World Fuel Services Event RAF Northolt – 28 March 2019

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World Fuel Services Event RAF Northolt – Thursday 28 March 2019

On 28 March World Fuel Services generously hosted an RLC Foundation event at RAF Northolt. The event was attended by 46 delegates from industry, the Petroleum Operator trade and the wider military community. David Cork, WFS Operations Director opened the event with an overview of WFS Global operations and the challenges they face when conducting demand forecasting and risk management. David highlighted the complexity of international fuel resupply routes and the problems WFS have to contend with on a daily basis. These problems ranged from maintaining the correct levels of fuel quality assurance from refinery to the customer, and the further decanting risk factors when transferring the product to road, rail, sea and air assets, to insurgent disruption within the supply chain in the Middle East. Dale Garner the station manager at Southampton and Bournemouth airports quantified the scale of global operations and how historical data is best used to forecast future fuel requirements within the Aviation sector. He gave a fascinating insight into the storage of fuels and the processes and standards that have to be maintained when conducting aviation resupply operations. Paul Heald, Global HSE Director WFS (Aviation) talked about the relatively new Joint Inspection Group (JIG) which advises on aviation standards and training and conducts inspections at airports for participating members. The JIG vision is to set a Global Quality Assurance Aviation standard that shares best practice throughout the aviation industry.

WO1 Paul Franks, Command Petroleum Warrant Officer at Army Headquarters rounded off the morning presentations by giving an overview of current military fuel capability, demand forecasting and safe systems of work that Petroleum Operators must adopt when conducting fuel operations.

In the afternoon all delegates visited an airfield demonstration of WFS aviation bulk storage tanks, viewed bowser operations and visited a fuel testing laboratory. The Petroleum Operators displayed their Joint Operational Fuel Systems both for mobile light operational capability as deployed with 3 Commando Brigade and the much heavier Bulk Fuel Installation which demonstrated the field storage aspect of fuel resupply.

This was one of our best events to date. A big thank you to WFS.

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