MTCS even worse news

[Lenny]

I just heard from a friend that works for one of the big American Rov companies and he said that his company uses MTCS certificates to provide proof of competency to their clients. That in itself is pretty bad, just because I think we all know that MTCS doesnt actually do anything for the certs that they provide, so its a pretty poor way to provide competency.

Anyway, thats not the worst of it. He told me that the Rov personnel dont even see the assessments, the company secretary completes all the documents, pays the fee and all done, certs arrive! I guess all of that is a bargain at 350 pounds!

[Roy Simson]

Sorry but as I have said many time MTCS is just a training school and nothing more . As you know your self after speaking to Nick Hough at IMCA in his own words it states .

IMCA sets no mandate, doctrine or requirement in this respect – there is no IMCA requirement saying that certificates of (ROV) competence must be renewed every three years.
IMCA makes makes no endorsement or comment on the policy of any given supplier of training services regarding the expiry of validity of their course certification.
That said, this is something that is of interest to the IMCA ROV management committee and the IMCA Competence and Training Committee, and with your agreement, I will pass on the fact of this query – no names, of course – to them for info.

Best wishes

Nick Hough
Technical Adviser

IMCA – International Marine Contractors Association

IMCA is the Association that puts forward all of the recommendations and not some training school , Unless I see something in writing from IMCA then its just pie in the sky !
like I said in the last chat we had how on earth can a training school do a competence assessment on someone they have never met ? If Competence assessment are required then it should be done in house like it has been done in the past .

Sorry but unless you can provided me and the other members of this forum showing this is mandatory requirement from IMCA then I am sorry it means nothing .

Requirements for some jobs are set by clients this I fully understand since some have a visit from a MTCS agent convincing them to take part but its not mandatory requirement to contact MTCS and get a Competence assessment done for £300 every 3 years . Should any future client ask for proof of competence get a letter from your past employer its FREE and wont cost you a penny .Over the years I must have done hundreds for people who have worked under me .

Over the years I think we have seen many get rich quick schemes and this is one of them .

[Lenny]

Raptor,

I appreciate your reply, but my messages arent questions to you, so Im not sure why you repeat what I say. I am just posting to the forum like everyone else.

[Roy Simson]

Sorry Bazinga I appreciate what your saying but unless its a mandatory requirement from IMCA then its not relevant . MTCS can do and say what they want but unless its supported by IMCA its not relevant .

I am replying to you to let people know if they dont know already that if they do require Competence assessment it can be done from your past or current employer the last thing I want is people reading your post and thinking they need to contact MTCS and pay £300 to be assessed .

[Lenny]

ok Raptor,

No problem, hopefully we can raise awareness and guys know that they dont need to use MTCS.

Thanks

[jaso]

Bazinga
how does that work, how can they be assessed if their company just fills out all the forms for them.
How can that assessment company actually condone that.
Its just a take the money and you lot are ok.
Before the new changes that came in last year you just had to get a witness statement and pay 85 bucks, i can see a company doing that but
now its the whole exam assessment thing evidence forms and 350.
Can that company be doing that now its so much more work.

is there anyone else that does assessments out there ?

😥 😥 😥

[Lenny]

Hi Jaso,

In response to your question:

how does that work, how can they be assessed if their company just fills out all the forms for them.
How can that assessment company actually condone that.
Its just a take the money and you lot are ok.

I think that is the whole point, they shouldnt be able to do it. Why agencies and clients give MTCS certifications credit is a mystery.

[jaso]

Hi Jaso,

In response to your question:

how does that work, how can they be assessed if their company just fills out all the forms for them.
How can that assessment company actually condone that.
Its just a take the money and you lot are ok.

I think that is the whole point, they shouldnt be able to do it. Why agencies and clients give MTCS certifications credit is a mystery.

🙁 🙁 🙁
i totally agree how is that even legal and that leads to incompetency, i worked a couple of jobs ago where the other shift just could not do their job, i was woken up whilst off shift to fix things. I dont mind helping out at all but for menial tech work, i have to get up and had to do all their paper work to, and we all know how much of that has to be done these days.
It just made my work load twice as hard.
Im not a snitch or tell tale but i casually asked my OIM if the other guys had Certs in a round about way, and sure enough they both had MTSC certs and they were not qualified to do their jobs properly not at the ranks that their Certs said they were anyway.
It seems if you pay they just had them out.
im not happy

[James MacDonald]

Having read all of the above I have to say I am disappointed that a company would be so willing to be underhand in sending in the documentation required for assessment in the manner Bazinga says. The company should be reported to IMCA directly.

The MTCS certificate is not and has never been endorsed by IMCA. IMCA set a standard and MTCS or any other training school teach/train to that standard.

We could get into the whole right/wrong argument of that all day long and it will end up being a long drawn out no end in sight type of conversation.

So lets get to the real world. Assuming the system works as it should the candidate should complete a task for example a tether re-term. That would be one activity in a few different competency areas. Here is where it starts to fall apart. Quite often the signature on the sheet of what was a witness goes into the assessors box the witness may be the most competent person in the world but if they are not trained as an assessor they should only sign as a witness.

Once the competency pack is completed and evidence is also produced to support the signatures then it should be sent in for assessment this can be by an assessor within the candidates company or agency. MTCS also do this.
Reading the new E-portfolio documentation on the IMCA website they seem to expect the company an agency worker is on contract to could do this for them.

