Knowledge Management Strategies for Mitigating the Big Crew - Wipro

Knowledge Management Strategies for
Mitigating the Big Crew Change in E&P
William Barna
MBA
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary ...................................................................................3
Introduction ..............................................................................................4
The Challenge ...........................................................................................5
Wipro’s Business Solution ........................................................................7
Technical Solution ....................................................................................12
Conclusion ...............................................................................................15
Appendix .................................................................................................16
References ..............................................................................................16
About the Author ...................................................................................17

Knowledge Management Strategies for mitigating the Big Crew Change in E&P
Successfully finding and producing oil requires a team of highly trained and experienced engineers. In most oil companies the
average age of an engineer is 48; 50% will be retiring within 10 years. Unfortunately, there are no replacements for these
retirees and companies will experience decreased production levels, reduced profitability and an increase in accident rates.
While new college graduates will fill some of the gaps, there are neither enough of these personnel nor do they have the
necessary skills. Wipro believes the best way to address this issue is with knowledge communities that keep retirees available as
consultants and with professional networking technologies that improve collaboration.
Executive Summary
The Oil and Gas Industry will be facing an enormous challenge over the next decade, when nearly 50% of its workforce will be
eligible for retirement. When these employees leave they will be taking their experience and institutional knowledge with them.
Exploration and Production (E&P) will be particularly hard hit because of its reliance on world class engineering talent. The most
successful engineers are those who have 20 years of experience or more. Finding and producing oil is a combination of instinct
and science. While the science can be taught in universities, instincts come from experience. To make matters worse, there are
few mid-career engineers in the pipeline to replace the seasoned veterans. Depressed oil prices in the 1980s and 1990s
significantly decreased the number of engineers entering the industry. While the number of new engineers is increasing, there
will not be enough of them to replace those who are leaving. Even if quantities were sufficient, their lack of experience would
make them largely ineffective.
The impact on the industry will be enormous. As the world economy grows, demand for fossil fuels increases. At the same time,
the world’s “easy” oil has already been found. The remaining oil is located is small, engineering-intensive fields, in depleted oil
fields requiring enhanced recovery, and in deep water. Getting at these hydrocarbons will require the most talented engineers
with decades of experience. These are the same people who are leaving the industry.
The demographics of the labor market have also changed. While there is a large deficit of engineering talent in North America
and the Middle East, there is a surplus of talent in China and India. If oil and gas companies are going to remain competitive,
they are going to have to find a way to tap into this labor pool.
Wipro, in conjunction with Microsoft and Rice University, has studied this challenge extensively and believes that a combination
of new business processes and supporting technologies can partially mitigate the impact of the “Big Crew Change”. Wipro’s
solution is to develop knowledge communities that include on-duty, off-duty, Center of Excellence alumni association
consultants and partners/vendors. New collaborative and communications technologies will allow this group to function in a
virtual environment. One of the key innovations for this solution is the knowledge market where off-duty and retired employees
can work as consultants to solve problems and support projects.
Wipro’s solution is based on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 platform and includes Microsoft’s Unified
Communications Product suite. The technical solution will support the knowledge communities with intranet and extranet
portals and real-time communications. The system will integrate into existing knowledge management, asset management,
condition-based maintenance, SCADA1 monitoring, troubleshooting and ERP2 systems. Professional networking technologies
will link assets to processes to people. Powerful search engines will allow the user community to quickly locate information and
more importantly, the people who have the information. Mobile communications devices based on Smartphones will make it
possible for off-duty and retired employees to be on-call without interfering with their personal time.
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This solution has the ability to save or create billions of dollars of oil revenue for individual companies. It will also help the
industry meet the energy demands of the world economy at a time when the industry’s best and brightest are leaving the
[1] [2]
workforce.
Introduction
Wipro Consulting Services (WCS) has been delivering knowledge management strategies for its oil and gas customers since 1990,
thus improving collaboration, regulatory compliance and operations. Within the last 5 years demand has increased for solutions
to address the “Big Crew Change”. Wipro has worked with its customers on this issue and believes it has a solution that is
applicable across the industry. This paper provides a solution overview and helps oil and gas companies with their strategies.
