response rate come through on our masculinity and engineering research as well equal engineers. So I How, how much of what I’ve just described applies to like the offshore working environment, like, are the guys looking out for one another at a deep level? Have you? Have you seen an evolution in terms of masculinity, and it’s, it’s very interesting even now have like having this conversation, you know, in the context of what’s going on on social media, with Mark Zuckerberg saying we need more masculine energy in the workplace, and Trump coming in in a few weeks, you know, where, where, where is all this going to take us in the energy sector, and the influence that this is going to have on on culture and commitments from industry and from industry bodies like yourselves, on how hard you’re going to lean into inclusive leadership and and all that. Yeah, big question, but really keen to get your thoughts
Mark Wilson 28:35
on it, yeah? I mean, it’s a really interesting one. Yeah, you could probably spend a few hours talking about that one on its on its own, because, I mean, I certainly, I really do see the benefits of your diversity, and that’s diversity across a number of sort of Len lenses, and that in your and the key thing for me, as well as around this, you know, having that diverse approach, but it’s that inclusion and whatever, whatever, whatever gender, whatever Your background is, is about having the inclusion piece there and making sure that you can but being genuine with it, and I can speak up a number exam, it has been necessary for the whole industry, because there’ll always be pockets where it’s not necessarily going right. But certainly my experience, I’ve seen offshore and I’ve been on numerous assets and for different organizations, is there is a right from the word go, there’s that inclusion piece in there. And there’s a in a lot of cases, I’ve seen, is the that the the leaders show, humidity, humility, and you know where, where they’ve got it wrong. You know, the good leaders will start off that, okay, we, we didn’t get this right, but this is what we’ve learned. So we’ve moved it from there in terms of that’s showing some humility. And I know when I first came to the industry, there’s a phrase that looked at me I heard from from the military. I went on this course within this industry called authentic leadership, and I didn’t like it. I just like, it’s like. Well, if you’ve got authentic leadership, that means you’ve got unauthentic leadership, yeah. And I’ve come from this machine in the military where we’re all seen as quite authentic, you know, clearly I’m, yeah, clearly, there’s examples where it’s not necessarily the case. And there’s the phrase in the military now called toxic leadership, but there’s a bit yeah, but clearly not everybody is but, but I didn’t quite like that, but then they’re like, then once I got into the industry, I thought, okay, yeah. And then when they started talking about looking at yourself in the mirror and the shadow you cast, it’s sort of gossip for this industry, is that. And there was O, I m is playing back to me about how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning and make sure they’ve got that consistent, fair approach. And that cascades very quickly through their leadership team, and they, they have this include, this inclusive effect. Yeah, it would be, for me, having more diversity offshore would be great, you know, having more sort of far better gender balance. And we need to, we need to ensure that we continue to promote that agenda without a doubt. There’s no doubt about that, because we get that it’s just better all around for performance, for a whole wide range of sort of aspects and angles to it as well. But yeah, they the main thing for me is about if you can generate this, you know, the culture of care, as some call it, but generate it so people have got some humility, that they can break down barriers. And so we talked a lot. When I was with Conoco Phillips, we talked a lot around sort of safety conversations. And there wasn’t just about poor behaviors and poor observations. The you know, the switched it and talked about good conversations and good observations and positive things we found. And for me, I’m I’m afraid. I am. I’m not even, I’m not even going to say I’m going to glass half full individual. I’m a glass over filling individual. I’m positive, I’m enthusiastic, and I recognize there’s positives and negatives to that. But I that’s just me. I’m far too long in the tooth to probably change that, that piece there now. But I also do recognize in safety the power of positivity. I really think it’s there. You know, we when I first came to the industry, one of the things that surprised me was we measure how many people we injure, how many things that blow up? Well, let’s change that psychology and measure it in terms of things that we’ve prevented, things that we’ve changed. That’s that I know it’s difficult to do. But the power of positivity for me that that really sort of reflects through and I think in some ways, that’s been one of the areas where I remember talking to my line manager at the time, saying, I’d like to go offshore and workers and be an offshore Installation Manager. And they looked at me. Mom said, if you’re enthusiastic and as positive as you are onshore, you’re going to make a difference. I support you. Let’s get you trained.
Mark McBride-Wright 32:43
Brilliant. And so that was that what you did offshore there, when you lived
Mark Wilson 32:48
I went to do a sort of combined operations. I am in a decommissioning environment, so lots of movement parts, lots of different moving pieces, and lots of uncertainty as well. People not sure whether they’re going to be coming back in a month’s time, because we’re doing decommission activity people on short term contracts. And how do you manage that? When you manage that by connecting with people, showing some humility, some empathy, wearing it in something, some cases, wearing your heart and your sleeve. Go into the boot room, go into the locker room. I don’t smoke, but occasionally I went to the smoke shop because there were some people in there I wanted to engage with. And just just being there, being visible and sort of being part
Mark McBride-Wright 33:23
of amazing well, so tell me a bit about your role at offshore energies UK and future, and what you’re working on now and where you see things headed.
