A project team that is structurally unique and balanced in terms of competencies was set up to tackle the above challenges. The team consists of a Governance Board, Gokhan Aker, Project Director, Single Point of Accountability (SPA) Azat Garifullin, central project team in Moscow and an expert group in the Drilling Support Center in Tyumen. Local working groups were arranged at the level of each Target Sub covered by the project under the guidance of the Drilling Directors, Single Points of Accountability and responsible IT representatives from the Target Subs.
The contractors’ project team leaders also played an important part in the integrated project management process. In order to ensure efficient interaction among the participants of this fairly complex organizational structure, we set up three layers of communication with a clear interaction mechanism that included weekly project team meetings, weekly drilling planning meetings, monthly meetings of the Governance Board, regular expert meetings and field meetings in the Drilling Support Center and Target Subs. A clear-cut problem escalation mechanism ensured immediate intervention by the project leaders and rapid problem solving. This was quite a significant factor contributing to the outcome that the project team has managed to keep up with an extremely tight implementation schedule, achieving all key targets by the end of 2011.
Our flexible approach to management of the drilling process automation program called for freedom of action, trust in the project team, as well as timely and mandatory engagement of managers in troubleshooting.
The improved efficiency was also facilitated by zoning out parallel tasks and quickly switching priorities – e.g. specialists quickly moved away from areas where the work slowed down (such as waiting for equipment delivery or a Target Sub management decision) to areas conducive to rapid solutions. When planning procurement, work and training, the project team factored in the regional specific features encountered during prior visits to the regions right from the outset. In order to minimize training impacts on the business, we developed a cascade model encapsulating several levels of training (base level, engineering, in-depth engineering, administration and support).