Effective solutions improve business processes. Technology’s role is to act as an enabler, making it possible to do business in new
ways. It is constantly changing, creating new opportunities. Breakthroughs in knowledge management, unified communications
and social computing are providing value tools for reshaping business processes that can offset the impact of the Big Crew
Change.
Microsoft is an industry leader in many of these technologies. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 Enterprise
provides team collaboration, document management, records management, search, enterprise portals and other key
functionality that can provide the foundation for any knowledge management system. Microsoft.s Unified Communications
Solution integrates cleanly with MOSS and provides Voice-over-IP, presence, group chat and video conferencing. The
combination of these two technologies has added new capabilities to the marketplace that can be used to rethink how
business has been done and provide new levers to use in coping with the Big Crew Change.
Microsoft included social networking in MOSS 2007 and plans to refine the technologies in SharePoint 14. While social
networking technologies used in sites such as Facebook or MySpace have proven enormously popular with consumers, many
businesses have failed to see the value of incorporating these technologies into their knowledge management infrastructure.
Wikis, blogs, forums, and people searches have been seen as too imprecise and unregulated to be effective tools for operations.
These tools, however, play an important role in Wipro’s solution. Instead of installing social networking components on a
Website, Wipro has integrated them into new business processes. It has provided governance models and employee incentives
to increase user acceptance. In Wipro’s solution implementation, these tools are referred to as Professional Networking tools in
order to differentiate between what consumers use on the Internet and what would be built into a corporate knowledge
management system.
Using these tools in an oil and gas business environment is not new and many companies are experimenting with this
technology on a small scale. A good example is Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Oxy has deployed a wiki site called Oxypedia
to 300 users in its Elk Hills operation.3 Elk Hills supports operations in California where Oxy is the largest gas producer and third
largest oil producer in the state. The site received 1500 hits on its first day and user acceptance has been excellent.
The wiki is a repository for best practices and includes information on topics like normalizing well data, default settings for
forecasting software such as Peep and Aires, and how to evaluate well data in Microsoft Excel.
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In Wipro’s implementation of wikis, these elements are built into a much larger solution that links wikis to people, assets and
processes, while using next generation search engines to quickly locate the information needed to solve a problem or locate a
person who has the required knowledge. The solution goes one step further through communities and markets that greatly
increase the knowledge pool. This will become critical as more and more knowledge leaves companies as people retire.
Wipro has been studying this issue since 2007 and has worked with Rice University, Microsoft and customers formally and
informally. Wipro is a Silver sponsor of Rice’s Energy Management program. Since Wipro plans to base this solution on the MOSS
platform, Microsoft has funded research and provided technical expertise. Many of Wipro’s customers have shared information
on their internal research programs. Wipro has provided a Proof-of-Concept (POC) to Petrobras in Houston, TX. Petrobras is
[3]
evaluating the POC’s ability to improve offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).
The Challenge
Most of the world’s “easy” oil is gone, forcing oil companies to focus on smaller oil fields, enhanced recovery, and deepwater oil.
4All three are engineering intensive and require large capital investments. This is happening at a time when most of the
industry’s top engineering talent is about to retire. Making matters worse, universities are only providing a fraction of what is
needed to replace the retirees. As a result, the oil industry is in a crisis.
Twenty years ago there were fifteen “Super Giant” oil fields capable of producing a million barrels per day. Today there are only
four.5 In order to meet production targets, companies are producing larger numbers of smaller fields. These smaller fields are
resource-intensive, requiring substantially more engineering hours per barrel of oil produced. Smaller fields also scatter
engineers, reducing productivity. Since it is unlikely that new Super Giant fields will be discovered, smaller fields will
produce more and more of the world’s oil. As a result, the demand for petroleum engineers will increase year after year unless
technology can be used to offset this trend.
Since low-cost oil is becoming harder and harder to find, the industry is revisiting depleted oil fields with enhanced recovery
technologies such as gas injection, chemical injection, ultrasonic stimulation, microbial recovery and thermal recovery. In a
typical field only 20% to 40% of the oil can be produced by primary and secondary recovery means. With enhanced recovery this
improves to 30% to 60%. The downside is the expense and the fact that it is engineering intensive. As energy prices increase,
enhanced recovery makes economic sense. However, it will also further strain engineering resources.
