Developing and Maintaining a High Performance Culture in a Well Engineering Environment - Making Technical Limit Work

Abstract

Abstract Pursuit of performance is fundamental in today's Well Engineering world but are you getting all that you can out of your team? Detailed procedures and systems, incentives and initiatives are often used but the real key may be something else - the people and the organisational culture that they work within. It has been 10 years since the introduction of Technical Limit1, and in the interim human resource specialists have widely argued that people are the sole source of sustainable competitive advantage in an organisation rather than systems and processes2. Translating this to a well engineering environment, our people should no longer be considered a commodity item. Issues such as performance management, training and development, organisational learning, developing a performance mindset (culture), and the ability to build individuals into a cohesive team all affect drilling and completion performance. These issues are often highly interdependent; such is the complexity of managing people. We believe that by taking the learnings from years of Technical Limit application and coupling them with current thinking in developing a high performance workplace culture, the result yields a high performing drilling and completions team. Introduction There is a vast array of literature explaining in great depth the structure and strategies around building a high performing team. This paper does not set out to discuss in detail the psychology behind teams, however, we recognize the key to building a high performing team is largely about psychology and behaviour. Whilst our analysis is in the context of what we have found to work within a Well Engineering environment, essentially it could be applicable to most industries. This may be a guide to those who are seeking to maximize the use of their human resource when pursuing drilling and completions performance. In the 10 Years Since Technical Limit Technical Limit Philosophy is Not Enough. Since the introduction of the Technical Limit (TL) philosophy1 it seems that drilling and completion departments in almost all upstream companies have adopted some form of target as well as a budget time curve. Despite the technical roots of the Technical Limit philosophy, it has become apparent that TL drives performance through far more subtle means. The original TL paper1 touched on this component when stating that courage and a "no blame culture" are required for acceptance, we seek to expand on this further. After nearly 10 years of applying the Technical Limit philosophy a number of key learnings have emerged:TL is a widely misunderstood term on the rig and best performance comes from applying a systematic approach to efficient operations rather than preaching a mantra. It remains very difficult to convince crews that TL does not mean "rush-rush" so very careful attention must be paid to implementation. The way in which TL is delivered to the rig is critical to achieving success and when done properly is a lot of fun.TL is best used as a motivational tool rather than a theoretical exercise in numbers, it is important to focus on what's in it for the team when chasing the goal. The reward for approaching TL may vary from the challenge of the chase through to pride in performance and being part of a winning team.TL although set as a strong stretch target, should still be achievable albeit in a perfect set of conditions, tools and people - analogous to a world record in athletics1. A correctly pitched TL as the best a rig can do sets a realistic stretch goal and is more likely to motivate a team to beat the target. Given this Woodside builds its TL using details from the best performance with the same or similar rig type in the same or similar basin.If TL is based on unrealistic targets it can lead to cynicism and demotivation. For example there is no logic in comparing casing run rates with a dual derrick when you are using a third generation semi-submersible.