Mark Wilson 33:35
Yeah. So my role, I have a fantastic portfolio offshore energy UK is the health, health, safety environment and operations director. So not only looking after the health safety environment emissions piece, but looking after some of the, the sort of licensing aspects, subsea activity, production activity and and decommissioning as well. So wide portfolio, but lots, lots going on. We’ve got, we’ve got a really exciting, really challenging year this year, but a positively challenging year and real opportunity to make a difference. We’ve got a couple of real important consultations that are going to be going on around the future the North Sea, the future fiscal environment, the post, the energy profit levy going and all of those from a safety perspective, they’re going to generate an air, an element of uncertainty with the workforce, the minute you talk about the future in the North Sea, that creates a question, doesn’t it? And so we’ve got to make sure that we’re staying, remain and engaged with the workforce. We’ve got to make sure that we’re representing the workforce and representing the industry, not just for the industry itself, but representing it so the government know what we’re doing, what we what we think the impact of their decisions could be on people’s lives, on the future of energy security. So there’s, there’s lots of there’s lots of moving parts, certainly to the first six months of this year that are going to be really into. In and all always underpinned by maintaining our social license to operate. We cannot afford another large high release. We cannot afford losses of life. That’s absolutely that’s non negotiable. We’ve got to always keep our eye on that and focusing on a consultation and taking your eye off, that is not the right approach. We’ve got to make sure that we’re able to keep the focus where we need to, and that’s keeping the workforce safe. It’s about making sure we produce any security so we can keep the lights on at home and all them sort of good things, because, you know, that’s that’s primarily what we do. We provide energy for the UK and other areas as well. So but yes, really important six months that are coming up, and I’m sure hopefully the listeners will will have some interest in that and want to learn more, and you’ll hear, as the government announces those consultations in the next coming weeks, just how how wide ranging they are. We don’t know quite yet how wide ranging they are. But quite frankly, future of the North Sea says itself
Mark McBride-Wright 36:04
and well, does your role encompass carbon capture and storage? Is that
Mark Wilson 36:10
my role sort of my team look at the operational aspects of carbon capture and storage. So that started reality now with a number of members looking at how they can reuse, repurpose infrastructure, looking how they can reuse and repurpose reservoirs that are depleted, and how we can look at that and how and how they can make a positive difference to the wider industrial decarbonization of the UK, for those hard to abate, industries such as cement, some of the chemical industries that can’t decarbonize and CCS has a great role to play there. And the UK has got a sort of fantastic opportunity in carbon capture and storage if we grasp it, which, again, has got a from a workforce perspective, it’s a lot of it is going to it’s like reverse engineering oil and gas.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:55
Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing to see how the industries actually come, come about. I had a real interest in CCs in my undergrad, but it all sort of started to unravel when George Osborne removed the commitment to fund a billion pound project or something in sort of two, mid, mid 2010s but now it’s sort of come, come right back up so much so, to the point that Edinburgh University were investing in a Masters in CCS Professor Stuart Hazelden, I think his name was, and I looked at doing that masters, but instead I did. I did my PhD in carbon capture and storage, but, but then it looked like there was going to be no industry to get a job within. So that was why I then went into, you know, technical safety engineering, to work in an industry. So it’s so I’ve been away from all that for, you know, 10 years or so. So it’s, it’s fascinating to now see, it’s I feel like life that I press pause on that part of my life, and then now seeing all these projects that are actually starting to happen. It’s like, oh, it actually is happening, you know, which is really cool to see. So there’s a part of the I like to do some quick fire question. So let’s, if you’re, if you’re ready, I will, I will crack on with them. So what’s the best safety innovation you’ve seen recently?
Mark Wilson 38:31
Interesting one that, in terms of what I’ve seen recently, I would, I would probably just keep it to where it’s always it’s not to say a recent one, this one, but it’s the one that I just think is the long standing one, and that’s just a safety conversation. For me, it’s as simple as that. I believe firmly, in this complex and complicated industry, in this complex company and world we live in, keep it simple. And a safety conversation is, for me, is that the best safety innovation we’ve got? It’s not an innovation. It’s something so simple, but I do believe that one, there’s lots of technological advances, advances that we’ve had, but and they’ve all got a role to play. But, yeah, safety innovation for me, is that safety conversation, effective safety conversation.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:12
How do you unwind after a demanding day? A bit
Mark Wilson 39:16
of a Lego buff. I’ve now, I didn’t have too much disposable income when I left the military, but I’ve got a bit more just income now, and I’ve got an eight year old son as well. But I say terms of how I unwind, it’s got to be with my my backside, on my on my exercise bike, or on my cycle home when it’s during the spring, because it’s normally cycling, because it allows me to process my thoughts and unwind and then get home and have some time with my son doing Lego
Mark McBride-Wright 39:41
what’s the most valuable leadership lesson we learned in the military? For
Mark Wilson 39:46
me is that integrity piece think be, be credible and act with integrity at all times. And one of the things I mapped across from the military is that is that means when people are not watching as
Mark McBride-Wright 39:58
well. I. An early bird or night owl? Interesting?
Mark Wilson 40:02
Yeah, it was a night owl until I stopped drinking, and now I seem to be a bit more of an early bird, which is an interesting one, but I’d probably, I would probably be more. I find my brain operates more in the afternoon, but operates better, shall we say, in the afternoon, in the evening. Okay,
Mark McBride-Wright 40:17
what’s a Bucha resource you’d recommend to everyone?
Mark Wilson 40:20
Very simple one. For me, it’s a very simple book. It’s issued to every officer cadet that goes through candor Sanders. It’s called serve to lead.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:31
If you could instantly master one skill, what would it be? Yeah,
Mark Wilson 40:34
this one would be a personal skill, and that’s playing the piano. I look at people that can do musical instruments with absolute envy. I just, I just don’t have that skill.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:47
What’s a favorite memory from your career so far?
Mark Wilson 40:52
I think for me, it’s where you get the feedback that something that you’ve done has had made such a difference in somebody’s life, and that might just be, and there’s a few where it’s just been an individual circumstance where you know you’ve prevented an injury from happening, and you’ve had it a few times, and you get that feedback through a near miss report that you think, yeah, I contributed to that, so team effort, but you know that you’ve contributed to that. There’s always that piece there and and some and sometimes it’s you don’t know what you’ve stopped from happening. You do if you don’t stop it. But sometimes you don’t know, but occasionally you get the feedback about that, that you made that difference there. Who
Mark McBride-Wright 41:31
inspires you the most in your field? I would say
Mark Wilson 41:36
there’s a slightly different one for me, because I don’t necessarily, I don’t get, necessarily over and inspirational by individuals per se, one or two, oh, I am that I can think back of, but my main inspiration is actually my son, okay, because I believe I want to go home safe every night to spend time with my son my wife as well. But is is my son that inspires me to for his generation to ensure that was will lay in the future for that for him, not just from an emissions perspective and decarbonization, but for an energy future as well.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:10
What’s a fun fact most people don’t know about you? Well,
Mark Wilson 42:14
there you go. So I actually share my name is on a trophy for Army Modern Pentathlon beside an Olympic gold medalist, beside you, Sergeant Jim Fox, who sadly has passed away. But Sergeant Jim Fox the Montreal Olympics won golden the gold medal for modern pentathlon. He won the army Modern Pentathlon championship many, many years ago, and I was fortunate enough when I was in the career to also be the army Modern Pentathlon champion. Oh,
Mark McBride-Wright 42:43
wow, you really aren’t your fitness maybe I know the answer to this question. The final question, if you weren’t in HSE, in operations, what career would you be pursuing?