Seven of the last 10 Giant oil fields have been discovered in deep water off Brazil, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Persian Gulf.
Giant oil fields are capable of producing more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day or 10 percent of a Super Giant. For example,
BP’s Thunderhorse platform 150 miles southeast of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico now produces between 100,000 and
300,000 barrels of oil. It came on line with seven wells in 20086. Future production may hit as much as a million barrels of oil per
day from up to 50 wells. The semi-submersible platform cost over $1 billion dollars to build and accounts for 3.3% of current U.S.
oil production. Thunderhorse was originally planned to come on line in 2005 and ran three years behind schedule. It is widely
believed that a shortage of engineering talent contributed to the delay. Since there are likely few Giants and Super Giants left to
be found on shore, the future of oil production will move off shore. This will further stress the short supply of engineering staff.
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[4] [5] [6] The average age of oil field engineers is 48 and 50% to 60% will be eligible for retirement within 10 years. The expected
attrition rate is 6% per year.7 The disciplines hardest hit include petroleum engineers, process engineers, geologists, and
geophysicists. Employee age also follows a bimodal distribution with a large number of older employees, a number of younger
employees and not much in the middle. A good example is Halliburton, where 56% of employees have less than five years of
experience, 17% have 5 to 10 years’ experience, and 27% have more than 10 years’ experience.8 Halliburton is considered a
young company in the industry with bimodal distribution over-weighted at the young side of the curve. Aramco is a similar
example. According to Allah Al-Saif, Senior VP of E&P, "nearly half of our workforce [Saudi Aramco] is less than 30 years of age.
Furthermore, surveys suggest that in the next few years more than 60 per cent of our engineers will have less than 10 years of
experience”.
The industry will be most at risk when the experienced employees retire, shifting the small middle group into leadership with
support from a large group of inexperienced employees.
Workforce volatility is not new to the oil and gas industry; it has been an issue for the last 150 years. As the price of oil climbs,
companies quickly hire. As oil prices fall, companies lay off. Since the 1980s the price of oil has gone from the $10s to the $140s
and back to the $50s today. The workforce demographics reflect this. However, oil price volatility is only one component. The Big
Crew Change has its roots in the 1980s and 1990s and occurred for three reasons:
1. Mergers and low oil prices caused hundreds of thousands of people to leave the industry
2. The image of E&P as low-tech and a dirty, sunset industry makes it less attractive for young people
3. Competition from other industries
There is also a regional graduation deficit for E&P engineers. The US enrolment in key E&P industry skills like petroleum
engineering fell 85% between 1982 and 2003. For example, in 1993 there were 11,000 petroleum engineering students in the
United States at 34 universities. By 2005, that number had plummeted to 1700 people at 17 universities. 10While the situation
in the United States is grim, in parts of the world such as India and China there is a surplus.
In 2006, Schlumberger Business Consulting surveyed 115 universities and 30 companies to compare available labor and
demand.11 The results of the survey showed major deficits in the United States, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Major
surpluses were found in China, Indonesia, India, Venezuela and Mexico. The deficits and surpluses roughly balance themselves.
One of the challenges going forward will be to either relocate these engineers closer to their work or to find new ways to
leverage them in their native countries.[7] [8]
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[9] [10] [11] Over the next 15 years, the industry plans to expand capacity by investing over $200 billion in E&P. In order to support this
growth rate, a solution to the talent issue must be found. Since it is too late to do anything about the mid-career gap in the
workforce, solutions will need to focus on five areas:
1. Keeping institutional knowledge in the system longer
2. Improving collaboration between employees
3. Developing IT systems that can mimic experienced employees
4. Providing more effective programs to reduce the time needed for new employees to become productive
5. Creating processes for leveraging surplus labor in deficit markets
New technologies that enable new business processes are showing great promise and may be the most effective way to
developing a strategy for mitigating the impact of the Big Crew Change.
Wipro’s Business Solution
Wipro’s solution for the Big Crew Change is to form knowledge communities that are linked together through collaborative
technologies provided by Microsoft’s MOSS 2007 Enterprise and Unified Communications platforms. Custom applications
delivered through Webparts in portals would be used to provide specialized functionality. Incentive programs would be used to
increase user acceptance and improve change management.
