SkillsSafe: join as industrial partner or advisory board member

Context

Companies in diverse industries, and especially those active in the (petro)chemical industry and port ecosystem, invest significantly in the onboarding, training and continuous development of their workforce. These sectors operate in highly regulated, safety-critical environments where even small deviations from established procedures can have major consequences for employee safety, environmental protection, asset integrity and business continuity. At the same time, many operational activities require employees to interpret complex situations and make decisions based on their experience, resulting in natural differences in how procedures are executed in practice. Daily operations often involve complex tasks such as line breaking, flange management and confined space entry. Particularly for such safety-critical procedures, it is important not only to confirm that employees have completed training, but also to understand how they perform procedures, where individual areas for improvement lie, and how their competences develop over time. 

In practice, assessing these competences in a consistent and objective way remains challenging. Evaluation methods and criteria may differ across procedures, assessors, and organizations. This can make it difficult to systematically monitor progress, tailor training to specific needs, and use insights across employees and procedures. There is therefore a need within the chemical industry to further objectify competence assessment and, where relevant, move towards greater harmonization. 

SkillsUpp provides a digital solution for this approach. Developed at Karel de Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts (KdG), SkillsUpp combines a methodology for analyzing procedures with a digital application for competence assessment. Together with domain experts, safety-critical procedures are translated into observable criteria and an underlying evaluation matrix. Assessors register what they observe during task performance, while the SkillsUpp-matrix supports more consistent assessment and helps identify individual areas for improvement and training needs. 

SkillsUpp has already been tested and applied in industrial settings, including Evonik Antwerp and Global Port Training. In addition, the methodology has been structurally embedded in education and has been used for all practical examinations in KdG’s Bachelor of Nursing programme since 2022. The SkillsSafe project will build on these experiences and further optimize, scale, and demonstrate the approach based on the needs of interested companies. The project will be submitted to the Innovation fund call of the Province of Antwerp.

Goals

The objectives of the SkillsSafe project are to:

• Further develop and validate SkillsUpp in real industrial working environments within companies active in the petrochemical, chemical and port sectors, with particular attention to onboarding, training and assessment of safety-critical procedures. 
• Explore with participating companies which competences and assessment criteria can be harmonized, while respecting company-specific contexts and requirements. 
• Evaluate multiple procedures and use cases through a common methodology, enabling individual areas for improvement and training needs to be identified and followed up more systematically. 
• Use anonymized and aggregated observational data to investigate recurring patterns and shared training needs across procedures and organizations. 
• Explore how data-driven analysis can support competence development and targeted training. 

Through these activities, the project aims to move from individual competence assessments towards a more harmonized and data-driven approach to competence development in safety-critical industrial environments for the chemical industry.

Hence, the project is expected to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of onboarding and training programmes, support the prevention of safety incidents and operational errors, and thereby help reduce costs associated with accidents, downtime and retraining.

Request

In this project, the current consortium partners (KdG and Evonik Antwerpen NV) are seeking industrial partners that are interested in objectifying training and assessment procedures of safety-critical procedures. In particular, the project is looking for companies based in the province of Antwerp, although companies from other regions can also express their interest.

Companies can participate as consortium partners, allowing them to include their own procedures and use cases in the project and participate in testing and validating the methodology.

Companies can also join an advisory board to share practical expertise, provide feedback on the proposed approach, and contribute to discussions on its broader applicability and potential for harmonization. This option allows companies to follow the project and help shape its development without taking on the same level of commitment as a consortium partner.

How to reply to this request

Please send an email to Martijn Roosen (mroosencatalisti.be (mroosen[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and briefly describe your interest in the project, before 14^th of September 2026.

Based on all applications, the current consortium partners will determine which partner(s) can join the consortium. After submission of your application, you can be contacted for further elaboration.