Mark Wilson 42:55
I am a practical sort of guy. I’ve got some theoretical knowledge, obviously, to back it up, but I’m very much a hands on person. I think if I wasn’t here, I would be doing something like an outward balance instructor, something that would be able to give something back from a teaching perspective, in terms of being able to grow and nurture others, and something that would even at my stage I’m at now in my career, in my age. So I say just I like to be fit and healthy and well, and I’d want to be doing something active and practical, as I sort of see my distant memory up
Mark McBride-Wright 43:25
well, you’re in one of the best places in the world to do that, up in Aberdeen. Then they got the highlands on your doorsteps, so that future could still happen. Because
Mark Wilson 43:36
in deja I cycle most most days during spring, in and out of commute. And there’s also paddle boards. I’m not afraid to try anything new at the age I’m at as well, and with an eight year old as a son, that you can’t have that as an excuse.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:52
Brilliant. Well, thank you very much for for joining. And I’ve really, really enjoyed the chat the podcast, if, if anyone wants to get in touch with you. You know, on the back of what you’ve shared, how can people reach out? I
Mark Wilson 44:06
would say the best way to get a hold of me is via LinkedIn. I’d be very happy to sort of respond. I do check it on a periodic basis. I’m not on Facebook necessarily, but I’ve certainly on LinkedIn. If you want to look me up on LinkedIn, I’d be happy to take any questions, comments, anything that maybe you’d like to know a bit more about. I’d be very happy to, and I’m also happy to pass on any further experience. And I’d like to, obviously, if those have got some interest in that, maybe they can give me some of their experience as well. Be great here from them as well. Brilliant.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:33
Well, add you to I’ll put your details in the bottom in the show notes. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Mark. Really enjoyed it. No likewise mark
Mark Wilson 44:41
and thank you for taking the time to connect. It’s been very reflective for me as well. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’m a bit more even more positive than I normally am. Thank you,
Mark McBride-Wright 44:49
brilliant. Have a good day. You too. Take care. Bye.
E017: Building Trust in High Risk Environments
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:01
Mark, welcome to the next episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host, Mark McBride Wright, and I’m delighted today to be joined by another Mark, Mark Wilson, who is the HSE and Operations Director for offshore energies UK. So Mark Wilson is a highly accomplished leader with extensive experience across the military, energy and health, safety and environment HSE sectors, currently serving as HSE and Operations Director at offshore energies UK, Mark plays a pivotal, pivotal role in driving safety excellence and operational performance within the UK offshore energy industry, a former Major in the British Army, Mark transitioned his expertise into civilian leadership roles, excelling in high pressure environments with his transformational approach to leadership and a steadfast commitment to integrity, passionate about fostering positive workplace cultures and advancing safety innovation. Mark combines his deep technical knowledge with a practical focus on collaboration and continuous improvement. Now as the Interim Chair of the institution of directors Scotland Aberdeen and Grampian branch, Mark is dedicating to supporting the next generation of leaders and shaping a sustainable, safer future for the energy sector. Mark, hello,
Mark Wilson 1:26
hello. Great to be here. Thank you.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:28
How are you today? You good,
Mark Wilson 1:31
yeah. Very good, yeah. Thank you very much for the introduction there. I feel rather humbled.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:36
Wow. You know when someone else bigs you up and talks about it certainly makes you reflect. Very easy, isn’t it, to sort of live in the moment and just be in your day to day, and you sort of you forget about, sometimes the how you’ve got to where you’re at, and sometimes you just need to sort of recent yourself, especially this time of year. So we’re recording this in middle of January, so it’s the start to 2025, so how, how’s the new year been going for you? Have you set any resolutions?
Mark Wilson 2:06
I tend not to do too many resolutions. Actually. I tend to have an approach that I I live my life each day, but I tend to sort of have a healthy and good, well being approach to all I do. So my Well, I made some I didn’t make resolutions last last year, but made some life changing differences which which was good. So I stopped drinking alcohol, stopped drinking caffeine, and they made a monumental change in my life. But I didn’t have a resolution to do it. I just made a decision to actually make a difference for myself. I focus a lot on making a difference for the people, but looked at myself in the mirror and went, maybe you could, maybe you could live your own life a little bit better and sort of So, no resolutions, necessarily, but a continuation of that thought process to make a difference going forward.
Mark McBride-Wright 2:52
So you stopped doing caffeine. How’s that? Actually? It’s interesting,
Mark Wilson 2:56
when I chat to some people to say I could possibly do, I could possibly do the alcohol, but not the caffeine. So, but a lot of it was just how it was making me feel. I was drinking too much tea. I do a lot of exercise, and I was rehydrating using tea, which is clearly not, it’s a dehydrance. So it’s not, it’s not so good for rehydrating. So it made an instantaneous the cafe made an instantaneous difference in my life. The alcohol was a bit more. You felt more better after about a month to sort of three months. But, yeah, but big changes. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 3:27
I can relate to that. My husband, I weren’t really big drinkers, but for the last month or so festive period, we’ve gotten back into that, oh, let’s have a margarita when we’re out and oh, let’s do that. We’re going out on date nights more often. And I think my average alcohol consumption has crept back up to, you know, I’m in New York now as well. And what I cannot find over here, so we moved here in August is the alcohol free gin and stuff like that. I mean, we were going through bottles of that stuff back in London, it’s, I must have revolutionized the drinks market. It was so nice to still be able to feel like you’re having something fancy and posh on your Friday night to end the week, but not having the, you know, just the headache or the lethargy. I was never really drinking to the point of getting drunk and hungover, but just the lethargy that comes with alcohol. How are you because, well, that’s
Mark Wilson 4:22
the interesting thing, because it was, I read a few interesting books recently, and I guess to say, stop drinking alcohol. You could say, Yeah, physically you’ve stopped drinking, but actually you have substituted alcohol and substituted with alcohol free. But what happens eventually you don’t drink so much alcohol free stuff, because you can only drink so much alcohol free lager, for instance, etc, but yeah, I’ve substituted it with something else, and it’s there if I want it. But yeah, but I’m pleased also in terms of come out through this sort of discussion. But that making a difference is that close family member who was drinking too much having some life changes in at. Recently made redundant and could actually have disappeared down a different route completely, had a discussion myself, looked at what I done as a bit of a role model, and made the decision, okay, I’m out of work. Now is not the time to be drinking. I’m going to take Mark’s lead here and stop drinking. They’ve now got a job. We’ve got a job offer in February, and thankfully, I’m really pleased about that, as you well imagine, but they’ve made a decision not to drink again, because they’ve substituted their alcohol with alcohol free and clean. So it’s a bit of that making a difference, a positive influence on not just myself, not just those people that I interact on a day to day basis, but my family and loved ones as well, is really important.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:40
Yes, I guess it’s the guess, it’s a sort of ripple effect that you you have around you. So, so if we were to what I like in the podcast, kind of going back in time and revisiting, you know, what built us up to make us who we are today. And you’ve had a bit of an interesting career, you know, moving from the armed forces and then into into the energy sector. So how would you say your experiences and what you’ve gone through have helped shape your leadership style and your approach to to safety and to operations?