Knowledge communities address the requirement of keeping institutional knowledge in the system during the period of the Big
Crew Change. The new electronic systems and business processes associated with the communities will address the second
requirement of improved collaboration.
These communities will consist of 5 groups:
1. On-duty employees supporting operations
2. Off-duty employees supporting operations
3. Center of Excellence (COE) employees
4. Partners and vendors
5. Alumni consultants
The five groups would be brought together as a virtual team through a portal that is accessible both internally through the
corporate intranet and externally through an extranet. Unified communications and mobile systems provide ubiquitous
communications allowing each participant to support the community from any location and at any time.
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On-duty and COE employees would access the portal through the corporate intranet. MOSS would be used to provide a personal
site for each employee. The content of the site would be dictated by group membership and job function. Employees could
customize pages by adding additional components. Webparts would be used to deliver functionality. Personal sites would
include the following components:
• Homepage
• Operations subpage
• Community subpage
Homepage
Operations dashboard
Community dashboard
Knowledge management
dashboard
Links to subpages
Scripted troubleshooting process
Process linked to tickets db, asset
db, personnel db
Employee presence
Group chat
LiveMeeting
If an issue should arise that cannot be handled through the scripted troubleshooting process and knowledge management
interfaces, the next escalation point would be the center of excellence. Most oil and gas companies already have COEs in place
that can easily be integrated into the solution. For example, Petrobras uses Petrobras University and its Central Research Group
as its COEs. If an E&P issue arises in Petrobras Americas that cannot be solved locally, the issue is escalated to these COEs in Rio
de Janeiro in Brazil.
Another example is Shell's COE in Bangalore India.12 Internally, the system is known as the Collaborative Work Environment.
"The Collaborative Work Environment allows us [Shell] to view real-time operational data from our worldwide
production; drilling; refining and manufacturing operations, in surveillance rooms in Bangalore. Subject Matter Expert in
Bangalore can then offer technical advice directly to asset teams during operational activities." This system is also integrated
[12]
with other Shell COEs in Amsterdam, Netherlands and other parts of the world.
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Operations subpage
Breakout for operations KPIs
KPIs associated with assets,
people and process
Asset database access
Employee presence information
Process documentation
Search
Employee presence information
Group chat
LiveMeeting
Link to Knowledge market
• Troubleshooting subpage
• Knowledge Management subpage
• Knowledge Market subpage
Community subpage
Professional networking
Employee presence information
Group chat
LiveMeeting
Troubleshooting subpage Knowledge Management
subpage
Knowledge Market subpage
Products
Consultant availability
Consultat bios
Pricing
Consultat presence information
Group Chat
LiveMeeting
VoIP communications
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Knowledge Management Strategies for mitigating the Big Crew Change in E&P
On-duty and COE personnel will have incentives to contribute their knowledge to the system through a compensation model
based on the value of contributions. Value would be determined by their peers as the information was consumed to address
business problems. The knowledge management system would track how often the information was accessed and the
consumers would provide feedback about the end result. A point system would be used to show impact and a dashboard would
allow each employee or an employee’s manager to monitor results. The organization could provide bonuses based on
performance, allow points to be used to make purchases from a company store or used in the evaluation process when
considering promotions or increases in annual compensation.
Off-duty employees, vendors, partners, and alumni consultants would access systems through an extranet site. Off-duty and
alumni consultants would participate through a knowledge market while partners and vendors would use a scaled down version
of the internal site.
Getting off-duty and retired alumni association employees to participate will require an incentive program. The knowledge
market allows stakeholders to flexibly volunteer their time in exchange for financial compensation. Each participant signs up for
the program and provides a profile. Off-duty employees will have their profile uploaded from the internal system and fill in
additional information about the times they are available and the rates they would expect.
Retired employees would join an alumni association prior to signing up as consultants. The consultants would sign non-
disclosure agreements. They would receive background checks and be required to comply with security policies. They would also
fill out a complete profile with their work history, certifications, expertise with specific processes and equipment, availability and
consulting rate. There would be an evaluation system that tracks the quality of their work over time.
