Kinder Morgan Enhances Operator Qualifications

Case Study - Kinder Morgan

The Department of Transportation ("DOT") passed a new regulation in August of 1999 known as the "Operator Qualification" regulation. This required affected companies to develop a written Operator Qualification ("OQ") Program and to document that anyone who performs a "covered task" (company personnel and contract employees) is qualified to perform that task. Qualification meant that the employees had to pass a written test and/or a skills evaluation.

After an extensive search of E-Learning and testing applications, Kinder Morgan chose Flextraining because of its functionality, flexibility and low-cost. The open source allowed the product to be easily customized to fit the specific D.O.T requirements and to be extremely easy to use and understand for the 2500+ employees who needed to be qualified. These employees are located in hundreds of different locations nationwide, so a web enabled application was essential.

" The FlexTraining Total e-Learning Solution has been extremely easy to set up and administer and the report builder has enabled our staff to quickly distribute results to the Area managers so they can insure that their employees are qualified ", said Kinder Morgan's Dave McKittrick .  " Online Development has provided excellent support for the few problems that we did encounter, and has also incorporated enhancements that we requested into their latest release. "

" Now that our initial need of providing testing for Operator Qualifications has been satisfied, we see great potential for this system to provide for a large portion of our future training needs. "

Kinder Morgan, Inc. is one of the largest energy transportation and storage companies in America, operating more than 35,000 miles of natural gas and products pipelines and approximately 80 terminals. Kinder Morgan, Inc. owns the general partner interest of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P., the largest publicly traded pipeline limited partnership in the U.S. in terms of market capitalization. Combined, the two companies have an enterprise value of approximately $19 billion.