The move sees the renewal of a relationship dating back to 1998 when Innovene - then BP Grangemouth - commissioned ALS to develop a 'round-the-clock' CBT learning tool for manufacturing and maintenance operations carried out by its chemical plant technicians. The programme comprised 22 modules, with a total running time of some 50 hours, incorporating complex 2D and 3D animations, video, voice-over, and audio creating an interactive learning environment.

A key training requirement was for Innovene technicians to fully understand the workings of the complete equipment within each operation. For the first time, technicians were shown how equipment worked from an external and internal perspective, through the use of high fidelity and interactive animations.

The programme was delivered on CD-ROM to provide the high bandwidth required to deliver the media-rich programmes.

ALS also developed a pioneering Macromedia Pathware-based Learning Management System (LMS) to allow the learners and materials to be managed and to enable the exchange of training data with other Management Information Systems.

BP initially trained over 1,200 technicians using the programme, which was widely described by learners as being both enjoyable and engaging. The ALS programme went on to win the British Interactive Multimedia Association 'Commissioned Training Award' in 1999.

Innovene was born in March 2004, when BP announced its intention to divest its olefins and derivatives business, including two refineries at Grangemouth, Scotland and Lavera, France.
Innovene employs over 8,000 people at 30 office and manufacturing sites deployed across Asia, Europe and North America.

With more than $12bn of total assets, £40bn of petrochemicals production capacity and $15bn of revenues, Innovene ranks among the largest petrochemical companies in the world.

Early in 2005, Innovene Grangemouth approached ALS to discuss updating the original materials.

"In the intervening years the programme has been used as part of our technician training," says Innovene's Gordon Munnoch. "We reached a requirement to both update content, reflecting changes in operations, and at the same time redevelop it into a web-based format that had the potential to be used across the Company."

As part of the update, ALS has carried out detailed reviews of materials to identify the changes required to update the content to match Innovene's needs. ALS also analysed the structure of the programme to identify how the original content can be repackaged into SCORM-conformant Content Objects or Learning Units.

In order to make the materials web-deliverable, ALS is reverse engineering the numerous original assets, such as complex animations and 3D graphics, and re-employing the elements by combining them within Flash objects. This route has been chosen to meet Innovene's wish to maintain the original look and feel of the programme graphics while minimising the size of the files for web delivery.

ALS managing director, Peter Bonfield sums up: "Overall, this learning provides Innovene technicians with the understanding that enables them to undertake higher-level tasks. These latest inputs make the process simpler and faster to both access and assimilate."