Depending on company policies and available talent, the alumni association would be local to the company or could include
retirees from similar firms. Existing services like “Expert Alumni” could also be integrated into the solution. Expert Alumni13 is a
service that provides retirees to the oil and gas industry as consultants. It is sponsored by the Society of Petroleum Engineers
and was specifically designed to help organizations deal with their staffing and knowledge transfer issues during the Big Crew
Change.
Security for the knowledge market would be set by the company. In all likelihood, the company would enact a “need to know”
policy. The individual purchasing the consulting would be responsible for granting access to specific company resources. The
knowledge management system would track usage and provide an audit trail back to the purchaser. Upon completion of the
engagement, the project would be closed and access to resources would be automatically revoked.
Off-duty and alumni association personnel would be given incentives to contribute to the knowledge base in the same way as
on-duty employees, with the exception of having their submissions reviewed by a review board. The review board would
evaluate the information for quality and ensure there was no duplication with existing works. Once accepted, the system would
be uploaded into the primary system.
For employees participating in the knowledge market, a local account would be maintained throughthe extranet site. A Paypal-
like system would be used to transfer funds from the market to the bank account.
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[13] Partners and vendors are a key component of the solution since they have expertise with equipment and then services that
may not be available in-house. A separate extranet site will be used for this group. It will have the functionality of knowledge
market minus the compensation component. Partners and vendors will have an interest in ensuring that they are adding value
to their customer in order to secure future sales. No additional compensation model would be required.
Business users would have access to the full community through portal application. They would likely first attempt to solve
issues or support projects locally and then leverage the COEs followed by partners/vendors and then as a last resort use the
knowledge markets.
No matter how effective the knowledge community is, there will be gaps. Some employees will choose not to join alumni
associations as consultants and there will likely never be enough consultants to meet demand. Organizations will need to invest
in operations research and expert systems to fill this need.
Operations Research (OR) uses mathematics and analytical computer-based methods to optimize scheduling to improve
operations. In oil field operations veteran managers are able to use their experience to optimally schedule resources. Developing
or producing an oil field requires a number of steps to be performed serially or in parallel. Knowing how to budget time or
estimate risks to timelines is largely a function of experience. When these experienced employees retire, systems like these will
be required to back fill them until the next generation of the workforce gains experience.
Below are two examples of OR systems improving operations from a recent Society of PetroleumEngineers paper titled “The
Impending Expertise Crisis: New Technology Comes to the Rescue”.
[14] “Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producing company, realized strong improvements in key performance indicators after
deploying Actenum’s Rig Activity Scheduler.”
“The Canadian oil sands extraction company Syncrude avoided an unplanned downtime estimated at a cost of $32 million within
two weeks of using a reliability driven maintenance scheduling prototype.”
Expert systems use Artificial Intelligence algorithms to replace human beings. These systems use manytechnologies including
rule based systems, fuzzy logic and neural networks. AI systems are most appropriate to:
• Get better value from large amounts of operational data
• Help experts to make better decisions by focusing on trends rather than details
• Providing decision support that improves the effectiveness of non-experts
One example is a fuzzy logic system developed by the Petroleum Recovery Research Center (PRRC), New Mexico Institute of
Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM. The U.S. Department of Energy funded $523,500 of this 36 month project. Below is an
excerpt from the team’s objective statement.
“The objective of this project is to create a user-definable and customizable fuzzy expert system tool to dramatically speed local
and regional play analysis and reduce subsequent drilling risk. This general tool will not require significant knowledge of
computer
programming and will guide users through the process of building a successful expert
system to evaluate plays from field to basin scale using public and/or private data and their own knowledge.
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To demonstrate the effectiveness of the tool, a secondary objective of analyzing the Pennsylvanian play of southeast New
Mexico will be performed. Public data will be organized for analyzing this outstanding, bypassed-pay play, which will provide an
example of the usage of the system while simultaneously providing a significant opportunity for identifying new reserves.”
Oil and gas companies need to do advance forecasting within their organization to understand what non-replaceable, critical
personnel will be lost during the Big Crew Change and work with these employees to transfer their unique knowledge to these
expert systems. Because of the high cost of these systems, oil and gas companies should consider forming partnerships with
similar firms and seek government funding.