Mark Wilson 6:14
So I think so. One of the things, as you mentioned there is, I left the I left the Army as a major, I would stress, I also joined as a private soldier. So I actually rose all the way through the ranks, and that’s important when I look at and I class that as my first career. And my second career is my energy career, the oil and gas career. But the first one, because I rose through the ranks, that you your leadership roles and responsibilities grew. You did courses, you you learned from experience. And that was that that was really good and fantastic. First career as I, as I call it, and then in the second career, I sort of took the same approach. I sort of knew that I’d have to, in theory, drop down a few rungs of the ladder to then be able to climb back up again. I think that was important, because you’ve got to learn the new skills, and you in theory, it’s a new trade, a new industry that you’ve got to learn but, but because you’re going to go quicker, because you’re mapping in previous skills and previous experience that I had from the military. So I left the military in 2011 after a fantastic career, as I say, but then took those transferable skills, but decided and made a conscious decision to start lower down the ladder and then move at pace through those new career steps. And it took a while for me to find the career path as it was, but, but they are there. You can find, you can certainly find the way, but I was able to map across very quickly, those those those leadership pieces. A lot of it, I find, is, think of you as to, if I was a sticker rock, and you as to to open up the sticker rock and it was a Mark Wilson sticker rock inside it would be integrity, that, that that resonated in the military. If I, if I said I was going to do something, I did it, and if I couldn’t do it, I’d say why I couldn’t do it. And I think that I’ve carried that forward into this career, from a from a pickup pick, from a leadership perspective, because it gives it gives you credibility. And one of the things I really wanted to do in the in the energy career, is I, yes, I wanted to go and work in an offshore environment, in terms of visit offshore, but I actually took the decision I wasn’t, and I’ll be transparent, I didn’t work for long offshore, but I actually did take the decision to go and live and work offshore on rotation, because I wanted to experience what those many 1000s of people experience day in, Day Out. Of what is it like to wait for a flight to take you home, to miss your loved ones, to be working in that environment and say, I only did it for a year, but and then I moved on to another opportunity, but it was enough for me to sort of feel I had a bit more credibility from having been out there and been in the boot locker room, not just visiting, but actually living there as well. So that was part of and I took that from the military, rising through those ranks to get to major which is a pinnacle of that career, but building in such a way that you’ve experienced, it was important for me this industry, to experience what people are going through and be able to talk from a credibility perspective.
Mark McBride-Wright 9:19
So how is that? So my mind, so a few questions I’ve got going through my mind is work. So from the safety dimension, were you involved in safety in your military career? And I’m curious how what you’ve just described is now flowing up into your role at offshore energies, UK, as leading on HSE, yes,
Mark Wilson 9:41
it’s interesting, because in the military, when I was in the military, when I joined, I joined too much the way I joined the Army in 1987 and in those days, we had a thing called crown exemption to things like certain regulations. But so safety was actually in all of us. There wasn’t a safety advisor, there wasn’t a. Safety Manager wasn’t a safety director. It was turning those early stages. It was in each and every one of us. We was trained to do things in a safe manner, and so particularly as I sort of came towards the end of the career, we started more talking to about the health, the safety and the environment of being a sort of unique in barracks capability, where you’d have an HSE manager, if necessary, or somebody would have that role. So it was, it was in, it was in each and every one of us. So that when I came into, into the the oil and gas industry as it was, it was, although I’m mechanical engineer, I’m a child engineer. My background is mechanics. That’s what I do. I like fixing things, but when I came into this industry as health and safety and environment and quality, seemed to be a natural fit, because the people skills and the leadership aspects. And when I first came in, I sort of moved more into the human performance area. So human Fauci was called because, because I was able to take those skills that I learned from the military and map them in quite nicely. So it was a nice fit to be able to go from something that’s been ingrained in me through 24 years in the military to something that remained ingrained in me, but I had to sort of somehow ensure that you can, as you mentioned before, that ripple effect, how do you get it out so that everybody gets it as well?
Mark McBride-Wright 11:26
Do they? Do they? Well, another two questions. So you mentioned 1987 did the Piper Alpha disaster and then the subsequent Lord Cullen inquiry, and all the recommendations that came out of that, that then shaped the offshore sector in the UK, did that then back influence the military at all, and with regard to then having sort of separate safety focus areas?
Mark Wilson 11:53
No, not so much. I mean, I was aware of the Piper Alpha disaster by virtually the fact that my my parents lived in Aberdeen at the time, so it was very much. And obviously it was in the media, in the news, etc. But no, it’s sort of the it was just purely in the same way that this industry has got that license to operate, that social license to operate, the military has the same it had to be seen to be acting within regulations, acting within credibility, and as such, the the regulations had to apply and see that that element of Crown exemption had to move on. There was, there was a change in the thought process of individuals in terms of, we had to be seen to be liable, to liable. There had to be an element of culpability. So as leaders, your decisions had to, there had to be some consequence for getting it wrong. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 12:48
absolutely, I know what you’re Yeah, no, yes, I’m showing my age. Yes, the and then, and then you touch there on. So that mapping exercise like transferring out of military life into city life, as I hear it, gets called into civilian life, like, do you get supported in that exercise in terms of identifying potential careers and language translation? Because I know that’s a big barrier something former veterans and is moving into, like, business language and, you know, just, just translating what you’ve been used to in terms of how you talk to one another and the language and the terminology, just even understanding that, decoding business and applying for jobs if you’re if you’re not helped in that process, sometimes you can, you know, miss out on opportunities that you would be perfectly suited for.