When MTCS/other company do the assessment they should be reviewing the evidence. The candidate should have a sheet with a who is who of signatures on the completed competency so it can be audited fully if required.

This is almost the same style of system used in NVQ/SVQ qualifications across multiple industries. The only difference I can see is that the assessing company is possibly not audited to the same level as there is body interested in doing that including IMCA.

So the system is flawed but what system is not.

A competence cert can be issued by any employer Raptor is right however a letter of reference does not count as evidence of competence alone neither does just a log book of work experience. I am sure all of us have worked with guys who have been in the industry a long time and are very incompetent however they are mates with the ops manager and manage to keep getting jobs.

I agree three years is a bit short for any renewal and also to be honest if you are staying at the same level then you should maybe just prove you are still working in the industry and the renewal should be issued for significantly less than it currently is.

Companies like certification it gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling that they can hide behind when something goes wrong and the a court case is pending. Until IMCA grows some teeth in the area of ROV training and actually assesses and issues competence certification itself then this is the system we have and it will not change. Competence certification seems to be in fashion at the moment, so for the offshore worker it is the extra piece of paper required to be employable by an agency and the piece of paper staff seem to need to have any chance of promotion.

[jaso]

ROVSUP123
(I agree three years is a bit short for any renewal and also to be honest if you are staying at the same level then you should maybe just prove you are still working in the industry and the renewal should be issued for significantly less than it currently is.

Companies like certification it gives them a warm and fuzzy feeling that they can hide behind when something goes wrong and the a court case is pending. Until IMCA grows some teeth in the area of ROV training and actually assesses and issues competence certification itself then this is the system we have and it will not change. Competence certification seems to be in fashion at the moment, so for the offshore worker it is the extra piece of paper required to be employable by an agency and the piece of paper staff seem to need to have any chance of promotion. )

Yeah i totally agree with you on this part, its like someone is going around to all the companies and paying or convincing them the Cert thing is the new fashion.
i think that if you are a trained electrician and been offshore say 15yrs this sort of bullying to be re-assessed is going to really get up your nose.
The company you work for should know their staff and issue their own Certs, a few do which is great.
i think the cost should be lower and the re-assessment should be based on HSE and paper work if you already hold a Cert for a rank.
Those are the only things that change not how to re-term mainlifts, which i might add some people with MTSC certs still cant do. As i witnessed not so long ago on a job as the wire slipped thru the donkey dick and into the water goes the system. So you dont bend the wires back on the mainlift i had said the night before, "never done that mate, was the reply"

you must agree the paper work is mounting you need a permit to look at something aloft and the wages are dropping. Now we have more Certs to worry about. what happened to the days of your going on a course says the manager and you are on pay and theres girls and beers and you learn something new.

Have you seen the Panamanian seamans book course, they tried to make me watch Cpt philips the movie. i said i got a UK seamans book i dont want this one, company did pay so i cant complain but i didnt learn anything and it was 500usd WTF.

thats all folks

[James MacDonald]

Ok Al,

So the biggest concern from our side is that the length of time between renewals is too short. The cost is to high and somewhere down the line the point of proving competence has been lost.

In the interest of transparencyI have worked on a consultant basis for MTCS in the past however no longer do. I do not have any current affiliation to them.

The cost is kind of dictated by company overheads. IMCA Membership, office and server/website costs, staff wages etc. Obviously it is a business they need to make enough profit to survive.
I personally feel five years for a renewal is more realistic and if you are staying at the same level then all you should need is a couple of appraisals to demonstrate you are not a complete screw up, log book or seaman book entries to demonstrate you are still working in the industry and a witness statement from your company/agent confirming all of this. I do feel that lifetime certs are better however that makes no business sense also I know that STCW survival courses used to be lifetime certs(not sure if they still are) however some companies insisted they were no more than five years old.

Unless more guys are qualified assessors within companies, and companies do not issue the certificates themselves, then unfortunately the competence packs will still have to be externally verified by someone who does not know the candidate and does not know the candidates abilities hence the importance of honest and truthful witness/assessment of a candidate otherwise incompetent or substandard people will end up with certification.
Incidentally the MTCS assessor qualification is a direct mirror of the NVQ/SVQ qualification so theoretically you do not have to do it through them as long as your company is happy to recognise the qualification right or wrong it is a lifetime certificate.

[Glevum]

https://subseaworldnews.com/2018/12/20/imca-names-andre-rose-as-technical-adviser/

[Carl Bottcher]

Hi All,
Unfortunately the cost of these courses and certifications are prohibitive to many contractors.
The pay isnt what it used to be and many companies have had to shed folk to the freelance game due to the down turns. The bulk of some companies are made up of contractors, many dont reimburse for the courses they require.
I understand it costs money to run a business but the costs should match the work gone into the product. Im sure its illegal to charge folk 20 quid for as a simple analogy.
It appears these guys have lobbied themselves into a necessity and are demanding a lot of cash because of it.
Wondering how it will end up if this is allowed to continue, could it be a case of the parasite dying with the host?

[liddelljohn]

The good news is that many companies now wont accept the discredited MTCS competency ,,

[Author]

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