As companies struggle to offset the 6% attrition rate with new employees, they will need new ways to reduce time to
productivity; that is, the amount of time it takes for the company to break even on their investment in recruiting and training
new employees. In recent SPE paper, “Developing Young Exploration and Production Professionals to Solve the ‘Big Crew
Change’”16, employee development is defined as:
• 10% theory
• 50% On-Job-Training
• 40% Coaching and Mentoring
As fewer and fewer coaches and mentors are available, companies are going to have to rely more heavily on knowledge
managements systems. As covered earlier in this section, current employees and alumni will need incentives to contribute to the
knowledge base to provide the support infrastructure to the incoming workforce.
The knowledge community and its communications infrastructure will help address the issue of having a workforce located in
Asia to perform work in North America and the Middle East. As discussed earlier in this section, Shell has developed a COE in
Bangalore, India to provide support operations worldwide. As it becomes more and more impractical to relocate engineers from
their home countries in Asia, the COEs will need to transform support centers to operations centers. New technologies in unified
communications, digital oilfields, and SCADA systems will make it possible to do more and more work remotely. Unified
communications will increase the effectiveness of virtual teams making it possible for a large team in Bangalore to support a
skeleton crew on the ground in Alaska. SCADA systems will allow the control center in Bangalore to monitor equipment, receive
alerts, and make adjustments to production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, reducing the number of employees needed on site.
Condition based maintenance systems based in Bangalore will make it possible to extend physical maintenance intervals in
oilfields in the Texas panhandle. This will reduce the number of technical support teams driving around the prairie in trucks
maintaining equipment.
[15] [16]
The technology needed for this solution exists today. Wipro is building it on the Microsoft platform.
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Technical Solution
The collaborative environment required to support the knowledge communities in the previous section will require significant
infrastructure, including federated directory services, Webservers, database servers, application servers, and security services.
The infrastructure must provide the following functionality:
• Highly scalable platform
• Enterprise portal
• Flexible and user configurable interfaces
• Secure extranets
• KPI and operational dashboards
• Database connectivity
• Professional networking
• e-commerce
• KM performance tracking
Wipro is basing its knowledge management solution on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) Enterprise Edition and
the Unified Communications platform. This platform was chosen because of its low cost, rich functionality, ease of application
development, readily available webparts and its market share. The Enterprise version of MOSS was chosen over the standard
version and SharePoint since the solution makes extensive use of KPIs, Business Data Catalog (BDC), Excel Services and the
Forms Server. This functionality is only available from the Enterprise version of MOSS. Many of Wipro’s customers have already
purchased e-CALs from Microsoft, giving them full access to the software at no additional cost.
MOSS will be implemented as a three tier configuration. Tier-1 is the database layer and will be based on Microsoft SQL Server
2008 in a clustered configuration to improve scalability and performance. Tier-2 is the application layer and provides the MOSS
shared services such as indexing, search, reporting, connectivity, forms and Excel Services. Many of the application components
cannot be clustered and scalability is achieved through dedicating each server in this layer to a specific function
and by increasing hardware (scale-up). Tier-3 is the presentation layer or Windows Front End (WFE) servers. These servers use
network load balancing to improve performance and reliability. Scalability is achieved through a scale-out design. When
additional capacity is needed, more servers are added to the cluster.
The MOSS implementation will also require Active Directory, Exchange, and Forefront Edge Security and Access, Office
Communications Server, PBX connectivity, Mobile Information Server, Smartphones and a high bandwidth network. The MOSS
portal will need connectivity to the enterprise asset management system, HR system, scheduling systems, SCADA systems,
systems monitoring systems, troubleshooting systems and ticket management systems.
The enterprise portal will be provided through MOSS. MOSS runs on top of Microsoft Internet Information Service and delivers
functionality through Webparts running on Active Server Pages 2.0. Webparts are browser based applications that provide
business functionality. MOSS also provides personalization based on group membership and user configured settings. When a
user logs onto the site, group and individual settings are applied, providing the proper interface for each user. When coupled
with Active Directory Federated Services, MOSS will provide the secure extranet portal for the knowledge market and
partner/vendor collaboration interface.