Mark Wilson 13:43
Yeah, I mean, it certainly you do. I mean, depends on the level of service that you’ve done in terms of the years served, in terms of what level of career transition support you get, whether it be two weeks or whether it be six weeks. Myself, it was six weeks. But fundamentally, for myself and I sort of put this recommendation to other service leavers, because we’re still engaged as an industry. We’re still active with service levers to sort of look to actually bring them into the industry as well, recognizing skill shortages. And why wouldn’t we tap into those? But it’s just about recognizing how best for them to sell themselves and don’t if you’re an infantry sniper, you’re going to have to adjust your CV to actually be able to be able to be sort of make sure your skills are mapped across. And I use that as an extreme sort of example. But however, it’s one of those. I’m sure there’s a role for that type of individual by virtue of the leadership and the management skills they’ve had, but it might be rope access technician that requires some further training. And how do you map that across and as fundamentally, what the way I looked at it is from a personal perspective, I really started my transition out of the military, maybe somewhere in the region of eight to 10 years before I was leaving. So think i. But yeah, I wanted to get charted engineer status. I wanted to do I wasn’t degree educated. So how do I get a degree so that I can be coming out and be at the age I was be equivalent to my peers in some of those so if a CV goes in front of somebody in this industry and it’s got a degree on the left, and I was able to at least get through any filter, because there was a degree on mine. And then the CVs are written in such a way that the the hiring manager can look at it and go, okay, yeah, I get what skills the individuals can bring into the organ, into the organization in the industry. And
Mark McBride-Wright 15:36
so you mentioned there about skills shortages and skills needs, I guess, across different sectors as we go through the energy transition. So what? What talent sources do you see there being out there, and even in the offshore sector, moving to decommissioning, and then, you know, other sectors that need the talent that oil and gas has had? What, what’s being done to sort of migrate people, where we don’t get a massive cliff edge of experience going into retirement?
Mark Wilson 16:10
Yeah, there’s a there’s a number of initiatives that are evolving and moving forward, things like the skills passport, where we’re looking at what skills individuals have right now and how they can map those across. That passport allows them to move from one energy type, so from oil and gas to offshore wind to carbon capture and storage, and move backwards and forwards. And we’re seeing that already when we look at things like some some of the drill rigs, for instance, where they’ll be, they’ll not be just doing the typical oil and gas drilling activity. They’ll be doing future carbon capture and storage wells. We’ve got some some decommission activity, where you might be seeing a vessel that is at one moment of time, is being used as storage facility for doing keeping equipment on that is doing plug and abandonment on small offshore installations, and then maybe two weeks later, is installing wind farms. We’re seeing that movement across already. And I think one of the certainly, one of the positives, is the the skill sets of the offshore workforce have got the ability to migrate across, and we’ve been doing some work as offshore energy UK, about just how, how, how easy is it for somebody to migrate across with those core skills from oil and gas into wind? For instance, your offshore as I mentioned, rope access technician? Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it as well, we need to remember is the that the oil and gas industry the heritage of 50 to 60 years and that ingrained approach to health, safety and environment that they’ve got so that safety approach that they’ve got the ability to challenge poor work practices. There’s a there’s a real there’s a there’s a an increase in impact that the current industry workers can have on generally, on safe performance, generally as they go out to other areas of industry, whether that be another energy industry or going to work for Tesco, Amazon, that can take that thought processing about keeping people safe, which they do, day in, day out. And do you
Mark McBride-Wright 18:17
think, do you think we’ve what is the workforce profile on average like? And I know in kind of, my age group, there’s a bit of a gap, you know, there’s a real sort of, the average age of the offshore workforce is, what about 47 or something? I think, yeah,
Mark Wilson 18:33
it’s in that. It’s in that area as a sort of, but we are getting, we’re getting the work is coming through. There’s no doubt about it. We’ve got to go to heliport and you see the diversity of the workforce, and it’s about promoting future careers in the industry. I mean, there’s a future for oil and gas in the industry. We only got to look at the trend. It’s out to 2050 that will still be using oil and gas. The statistics that I put, we put to people. You know, there’s, there’s 38 million vehicles on the road that are powered by diesel and petrol in the UK. And there’s 23 million gas boilers in our homes in the UK. Now, we’re not going to, we’re not going to turn them off overnight. That’s going to be a phased approach. And then then there’s decommissioning, as you mentioned before, what a great career opportunities that’s got for the next 20 years as well, and then, and then after that. And even whilst that’s going on, you can go into carbon capture storage. There’s lots of there’s lots of opportunities and options available. And
Mark McBride-Wright 19:37
do you think, I mean, what is the tone in the workforce, in that more senior, established, long tenured individuals. Are they? Are they? Do they want to hang around and impart that knowledge and wisdom to the generation coming in? Or I feel, I feel like, from what I read, sometimes we’re on a sort of cliff edge in the next five. 10 years, where we’re then not going to have the the experienced ones to then work learn off of, and so we’re going to have, we’re going to miss a window, basically, unless we take significant action now. Or are some of those people willing to hang on and still be about and work into the traditional retirement age? Yeah,
Mark Wilson 20:18
I think there’s, there’s there’s a there’s a bit of both. There’s those people who have worked for a long time in the offshore environment and to sort of take the opportunity to move on, enjoy their that maybe early retirement for those but we’re not seeing from what I’m sort of seeing, I’m not seeing a cliff edge. I mean, we will naturally, because the the base, the United the UK continental shelf, will naturally decline. We want to, obviously want to maximize as much as we can, but we’ll see that natural decline. We will see people moving and migrating from one energy type, oil and gas, to another, actually. And it could work quite well, but certainly all the experiences I’ve seen has been, I’ve not, I’ve not had engagement or not, not seen anybody who is not willing to engage with you know, what I find as well is because the in a lot of cases, the culture we have is it’s not just the where I’m and probably that that older hand, that more mature individual, but it’s also what we’re finding is the that those people that are new to the industry are actually asking real, searching and challenging questions well as well. And it’s something we was always keen to do through behavioral based safety programs, is, you know, always ask the question, Well, why do you do that? Not just what are you doing, but why do you do that and challenge? And I think as an industry, we’re very good at doing that. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 21:43
definitely, definitely, yeah. I’ve got a massive bias, because I grew up in this industry. So you know, now, working more cross sector, given what I do now, I see how unique that is, sometimes in safety based environments or sectors where safety is a more like a stronger part of the culture than, than, than, you know, other aspects. So that ability to question why and really push is, is so, so important. Where, where do you see the do intergenerational biases create any barriers to proper cohesion and culture building in the workforce?
