Therefore, we need to keep investing in education, training and skill development. The staff need to deliver quality, while adapting to change and developments, to maintain business continuity.
The big question is how an organisation can build a knowledge centre, that develops staff to deliver high quality output, promotes novel solutions and is prepared for new challenges?
The Mike Gunningham Consultancy has acquired a wide knowledge base, from working and advising, for many years in Production Technology - providing the integration between petroleum engineers and surface engineers and operators.
Apart from educating, training and coaching Oil and Gas professionals, the consultancy has successfully delivered full scale projects all over the world, on behalf of Super Majors, National Oil Companies and Independent oil and gas companies.
Mike, with a team of Petroleum Engineers and Information Technology staff, developed, constructed and implemented an Opportunity Register and Opportunity Maturation Process for a Middle East operator, in 2011. The rewards were immediate and sustained, with approximately 15,000 bopd oil gains and 100,000 bwpd water injection gains on average per year for the next 3 years.
We have developed integrated learning programmes for a major oil company in 2000-2005, where participants started with online learning modules, quizzes and exercises, before working together at a class room event. They then went back to their workplace to carry out workplace assignments, where they applied what they learned from the classroom, on real wells and fields, in their company. The participants were given virtual coaching by Mike’s learning team, as well as having a dedicated coach/mentor in their place of work. Overall, the end result was that staff developed and applied skills more quickly, more effectively and in a more sustainable manner – basically they remembered more about what they learnt because they were applying it straight away and repeatedly. For the company, it meant that the workforce was more productive and the competence level increased. A lot of these participants are now in leadership roles, developing the next generation of engineers.
Over the years, we have improved reliability in people, equipment and processes, in a variety of situations. One recent example in 2017, was that we developed a Sand Management Strategy and Plan for a North Sea Operator. By working with the staff there, we were able to pull together all the components for managing sand and solids for each field, identifying what was critical for safe and reliable operations. We carried out a risk assessment for each field, put together a fit for purpose strategy and plan, to ensure that safe and steady production could be maintained and enhanced, even if sand or solids were produced. With this information, we could also establish best practices to be applied to other fields and identify improvement areas to further enhance production, while maintaining safe and reliable operations. In order to implement the plan a sand management team was established, who also reviewed the overall condition of the wells and facilities, so that reliability will remain high in the future, even if there are changes to the field.
Back in 2005-8, we worked with a Russian operator on a major offshore gas field development to optimise the design of high producing gas wells, so that they reliably produced at high rates (350 MMscf/d) with minimal sand production. Although, this was a technical piece of work, there were important financial aspects to this work. By designing high capacity wells, the number of wells required was significantly reduced, which reduced the size of the platform. The way the well was completed meant that production was high, sand production was minimised and costs were optimised. Finally, the process for starting up the wells into the dedicated well testing facilities was carefully controlled, so that any initial sand production was captured and removed in these well test facilities, to minimise any sand going into the platform’s production facilities. In this way, the production facilities were safeguarded from sand production and ensured their future reliable operation. There was an additional cost for the dedicated well testing facilities, but this was more than compensated by the safer and quicker start-up of the wells, as well as minimising sand erosion in the production facilities, which could have led to considerable costs and downtime, if equipment had to be replaced.
Safety culture is particularly important when new people join an organisation. From 2011-17, we developed and enhanced the safety induction programme, with the safety champions of the organisation. Rather than outsourcing the safety induction, these safety champions took ownership for safety, on behalf of the company. We started by having training from safety professionals and then carried out the induction programme, initially with guidance and coaching, before taking over completely. We regularly asked for feedback and had monthly champions meetings to discuss how to improve the programme, and also expanding into other branches of safety in the organisation, such as facilitating the Global Safety Day. All this was done while still doing our normal fulltime job. For the organisation, it sent a very powerful message to staff and contractors, that the company was committed to safety. For the individuals, they demonstrated their personal safety commitment and also developed presentation and facilitation skills, as well as gaining confidence in public speaking.