To: All Whiting Employees
The purpose of EIB #4 is to answer additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) we have received about the proposed Operations job progression.
Question 1: Who would be involved in the formal assessments for Operating Technicians to advance to a fully qualified Operating Technician 3?
Answer: Assessments would involve the employee’s direct supervisor and a neutral subject matter expert.
Question 2: As part of the forthcoming implementation of Electronic Control of Work (eCoW) Area Authority (AA) is planned to be consolidated into designated salaried roles. What would be different for the AA and why is this being proposed?
Answer: With the implementation of eCoW, Area Authority (AA) would be restructured and consolidated into a dedicated day-shift salaried role within each complex to improve accountability for the overall end-to-end process for CoW. In addition to being a critical safety and execution role, the redefined role would also be accountable for managing, authorizing, and controlling work in a defined unit or area through all eight phases of Control of Work (CoW): Plan, Risk Assess, Prepare–Schedule, Authorize, Execute, Monitor, Complete, and Learn. The issuing authority (IA) roles are not expected to change.
Question 3: Does this mean that Operating Technicians would no longer verify Isolation Control Certificates (ICCs)? Would ICCs require approval of an AA or Shift Team Leader (STL)?
Answer: Operating Technicians would field-verify ICCs. Area Authorities (AA) would approve isolation quality, deviations and compliance with the standard. It is anticipated that the salaried Area Authority would handle these approvals on days, and Shift Team Leads would handle these approvals on nights and weekends, if needed.
Question 4: Would Operating Technicians hold AA competencies?
Answer: Area Authority would be consolidated into a single, dedicated salaried role for each complex. The Company has proposed limited opportunities to have trained and qualified hourly employees temporarily hold Area Authority to support Outages or Turnaround (TAR) events in the context of off-shift assignments such as Hourly Maintenance Coordinator.
Question 5: Per the Company’s proposal, would there be an Operating Technician 4 on each shift? Would there be an upper or lower limit for the number of Operating Technician 4s per complex?
Answer 5: Under the Company’s proposal, the Operating Technician 4 role would be structured as a work assignment. This would mean that an Operating Technician 3 would be trained and qualified to perform at least one Board Technician duty station and could be stepped up to fill temporary vacancies in the Board Technician job as needed. If an employee is stepped-up to fill such vacancies they would receive the Operating Technician 4 rate of pay. While there is no fixed obligation proposed with respect to the number of employees to be qualified to perform the Operating Technician 4 assignment, the Company generally anticipates having one qualified employee on the A/B rotation and one on the C/D rotation.