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• Search
• Workflows
• Document and records management
• Presence
• Integrated Voice over IP (VoIP)
• Instant messaging and group chat
• Video conferencing
• E-mail integration
• Mobile devices
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Knowledge Management Strategies for mitigating the Big Crew Change in E&P
In order to provide database and application connectivity to feed the KPI and operational dashboards, MOSS provides the
Business Data Catalog (BDC). Out of the box, the BDC comes with Application Data Files (ADF) for SAP, Siebel and other line of
business applications. ADFs simplify connectivity and reduce development effort/costs. In situations where ADFs do not exist for
legacy systems, Wipro will create the configuration files. The BDC will be used to connect to the enterprise asset management
systems, SAP HR systems, personnel systems, SCADA databases, troubleshooting systems and ticket management systems.
Out of the box, MOSS provides Webparts for social networking including wikis, blogs, forums, people search, and relationship
management. As part of Wipro’s solution this functionality has been aligned to business processes and extended to make it
more relevant to E&P operations. Social Networking functionality has been renamed Professional Networking to reflect its
business alignment. One of the most innovative components is the linking of processes, assets and people and integrating the
results through the MOSS search engine.
For example, if a user initiates a search for information on a piece of equipment he will not only get a list of documents (data
store, wikis, blogs, forums) but he will also get a list of people associated with asset directly or indirectly. People-to-asset linking
will show first, second and third order associations. First order associations are employees with a direct history to the asset.
Second order associations are employees with experience with the same equipment elsewhere in the company. Third order
associations represent experience with similar equipment. Users will want to start with first order relationships since they are
most likely to provide the desired result, leveraging the second and third tier if things do not pan out.
As the search engine turns up people, relationships between people are also displayed. People-topeople linking is what is found
in LinkedIn, the popular Web-based networking tool. LinkedIn allows users to leverage their relationships with individuals to
access a wider network. This will prove very effective in E&P when employees need to enlist the help of people with whom they
have no past relationship. Cold calling is never as effective as when someone else with a relationship acts as a liaison.
The knowledge market is an e-commerce site. Consultants sign-up to deliver predefined products, set prices and advertise their
services on a portal. The portal is accessed by on-duty employees who need assistance on projects or troubleshooting
operations. Based on need and cost, the on-duty employees make a decision about whether to secure an individual’s services. A
shopping basket would be used to make purchases and payments would be handled by Paypal-like functionality. Workflows
would be used to get the necessary approvals to authorize engagements and payments. MOSS would serve as the platform for
this site and existing and new Webparts would be used to provide the functionality. MOSS based workflows integrated with
Exchange e-mail would manage the approval process. The entire incentive system is based on compensating employees based
on the value of the knowledge they contribute to the system. When an employee accesses information through the knowledge
management system, the system will require that he fill out a survey on the value of the information.
This is very similar to what is in use on e-commerce sites. For example, when a consumer evaluates a book on the Barnes and
Noble website, they get the opportunity to read reviews from people who have read the book. This information is used as part
of the buying decision. This same technology is used in Wipro’s solution. The search engine takes into account the rating of the
content when delivering results based on relevancy. The system will also track the number of times a document is accessed, its
average score and link it to particular project or troubleshooting process that has a dollar value. A point system is then used to
quantify value. Each user will have a scorecard that shows the value of his information compared to his peer group. Value
received would then be used to determine bonuses, promotions or other incentives. This functionality will be delivered through
existing and new webparts for the MOSS platform.
