OPITO — Company directory

Aberdeen-headquartered, industry-owned skills body that sets offshore safety and competence standards, including the BOSIET and HUET survival training taken by offshore workers.

OPITO is an industry-owned, not-for-profit safety and skills authority for safety-critical industries, based at Minerva House, Bruntland Road, Portlethen, Aberdeen AB12 4QL. The organisation says it has operated for more than 50 years and works with governments as well as employers on workforce standards. It keeps operational hubs in four regions, covering the UK and Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, and the Americas, and answers general enquiries through a published head office address, [email protected], with separate addresses for each region.

Scale of the centre network

OPITO reports more than 500,000 registrations every year, delivered in over 50 countries through a network of more than 240 approved centres. Approved centres deliver the training, while OPITO owns the standards behind it and maintains the centre network directory that lets employers and learners find provision by location. Regional hubs are staffed in Kuala Lumpur for Asia Pacific, Dubai for the Middle East and Africa, Houston for North America and Rio de Janeiro for South America, each publishing its own enquiries address.

Standards and qualifications

Training and assessment standards are written with Industry Working Groups made up of employers, subject matter experts, regulators, trade associations and workforce representatives, and are published in three libraries: Training and Assessment Standards, Workplace Competence Assessment Standards, and Global Qualifications. The best-known products are the offshore survival courses Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training (BOSIET) and Further Offshore Emergency Training (FOET), together with helicopter underwater escape training (HUET), which is used by the offshore wind industry as well as oil and gas and is published in tropical variants, including versions using compressed air emergency breathing systems. The catalogue also covers technical and vocational qualifications such as high-voltage switching, rescue from height, bolted flange joint integrity and small bore tubing.

Records, applications and validation

Completed training and assessments are recorded in The HUB, OPITO's certification platform, and learners can reach their records through VantagePOB or the free TRAIN-R mobile app, which OPITO says has been downloaded by more than 60,000 users worldwide. Employers and centres can confirm a certificate's validity through the public certificate validation checker. TRAIN-R was enhanced in July 2026 to widen access to training records for the global workforce.

Apprenticeships, open learning and future skills

The APTUS apprenticeship programme, formerly the Oil and Gas Technical Apprentice Programme, is owned and managed by OPITO with the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board and has qualified more than 2,000 apprentices since it launched in 1999. OPITO's Open Learning portfolio, accredited by City & Guilds, gives learners self-paced modular courses, and the organisation also runs a skills screening tool for employers, competence management system (CMS) accreditation, and the My Energy Future schools and STEM programme aimed at attracting young people into energy careers. It engages with policy through work connected to the North Sea Transition Deal and publishes research papers and a skills manifesto.

Activity during 2026

OPITO's 2026 programme has moved beyond the traditional offshore survival syllabus. On 24 August 2026 it launched a decarbonisation training certification developed with PETRONAS, aimed at the skills gap created by energy transition work. A train-the-trainer qualification followed on 29 April 2026, supporting competence in safety-critical instruction. The TRAIN-R app was updated in July, and a new My Energy Future website went live on 13 April 2026. Registration opened on 8 April 2026 for OPITO Global 2026, the organisation's annual conference, and the company has published case studies on CMS accreditation, including one with Well-Safe Solutions in May 2026, and blogs on HUET demand in European and Asian offshore wind. A fee adjustment was announced on 6 August 2026 to take effect from 1 January 2027.