Recruiters have come through current turmoil in Libya and other troubled parts of the region relatively unscathed thanks to good planning and swift action.

Nick Stocker, associate director at NES, told Recruiter that the company had had a number of contractors working in Libya, both in the desert and in Tripoli.

However, he said that by following the company’s “detailed risk management plan” all contractors were evacuated by 22 February. Stocker wouldn’t be drawn on how many contractors NES had had in Libya, but said, “it isn’t a huge number”.

The features of NES’s risk management plan include:
- employing a risk management firm to identify threat levels
- a 24-hour information helpline for contractors, their families and NES staff
- a process that identifies who, and where the contractors are, and what they are doing
- arranging transport out of risky areas.

NES also evacuated contractors from Tunisia and Egypt. “The key thing is to make sure you are in communication with contractors,” said Stocker.

He accepted that the turmoil meant a loss of income for the company. However, he added: “You can’t only measure it in those terms. What would have happened to our reputation within the contractor community if we had turned our back on them?”

Nathan Ward, global director of Leap29, said the firm’s five contractors working in the Libyan desert, had been evacuated to Malta by the client. He added that the camps where the contractors had been working had been surrounded and then looted.

The events in Libya had had “a pretty substantial impact” on the company, said Ward, as the five contractors in Libya represented a 10th of its contractors. However, he said there was a strong possibility all five would be offered positions on a new rig in Egypt.

David Mason, international talent acquisition director at global engineering, construction and operation services firm CH2M Hill, told Recruiter that the company had now stopped its recruitment in Egypt. Mason said that one consequence of the turmoil was that fewer Egyptian candidates were seeking jobs outside the country. CH2M Hill evacuated all of its 10 staff from Egypt. “Our real focus has been on the safety of our employees,” said Mason.

Chris Harrison, geoscience recruitment practice lead at Petroleum People, told Recruiter that most of the firm’s contractors had been evacuated from Libya.
However, some permanent staff the company had placed were “hanging on” in Tripoli. “The more senior staff generally stick around,” Harrison explained.

He added that taking the region as a whole, including Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it was “business as normal”.

A spokesman for BP said that the company had evacuated the last of 40 expat staff from Libya on 23 February, but that the overall impact had been “pretty minimal”.

There had been no “recruitment programme” in Libya because the company was in the early stages of exploration there, said the spokesman.