Petrofac Rising Stars Shine at Royal Academy of Engineering Awards

Two Petrofac engineers were recently honoured by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) for their ‘exceptional engineering contributions in the early stages of their careers’.

Kayvaan Kermani and Abha Batra were each presented with a Rising Star Award at the annual RAE Awards Dinner in July.

The RAE Awards showcase and celebrate the diversity of talent in the engineering industry. The event, which Petrofac sponsored, was held at one of the world’s most iconic buildings representing great British engineering, Battersea Power Station, and was attended by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal and the Right Honourable George Osborne MP.

As engineering is at the heart of Petrofac’s business model, the capability of our workforce is vital to our success. Our Group-wide talent management strategy aims to address the increasing demand for talented engineers in the oil and gas industry by identifying and developing rising stars within the Company. The RAE Awards Dinner provides an excellent opportunity to recognise these rising stars and their efforts.

Kayvaan, a Graduate Process Engineer based in our Aberdeen office, was recognised for his contributions to the technical safety team on the Ikhwezi project. His role was to review the technical safety aspects of modifying a platform off the coast of South Africa. With no prior experience in this field, Kayvaan developed fire and explosion analyses, philosophy documents and reliability reviews as well as providing recommendations on how to update the platform’s Case for Safety, a document defining hazards and the means of managing them, which hadn’t been updated for more than 15 years.

Abha, a Risk Safety and Environmental Engineer based in Woking, was recognised for her recent performance on the Statoil SNAEX project. She was involved in carrying out the safety studies and fire and explosion analyses of debottlenecking two platforms. However, when the project lead was suddenly unable to continue due to illness, Abha stepped in to lead the project from a safety perspective. In her first role leading a project, Abha engaged with the project team across disciplines, bringing in the safety deliverables within schedule and to an excellent standard.

Andy Inglis, Chief Executive, Integrated Energy Services, is a Fellow of the RAE and gave a speech at the Dinner. He said of our Rising Stars: “Kayvaan and Abha have shown dedication to their projects and an ability to apply excellent technical judgement to develop practical engineering solutions. Many congratulations to them on their awards.”