Mark Wilson 22:32
Again, I’ve not seen a lot of that. I mean, certainly for the time that I’ve been offshore and the interactions I’ve had with the offshore workers when I’ve been this, this, yeah, there’s always the typical one when the other the role of technology in safety, but in the main, that doesn’t tend to be a barrier in terms of, we don’t have huge amounts of tablets on the platforms, and so that’s that but, and everybody seems to adapt to that technology, but I tend to see, because of the nature of of how we live offshore, it becomes a bit of a family feel to it. And we tend to find that, yeah, the green hat approach, and where people are wearing this green hat, if they’re new to an installation for a period of time, we should be adopting sort of this yellow hat approach, where you’re new to the industry or what as well. It enhances this, this, this culture of care, you know? This, this whole making sure that, okay, that person’s green heart may not know where the eye wash point is, may not. May ask a question that somebody who’s been there for 20 years might seem as a well, why is Why are you asking that? But you know it’s going to come from this individual, but there’s also, in the main, I mean, yeah, there’s, there’ll always be individual challenges there. But in the main, the industry seems to have this approach where they look after each other because they’re all in the same situation offshore. And I saw a lot of that in the military, when I go into the locker room offshore, the language that’s been used in terms of the words that are being used, not necessarily the language by bad language, but the words that are being used are very similar to what I used here in the military, when you go on operational tours, or how long you’ve been, when, when you’re going on, when you’re going home next, what’s your plans? What do you do on your last break? And stuff like it’s all so that the Psych is still there, but it’s all about building trust, and then trust, once it’s built, reflects into their safety performance and indeed their products. If you look at what has been achieved for this industry in a high hazard environment, it is, it is, we’re not complacent, of course, but the performance that we’ve we’ve achieved over the years has certainly been positive, and we continue to have that, that approach, where we’re not complacent, and we’re very much in that continual improvement loop, and making sure that we we do learn, and we pass those learnings on to other. I think that’s what you get from that intergenerational piece. Is that there’s a bit that you mentioned Piper Alpha, for instance, is about making sure. Sure that we can still replay that awful experience and make sure that people understand that those hazards are still in place at their work sites. And although we haven’t, I mean, or do we want to do an event, event like that for many, many years, it’s still there that sleeping Tiger still exists, and we do not want to be poking or waking the tiger. We want to be conscious of it and respectful of it, but actually making sure that we’re we know that it’s about consequence management, for me, about understanding consequences.
Mark McBride-Wright 25:34
And so one of the, one of the things that I’ve really evolved my thinking on since we, I think we first met five or six years ago, the the sort of concept of masculinity and men working in a male majority working environment, I think there was, there’s this brilliant reference that I use in my book called unmasking manly men, which is a study that was done by Harvard Business Review. It was covered in Harvard Business Review, and essentially it was they took they took all these offshore workers in the Gulf of Mexico, and they took them through this leadership program, and they metaphorically broke down these big burly Louisianan Texan men, made them be vulnerable and cry in front of one another, and then built them back up again with resilience. And you know, all these like more things that we associate with, inclusive leadership, empathy, centered leadership style. And they so they challenged what was a culture of dominance, power, fear, control, and built back up to a different um leadership style and performance across the assets went up, and that was put down to this, this investment, this retraining that they’d done. There wasn’t any enhanced oil recovery. There wasn’t any improved turnaround reliability interventions, or that it was simply put down to better performance. And so I compare that, I think that that’s on my mind when I think about male majority workforce of of engineering with a lack of diversity. So therefore, how as men, we’re not often conditioned to really connect interpersonally or be vulnerable or let our guard down. And in this sort of statistics of suicide and suicidal ideation, you know, engineering, the process manufacturing, the process sectors, construction, manufacturing process sectors have the highest of any sector, and we we saw this response rate come through on our masculinity and engineering research as well equal engineers. So I How, how much of what I’ve just described applies to like the offshore working environment, like, are the guys looking out for one another at a deep level? Have you? Have you seen an evolution in terms of masculinity, and it’s, it’s very interesting even now have like having this conversation, you know, in the context of what’s going on on social media, with Mark Zuckerberg saying we need more masculine energy in the workplace, and Trump coming in in a few weeks, you know, where, where, where is all this going to take us in the energy sector, and the influence that this is going to have on on culture and commitments from industry and from industry bodies like yourselves, on how hard you’re going to lean into inclusive leadership and and all that. Yeah, big question, but really keen to get your thoughts
Mark Wilson 28:35
on it, yeah? I mean, it’s a really interesting one. Yeah, you could probably spend a few hours talking about that one on its on its own, because, I mean, I certainly, I really do see the benefits of your diversity, and that’s diversity across a number of sort of Len lenses, and that in your and the key thing for me, as well as around this, you know, having that diverse approach, but it’s that inclusion and whatever, whatever, whatever gender, whatever Your background is, is about having the inclusion piece there and making sure that you can but being genuine with it, and I can speak up a number exam, it has been necessary for the whole industry, because there’ll always be pockets where it’s not necessarily going right. But certainly my experience, I’ve seen offshore and I’ve been on numerous assets and for different organizations, is there is a right from the word go, there’s that inclusion piece in there. And there’s a in a lot of cases, I’ve seen, is the that the the leaders show, humidity, humility, and you know where, where they’ve got it wrong. You know, the good leaders will start off that, okay, we, we didn’t get this right, but this is what we’ve learned. So we’ve moved it from there in terms of that’s showing some humility. And I know when I first came to the industry, there’s a phrase that looked at me I heard from from the military. I went on this course within this industry called authentic leadership, and I didn’t like it. I just like, it’s like. Well, if you’ve got authentic leadership, that means you’ve got unauthentic leadership, yeah. And I’ve come from this machine in the military where we’re all seen as quite authentic, you know, clearly I’m, yeah, clearly, there’s examples where it’s not necessarily the case. And there’s the phrase in the military now called toxic leadership, but there’s a bit yeah, but clearly not everybody is but, but I didn’t quite like that, but then they’re like, then once I got into the industry, I thought, okay, yeah. And then when they started talking about looking at yourself in the mirror and the shadow you cast, it’s sort of gossip for this industry, is that. And there was O, I m is playing