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Knowledge Management Strategies for mitigating the Big Crew Change in E&P
Appendix
References
Clark, Andrew; Davidson, Varya; Guilford, Zoe; Parry, Peter; “Labor and skills crisis could stall oil and gas boom”, Booz, Allen,
Hamilton, 2006
Rajan, Surya, “Generaton Y in the Oil Field: Are we Ready?”, SPE 109289, Society of Petroleum Engineers, November 2007
Rajan, Surya, and Krom, Jon D., “Intelligent Oil Field of the Future: Will the Future Be Too Late?”, SPE 115030, Society of
Petroleum Engineers, September 2008
1. Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA)
2. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
3. Hoffman, Joel, “Employee Knowledge: Instantly Searchable”, SPE 122471, Society of Petroleum Engineers, April 7, 2009
4. “Bust and Boom”, The Economist, May 22, 2009
5. Robelius, Fredrik, “Giant Oil Fields of the World”, Uppsala University, May 2005
6. “BP ramps up Thunder Horse production”, Oil & Gas Journal, April 27, 2009
7. Irgens, Morten, “The Impending Expertise Crisis: New Technology Comes to the Rescue”, SPE 116634, Society of Petroleum
Engineers, September 2008
8. Gell, Christi, and Schilling, Laura, “Empowering Young Professionals to Lead After „The Big Crew Change.”, SPE 115341, Society of
Petroleum Engineers, September 2008
9. Tealdi, L, Dreft, E., Donachie, J.M., “Developing Young Exploration and Production Professionals to Solve the ‘Big Crew
Change’”, SPE 99924, Society of Petroleum Engineers, April 2006
10. Parry, Peter; Davidson, Varya; Clark, Andrew; Guilford, Zoe; “Labour and skills crisis could stall oil and gas boom”, Booz Allen
Hamilton, 2006
11. “Surviving the skills shortage – 2006”, Schlumberger Business Consulting, 2006
12. James, Simon and Gullhave, David, "Utilizing Romote Collaboration and Visualization Technologies in a Collaborative Work
Environment to Connect Indian Experts with Worldwide Operations", SPE 113593, Society of Petroleum Engineers, March 2008
13. http://www.expertalumni.com
14. Irgens, Morten, “The Impending Expertise Crisis: New Technology Comes to the Rescue”, SPE 116634, Society of
Petroleum Engineers, September 2008
15. http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/Petroleum/projects/EP/Explor_Tech/15512.htm
16. Tealdi L; Kreft, E; Donachie, J.M., “Developing Young Exploration and Production Professionals to Solve the ‘Big Crew Change’”,
SPE 99924, Society of Petroleum Engineers, April 2006
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About the Author
William Barna has worked for Wipro Consulting Services for 2 years as a Principal Consultant specializing in Microsoft based
solutions. Prior to Wipro, he worked for Microsoft Consulting Services in Dallas, TX delivering Active Directory, desktop
deployment and Systems Management Server solutions for Fortune 1000 corporations in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Many
of his engagements were Oil and Gas firms in Dallas and Houston. Mr. Barna also worked for Microsoft in Redmond in the
Windows Server and Systems Management business groups, doing product planning and also benchmarking the value
customers received from Microsoft’s products. He also worked for KPMG Peat Marwick in Plano, TX consulting on knowledge
management solutions. Mr. Barna has additionally worked for the U.S. Department of State delivering Banyan Vines solutions
based on StreetTalk at U.S. missions in the Middle East.
Mr. Barna has authored white papers for Microsoft on Windows Server, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Microsoft Desktop
Optimization Pack (MDOP), Linux, Microsoft SQL Server and Infrastructure Optimization. His work has been quoted in
Knowledge@Wharton, Infoweek, CNET and other publications. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and has
contributed to articles published in the Journal of Petroleum Technology.
Mr. Barna has an MBA from Southern Methodist University, a certificate in IT Benchmark from Stanford University, and is
completing a Certificate in Energy Management from Rice University. He has a CCNA certification from Cisco, and CNE
certification from Novell and MCSE, MCSD, and MCTS (SharePoint) certifications from Microsoft. He is ITIL certified.
About Wipro Technologies
Wipro is the first PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMMi Level 5 certified IT Services Company globally. Wipro provides comprehensive IT
solutions and services (including Systems Integration, IS Outsourcing, Package Implementation, Software Application
Development and Maintenance) and Research & Development Services (hardware and software design, development and
implementation) to corporations globally.
Wipro’s unique value proposition is further delivered through our pioneering offshore Outsourcing Model and stringent quality
processes of SEI and Six Sigma.
About Wipro Council for Industry Research
The Council for Industry Research at Wipro is comprised of domain & technology experts from the organization. It has been set
up to address the needs of customers, specifically looking at innovative strategies that will help them gain competitive
advantage in the market. The council studies potential market trends and equips organizations with insights that will facilitate
their IT and business strategy.
For more information on the research council please visit www.wipro.com/industryresearch or email
industry.research@wipro.com
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