Building offshore competence together: How Suraksha Marine and ONGC ATI are reshaping offshore safety training in India
A collaboration built around operational capability, internationally recognised standards and the development of a safer, more competent offshore workforce.
On September 17, 2026, ONGC Advanced Training Institute in Goa reached an international milestone when OPITO confirmed approval for four key offshore safety-training programmes.
Behind that achievement is a collaboration between two organizations with very different, and highly complementary, strengths: ONGC ATI's operational depth, infrastructure and institutional scale, and Suraksha Marine's specialist offshore training experience, international-standards knowledge and competence-development systems. The significance of the partnership lies not only in what has been approved, but in what the two organizations can now build together.
Offshore personnel now work across increasingly complex assets, move between operators and regions, interact with more sophisticated equipment, and depend on emergency systems that call for both technical familiarity and disciplined response.
Access to training courses alone is no longer enough. Offshore operations increasingly demand training environments that reflect the complexity, equipment interfaces and decision-making pressures personnel are likely to encounter in the field. The objective is not simply to transfer knowledge, but to develop confidence, judgement and emergency-response behaviour that remain reliable when conditions become unfamiliar and time-critical.
This is where the collaboration between Suraksha Marine and ONGC Advanced Training Institute creates a distinctive advantage. ONGC ATI brings the operational perspective of a major offshore energy organization, combining deep institutional knowledge of petroleum operations with infrastructure designed around the hazards, systems and emergency scenarios encountered across the industry. Suraksha Marine complements that capability with more than three decades of experience translating offshore safety standards into structured practical training, high-fidelity simulation, competency-based assessment and workforce development.
Each organization brings significant capability in its own right. Together, they create a more integrated training environment—one that connects operational reality with internationally aligned training methodology and moves workforce preparation beyond course completion toward demonstrable offshore competence.
Combining operational reality with international training discipline
ONGC ATI's defining strength is its proximity to operations. Its training environment is connected to drilling, production, offshore aviation, marine logistics, firefighting, emergency response, occupational safety and other high-hazard activities. The institute understands the conditions in which offshore personnel actually work: the equipment they encounter, the operational pressures they face, and the consequences when normal operations begin to deteriorate.
Having trained more than 50,000+ offshore professionals over the course of its operations, Suraksha Marine has supported personnel from leading international drilling contractors, engineering companies and offshore service organizations, including Transocean, Halliburton, SLB, Saipem, GE Oil & Gas and more, as well as workforces mobilizing to projects across India and international offshore markets.
This breadth of exposure has given the organization practical insight into the competence expectations, equipment familiarity and emergency-response standards required across different operators and operating environments.
That international experience builds on an important milestone in Suraksha Marine’s own development. In 2009, Offshore Magazine reported that Suraksha Marine had received OPITO approval to deliver BOSIET, Tropical BOSIET and H₂S training in Mumbai, with OPITO identifying it at the time as one of the first Indian centres accredited to deliver BOSIET and other OPITO courses.
The approval marked an early step in bringing internationally standardized offshore safety training to the energy sector workforce and established a foundation from which Suraksha Marine subsequently expanded its capabilities across helicopter emergency response, offshore survival, emergency breathing systems and further competence development.
The collaboration brings together two capabilities that are distinct in their strengths but closely aligned in purpose. ONGC ATI contributes the operational depth, institutional scale and industry context of a major offshore energy organization, while Suraksha Marine brings specialist expertise in translating international safety standards into structured training, high-fidelity simulation, assessment and demonstrable workforce competence.
Together, these capabilities create a training environment that is more closely connected to the realities of offshore operations, allowing technical knowledge, practical response and decision-making to be developed within a framework that reflects the conditions personnel are expected to encounter in the field.
The result is more than a stronger training proposition. It is a more integrated approach to competence development—one that connects operational experience with internationally aligned training methodology and helps convert learning into reliable performance when it matters most.
The collaboration changes what the training environment can become
When Suraksha Marine began working with ONGC ATI in 2025, the Integrated Sea Survival Training Centre in Goa already provided a strong technical foundation for offshore emergency training. Its capabilities included helicopter underwater escape, sea survival and the controlled simulation of adverse environmental conditions. The opportunity was to extend the value of that infrastructure by strengthening the training systems around it.
Advanced simulators can reproduce immersion, inversion, disorientation and escape conditions. However, effective training depends on more than simulation alone. It requires competent instructors, consistent assessment, reliable equipment, disciplined maintenance and practical exercises that develop the correct response sequence.
