Posted By Ian Waldram
It's not exactly comparable experience, but the offshore industry faced a similar issue after Piper for training & assessing Offshore Installation Managers - a bit more extreme as external aid is minimal and evacuation sometimes linked to severe personnel risks too.

The industry solution was to move to competence assessment, based on very realistic training and exercises in premises which can be easily adapted to mimic any specific installation. Advice from ex-Royal Navy people on how to do this was a key input (but they are very expensive!). There is now 10+ years of experience and lots of good learnings from this approach. Several offshore industry training providers have also developed the process for COMAH-type installations. Two examples with a good reputation are RGIT-Montrose (Aberdeen) and Link (Rugby), both can provide training/ assessment at company premises or offsite. However it has to be tailored, so an early step would be for you to define the specific list of competences the shift controller needs. Also the emergency response is often within a team, so it can make sense to train each shift team together, even though the formal assessment may be for only the Shift Controller.