back to me about how they look themselves in the mirror in the morning and make sure they’ve got that consistent, fair approach. And that cascades very quickly through their leadership team, and they, they have this include, this inclusive effect. Yeah, it would be, for me, having more diversity offshore would be great, you know, having more sort of far better gender balance. And we need to, we need to ensure that we continue to promote that agenda without a doubt. There’s no doubt about that, because we get that it’s just better all around for performance, for a whole wide range of sort of aspects and angles to it as well. But yeah, they the main thing for me is about if you can generate this, you know, the culture of care, as some call it, but generate it so people have got some humility, that they can break down barriers. And so we talked a lot. When I was with Conoco Phillips, we talked a lot around sort of safety conversations. And there wasn’t just about poor behaviors and poor observations. The you know, the switched it and talked about good conversations and good observations and positive things we found. And for me, I’m I’m afraid. I am. I’m not even, I’m not even going to say I’m going to glass half full individual. I’m a glass over filling individual. I’m positive, I’m enthusiastic, and I recognize there’s positives and negatives to that. But I that’s just me. I’m far too long in the tooth to probably change that, that piece there now. But I also do recognize in safety the power of positivity. I really think it’s there. You know, we when I first came to the industry, one of the things that surprised me was we measure how many people we injure, how many things that blow up? Well, let’s change that psychology and measure it in terms of things that we’ve prevented, things that we’ve changed. That’s that I know it’s difficult to do. But the power of positivity for me that that really sort of reflects through and I think in some ways, that’s been one of the areas where I remember talking to my line manager at the time, saying, I’d like to go offshore and workers and be an offshore Installation Manager. And they looked at me. Mom said, if you’re enthusiastic and as positive as you are onshore, you’re going to make a difference. I support you. Let’s get you trained.
Mark McBride-Wright 32:43
Brilliant. And so that was that what you did offshore there, when you lived
Mark Wilson 32:48
I went to do a sort of combined operations. I am in a decommissioning environment, so lots of movement parts, lots of different moving pieces, and lots of uncertainty as well. People not sure whether they’re going to be coming back in a month’s time, because we’re doing decommission activity people on short term contracts. And how do you manage that? When you manage that by connecting with people, showing some humility, some empathy, wearing it in something, some cases, wearing your heart and your sleeve. Go into the boot room, go into the locker room. I don’t smoke, but occasionally I went to the smoke shop because there were some people in there I wanted to engage with. And just just being there, being visible and sort of being part
Mark McBride-Wright 33:23
of amazing well, so tell me a bit about your role at offshore energies UK and future, and what you’re working on now and where you see things headed.
Mark Wilson 33:35
Yeah. So my role, I have a fantastic portfolio offshore energy UK is the health, health, safety environment and operations director. So not only looking after the health safety environment emissions piece, but looking after some of the, the sort of licensing aspects, subsea activity, production activity and and decommissioning as well. So wide portfolio, but lots, lots going on. We’ve got, we’ve got a really exciting, really challenging year this year, but a positively challenging year and real opportunity to make a difference. We’ve got a couple of real important consultations that are going to be going on around the future the North Sea, the future fiscal environment, the post, the energy profit levy going and all of those from a safety perspective, they’re going to generate an air, an element of uncertainty with the workforce, the minute you talk about the future in the North Sea, that creates a question, doesn’t it? And so we’ve got to make sure that we’re staying, remain and engaged with the workforce. We’ve got to make sure that we’re representing the workforce and representing the industry, not just for the industry itself, but representing it so the government know what we’re doing, what we what we think the impact of their decisions could be on people’s lives, on the future of energy security. So there’s, there’s lots of there’s lots of moving parts, certainly to the first six months of this year that are going to be really into. In and all always underpinned by maintaining our social license to operate. We cannot afford another large high release. We cannot afford losses of life. That’s absolutely that’s non negotiable. We’ve got to always keep our eye on that and focusing on a consultation and taking your eye off, that is not the right approach. We’ve got to make sure that we’re able to keep the focus where we need to, and that’s keeping the workforce safe. It’s about making sure we produce any security so we can keep the lights on at home and all them sort of good things, because, you know, that’s that’s primarily what we do. We provide energy for the UK and other areas as well. So but yes, really important six months that are coming up, and I’m sure hopefully the listeners will will have some interest in that and want to learn more, and you’ll hear, as the government announces those consultations in the next coming weeks, just how how wide ranging they are. We don’t know quite yet how wide ranging they are. But quite frankly, future of the North Sea says itself
Mark McBride-Wright 36:04
and well, does your role encompass carbon capture and storage? Is that
Mark Wilson 36:10
my role sort of my team look at the operational aspects of carbon capture and storage. So that started reality now with a number of members looking at how they can reuse, repurpose infrastructure, looking how they can reuse and repurpose reservoirs that are depleted, and how we can look at that and how and how they can make a positive difference to the wider industrial decarbonization of the UK, for those hard to abate, industries such as cement, some of the chemical industries that can’t decarbonize and CCS has a great role to play there. And the UK has got a sort of fantastic opportunity in carbon capture and storage if we grasp it, which, again, has got a from a workforce perspective, it’s a lot of it is going to it’s like reverse engineering oil and gas.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:55
Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing to see how the industries actually come, come about. I had a real interest in CCs in my undergrad, but it all sort of started to unravel when George Osborne removed the commitment to fund a billion pound project or something in sort of two, mid, mid 2010s but now it’s sort of come, come right back up so much so, to the point that Edinburgh University were investing in a Masters in CCS Professor Stuart Hazelden, I think his name was, and I looked at doing that masters, but instead I did. I did my PhD in carbon capture and storage, but, but then it looked like there was going to be no industry to get a job within. So that was why I then went into, you know, technical safety engineering, to work in an industry. So it’s so I’ve been away from all that for, you know, 10 years or so. So it’s, it’s fascinating to now see, it’s I feel like life that I press pause on that part of my life, and then now seeing all these projects that are actually starting to happen. It’s like, oh, it actually is happening, you know, which is really cool to see. So there’s a part of the I like to do some quick fire question. So let’s, if you’re, if you’re ready, I will, I will crack on with them. So what’s the best safety innovation you’ve seen recently?
