Make skilled engineers available for operations with flexibility between projects
Within the energy industry, demand and revenues depend to a great extent on the geopolitical situation. What we are facing today is an enormous pressure on European companies to increase energy independence in the region. With boosted demand and favourable prices, there are not only increased revenues, but also obligations to intensively deliver a higher number of drilling projects, and in geographical areas not exploited before the recent geopolitical crisis.
In the current circumstances, developing and implementing effective cost and risk management tools are needed to guarantee safe and profitable operations. But there is still an important threat to address: a shortage of educated and experienced personnel. We are experiencing a significant outflow of manpower with a strong engineering background, out of oil & gas and into green and alternative energy companies. This frames up a new era of challenge for process management: to enable safe delivery of an increased number of intensive drilling projects, with stable or decreasing numbers of educated engineers.
Problem with onboarding new hires
Even if you hire an engineer with a strong energy industry background, it can take several months to onboard him if the same standardised structure for all the projects is not there. When new employees come from other companies, they tend to base solutions to project inefficiency gaps on their past experience. New hires aim for a transparent project structure that they are accustomed to, so they organise operations in a familiar way, either informally, or even by overwriting existing procedures with what they’ve learned from a previous job. By doing this they disturb the process consistency which is crucial for workforce exchange between projects.
Problem with exchanging engineers between projects
Companies’ rig teams often act as if they belong to different organisations simply because they took part in projects structured and managed in a different way. They function as separate closed ecosystems with no unified approach to process and risk management, data storage and analysis, task tracking and logistics management. This is a real barrier for transferring people between rigs and projects.
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Problem with data availability after employees leave the company
In the absence of a standardised workflow and project structure, information about important project outputs is at risk of being lost when data is stored in some unknown location, such as private HDD’s or ‘on the cloud’. If an owner of such data leaves a company, it may lead to significant inefficiencies, redoes and project delays, affecting financial performance.
Intelligent process management solution for the energy industry
That being said, here is the key direction of process improvement: to design a project workflow and establish standards against which results are evaluated, summarising it in one comprehensive operational planning and management software system which assures performance of drilling projects in the same standardised way. As a direct benefit, you eliminate human factors, shorten the learning curve, simplify the onboarding process for new hires, enable the smooth exchange of?the workforce between rig teams in the face of a lack of a skilled workforce, and ensure security of the work done.?
How do you get there?
Apriside can help your organization to overcome these challenges and create a resource-efficient work environment. Contact us for more information about the OilfieldOS – the intelligent project delivery system for the energy industry.