Training engineers in the Middle East

The article reports on how oil company ADCO trains its engineers. Training is an important issue for all engineering companies but every business looks at it in a unique way. Overseas companies are, of course, no different in this. For ADCO, an oil producing firm based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a career with them is for life and, with that in mind, they offer one of the most in-depth training schemes on the market. The nature of businesses in Abu Dhabi means that there is only a small percentage of UAE nationals working for them. ADCO´s current goal is to train a larger number of UAE nationals into high level management positions so that, when foreign managers move on, there are well qualified locals available to take up operational engineering positions. To ADCO, training is seen as an investment in its future, and so it aims to offer its recruits a balanced and comprehensive training scheme. Its initial professional development programme (IPD) comprises of two phases, the graduate development programme (GDP), typically lasting three years, and then an ongoing individual development programme (IDP).