Mark Wilson 38:31
Interesting one that, in terms of what I’ve seen recently, I would, I would probably just keep it to where it’s always it’s not to say a recent one, this one, but it’s the one that I just think is the long standing one, and that’s just a safety conversation. For me, it’s as simple as that. I believe firmly, in this complex and complicated industry, in this complex company and world we live in, keep it simple. And a safety conversation is, for me, is that the best safety innovation we’ve got? It’s not an innovation. It’s something so simple, but I do believe that one, there’s lots of technological advances, advances that we’ve had, but and they’ve all got a role to play. But, yeah, safety innovation for me, is that safety conversation, effective safety conversation.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:12
How do you unwind after a demanding day? A bit
Mark Wilson 39:16
of a Lego buff. I’ve now, I didn’t have too much disposable income when I left the military, but I’ve got a bit more just income now, and I’ve got an eight year old son as well. But I say terms of how I unwind, it’s got to be with my my backside, on my on my exercise bike, or on my cycle home when it’s during the spring, because it’s normally cycling, because it allows me to process my thoughts and unwind and then get home and have some time with my son doing Lego
Mark McBride-Wright 39:41
what’s the most valuable leadership lesson we learned in the military? For
Mark Wilson 39:46
me is that integrity piece think be, be credible and act with integrity at all times. And one of the things I mapped across from the military is that is that means when people are not watching as
Mark McBride-Wright 39:58
well. I. An early bird or night owl? Interesting?
Mark Wilson 40:02
Yeah, it was a night owl until I stopped drinking, and now I seem to be a bit more of an early bird, which is an interesting one, but I’d probably, I would probably be more. I find my brain operates more in the afternoon, but operates better, shall we say, in the afternoon, in the evening. Okay,
Mark McBride-Wright 40:17
what’s a Bucha resource you’d recommend to everyone?
Mark Wilson 40:20
Very simple one. For me, it’s a very simple book. It’s issued to every officer cadet that goes through candor Sanders. It’s called serve to lead.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:31
If you could instantly master one skill, what would it be? Yeah,
Mark Wilson 40:34
this one would be a personal skill, and that’s playing the piano. I look at people that can do musical instruments with absolute envy. I just, I just don’t have that skill.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:47
What’s a favorite memory from your career so far?
Mark Wilson 40:52
I think for me, it’s where you get the feedback that something that you’ve done has had made such a difference in somebody’s life, and that might just be, and there’s a few where it’s just been an individual circumstance where you know you’ve prevented an injury from happening, and you’ve had it a few times, and you get that feedback through a near miss report that you think, yeah, I contributed to that, so team effort, but you know that you’ve contributed to that. There’s always that piece there and and some and sometimes it’s you don’t know what you’ve stopped from happening. You do if you don’t stop it. But sometimes you don’t know, but occasionally you get the feedback about that, that you made that difference there. Who
Mark McBride-Wright 41:31
inspires you the most in your field? I would say
Mark Wilson 41:36
there’s a slightly different one for me, because I don’t necessarily, I don’t get, necessarily over and inspirational by individuals per se, one or two, oh, I am that I can think back of, but my main inspiration is actually my son, okay, because I believe I want to go home safe every night to spend time with my son my wife as well. But is is my son that inspires me to for his generation to ensure that was will lay in the future for that for him, not just from an emissions perspective and decarbonization, but for an energy future as well.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:10
What’s a fun fact most people don’t know about you? Well,
Mark Wilson 42:14
there you go. So I actually share my name is on a trophy for Army Modern Pentathlon beside an Olympic gold medalist, beside you, Sergeant Jim Fox, who sadly has passed away. But Sergeant Jim Fox the Montreal Olympics won golden the gold medal for modern pentathlon. He won the army Modern Pentathlon championship many, many years ago, and I was fortunate enough when I was in the career to also be the army Modern Pentathlon champion. Oh,
Mark McBride-Wright 42:43
wow, you really aren’t your fitness maybe I know the answer to this question. The final question, if you weren’t in HSE, in operations, what career would you be pursuing?
Mark Wilson 42:55
I am a practical sort of guy. I’ve got some theoretical knowledge, obviously, to back it up, but I’m very much a hands on person. I think if I wasn’t here, I would be doing something like an outward balance instructor, something that would be able to give something back from a teaching perspective, in terms of being able to grow and nurture others, and something that would even at my stage I’m at now in my career, in my age. So I say just I like to be fit and healthy and well, and I’d want to be doing something active and practical, as I sort of see my distant memory up
Mark McBride-Wright 43:25
well, you’re in one of the best places in the world to do that, up in Aberdeen. Then they got the highlands on your doorsteps, so that future could still happen. Because
Mark Wilson 43:36
in deja I cycle most most days during spring, in and out of commute. And there’s also paddle boards. I’m not afraid to try anything new at the age I’m at as well, and with an eight year old as a son, that you can’t have that as an excuse.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:52
Brilliant. Well, thank you very much for for joining. And I’ve really, really enjoyed the chat the podcast, if, if anyone wants to get in touch with you. You know, on the back of what you’ve shared, how can people reach out? I
Mark Wilson 44:06
would say the best way to get a hold of me is via LinkedIn. I’d be very happy to sort of respond. I do check it on a periodic basis. I’m not on Facebook necessarily, but I’ve certainly on LinkedIn. If you want to look me up on LinkedIn, I’d be happy to take any questions, comments, anything that maybe you’d like to know a bit more about. I’d be very happy to, and I’m also happy to pass on any further experience. And I’d like to, obviously, if those have got some interest in that, maybe they can give me some of their experience as well. Be great here from them as well. Brilliant.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:33
Well, add you to I’ll put your details in the bottom in the show notes. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Mark. Really enjoyed it. No likewise mark
Mark Wilson 44:41
and thank you for taking the time to connect. It’s been very reflective for me as well. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’m a bit more even more positive than I normally am. Thank you,
Mark McBride-Wright 44:49
brilliant. Have a good day. You too. Take care. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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