Suraksha Marine’s role has therefore extended beyond course delivery. The collaboration has brought international standards for offshore safety training expertise into the centre, connecting instructor competence, assessment methodology, emergency breathing systems, equipment assurance and practical delivery within a structured competence-development framework.
The result is a training environment that brings knowledge and action closer together. Understanding an Emergency Breathing System is different from deploying it correctly during an underwater escape.
Knowing a helicopter ditching procedure is different from maintaining orientation after inversion.
The collaboration enables these transitions to be trained deliberately, combining decades of offshore training experience with a practical understanding of how personnel must perform in real operating conditions.
From separate competencies to a connected response
Offshore emergencies rarely occur as isolated events. A helicopter incident can progress from impact and immersion to inversion, emergency breathing, escape and surface survival. A process emergency may move from gas detection and alarm response into respiratory protection, fire, reduced visibility, evacuation and muster. In each case, personnel must transition between different actions as conditions evolve.
Training standards necessarily separate these competencies into defined learning outcomes and assessment requirements. Offshore personnel, however, experience them as part of one developing emergency. Effective preparation must therefore build not only individual skills, but also the ability to connect those skills in the correct sequence.
By combining ONGC ATI’s operational perspective with Suraksha Marine’s offshore training experience, the collaboration creates an opportunity to train these critical interfaces more deliberately.
The objective is not to dilute individual course standards, but to strengthen the learner’s ability to recognize changing conditions, transition between responses and act with greater control. This moves training beyond isolated tasks and toward a more integrated form of offshore competence.
September 17 validates what the collaboration has built
The OPITO milestone achieved on September 17, 2026 should be viewed in this broader context. OPITO confirmed the approved status of Tropical BOSIET, Tropical FOET, Tropical HUET and Shallow Water CA-EBS Initial Deployment training at ONGC ATI.
The immediate benefit is expanded access to internationally recognized offshore safety training in Goa. More importantly, the approval validates the strength of the collaboration itself. It demonstrates how ONGC ATI’s infrastructure, operational knowledge and institutional scale can be integrated with Suraksha Marine’s specialist training experience, competence systems and international training methodology within a recognized global framework.
For ONGC ATI, the partnership strengthens the connection between its advanced training infrastructure and international offshore competence standards. For Suraksha Marine, it extends decades of expandable offshore training experience into a larger operational environment closely connected to the realities of offshore energy operations.
The significance therefore extends beyond four approved programmes. The collaboration creates a stronger link between international training standards and India’s offshore operating environment, while establishing a platform for broader workforce competence development in the years ahead.
Building a platform for the next offshore workforce
The collaboration is also taking shape at an important point in India’s offshore development. As activity expands into increasingly complex operating environments, workforce capability will need to advance alongside technology. More sophisticated assets, greater reliance on offshore aviation and marine logistics, and increasingly integrated production systems will place higher demands on the people operating them.
That progression can extend from initial survival training into further training, emergency response, helideck operations, H₂S, marine survival and role-specific capability, supported over time by more advanced simulation and performance analysis.
The result is a more connected workforce-development pathway in which competence evolves with changing equipment, roles and responsibilities.
Competence accumulates, responsibilities increase and emergency-response capability must develop with them. By combining operational knowledge with specialist training expertise, the collaboration creates a stronger framework for supporting that progression.
A collaboration positioned for what comes next
The significance of the Suraksha Marine–ONGC ATI collaboration lies in what the two organizations are now able to pursue together. ONGC ATI brings the operating context, infrastructure and institutional depth of a major offshore energy organization. Suraksha Marine brings specialist training experience, international standards knowledge and a long-established focus on practical competence.
Combined, these capabilities create a proactive framework with the potential to influence how offshore personnel are prepared, assessed and developed in India.
The OPITO milestone of September 2026 gives that collaboration an important international reference point, but it is not the end of the story. The larger opportunity is to build on this foundation with training that is increasingly integrated, operationally relevant and responsive to the changing demands of offshore work.
Together, the two organizations are positioned to develop several training programs in which operational experience and specialist training expertise reinforce one another.
As offshore activity evolves, the industry will require more than additional training capacity. It will require institutions capable of developing competence with consistency, relevance and scale.
That is the opportunity this collaboration now creates.
The OPITO approval marks an important milestone. The partnership creates the capability behind it, and the foundation for what India's offshore workforce will need next.
Training Inquiries:
Email: surakshaweb@gmail.com
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Global Standards. Operational Capability. Practical Competence.
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