The academy has a state-of-the-art training facility and is recognised as best in class. The facilities include five fully IT-enabled classrooms

Worley has over 40 years of experience and has built a valuable reputation, both internationally and within Saudi Arabia. The company is known for its commitment to quality and its knowledge on, amongst other things, front-end design, project management (including mega projects) especially in upstream and midstream, as well as its work on complex processing plants.

Worley’s experience and successful delivery of projects has fostered its reputation as an industry leader and a company its clients aspire to emulate.

As part of being an industry leader, Worley is committed to building the Saudi Workforce. "It has been 18 months since Andrew Wood (CEO, Worley) and Ahmad Al Saadi (Saudi Aramco SVP Technical Services) jointly signed our agreement to work collaboratively for the development of the Saudi Arabian economy and citizens.

"I am pleased that we have since been awarded Platinum status by the Ministry of Labour in recognition of our efforts to create local employment opportunities," says Ian Pearey, Location Director, Saudi Arabia.

"We recognise that Saudi Arabia is a nation of young people, with more than half its population under the age of 24. While many enter the market with degrees, often from international universities, they lack many key skills which are usually only gained through experience," he notes.

This has created a perfect opportunity for the further development of the Worley Academy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Worley Academy in Khobar, was originally set up to serve the internal training and development needs of Saudi Arabia’s national workforce.

It became quickly apparent, that Worley was favourably positioned to extend these services to the broader Saudi market, by offering training delivered by experts who have proven successful delivery across the asset lifecycle in the kingdom.

Worley has fostered strong ties with its clients and as a result it is acutely aware of their needs in an ever-changing market. Worley possesses the skills and the experience, and through its knowledge sharing, is perfectly suited to offer the training its clients and the industry at large is seeking.

Myles O’Connor, Academy General Manager, is passionate about making Saudi nationals ‘performance ready’ and recognises the real industry risks of rapid Saudisation. "Our mission is to enable Saudi Arabian business to reduce the project development risk associated with rapid Saudisation of the local workforce by producing ‘performance ready’ Saudi nationals, who are able to be productive in the workplace from day 1 and throughout their working career," says O’Connor.

With over 90 instructors and 200 courses, the training capability covers the core engineering disciplines employment-ready professionals need: Management and Leadership, Business and Finance, Project Management, Engineering, Instrumentation and Controls, Digital Enterprise, Health, Safety and Environment, Procurement and Supply Chain, Construction, Operations and Maintenance and Nuclear. The programmes are delivered into the following sectors: Upstream, Midstream, Refining, Chemicals, Power and Water, Infrastructure, Minerals and Metals.

Programmes vary in delivery methodology from classroom, virtual, eLearning, and blended on the job training in real workplace environments. As an employer of nearly 2,000 staff in the kingdom Worley is able to offer many opportunities for real world experiential training other organisations cannot match.

The Worley Academy has a state-of-the-art training facility and is recognised as best in class. The facilities include five fully IT- enabled classrooms and can seat over 100 concurrent students.

With Worley Academy one will learn from "real project experience, practitioners not theorists and asset owners and designers".