Competency is the ability to apply knowledge and skills to perform a specific task effectively and consistently within time frame and demonstrated by relevant behavior. Levels of competencies with knowledge and skills defined separately have been identified under different job families in Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) like Geoscience, Petroleum, Reservoir and Drilling Engineering. These competency levels can be equated with 4 internationally recognized levels of competencies i.e. Awareness, Basic Application, Skilled Application and Mastery. The desire towards international standards of performance and increasing nationalization of technical manpower has caused a major shift in how the oil and gas industry trains and develops its workforce. Like Kuwait Oil Company, many companies are facing problems due to bimodal age distribution of their technical manpower i.e. a sizeable group of experienced personnel are close to their retirement age and a large pool of young professionals and new hires are joining the oil and gas sector with no or very little practical exposure. As a result there is a significant shortage of fully qualified, mid-level technical workforce to bridge this generation gap. Therefore, the need of the hour is a fast track development of these new hires to equip them with sufficient knowledge and skills in a shortest possible time. In view of above objective, a competency based new hire's roadmap has been designed by KOC. The present paper has come out with an approach which is being implemented successfully to develop new hires on fast track basis. It involves four stages namely Familiarization, Customized Workshops (Discipline wise), Mandatory Foundation Assignments (MFA) and Career Path Oriented Project. After completion of the New Hires Roadmap, a technical employee may attain the competency level where He or She can perform routine tasks and related assignments independently.
The upstream oil and gas industry, facing with an aging workforce, need to implement the right approach to ensure that competent work force available to carry forward the needed tasks in achieving the company's strategic goals. As organization grows, we need to ensure that processes are in place to attract, retain and develop the employee's talent for succession planning and management. The paper present a strategic process that focuses on creating a sustainable value chain of high potential talent who have the requisite knowledge and skills to lead and manage new organizational requirements and address business challenges. As good succession planning is critical for companies facing the "big crew change," a systematic approach to implement fast track processes is proposed. It involves: i) Critical analysis of manpower (ageing/ specialization etc.), ii) Identification of specialized jobs / competencies, iii) Designing training & development roadmap for all jobs/ levels iv) Young Professional's, Mid- Career and Advance Career Competency Development Roadmaps v) Shadowing the personnel according to the jobs with target date and vi) Robust competency assessment process. The significant impact of implementing above process will ensure the changed crew acquire the desired competencies within timeframe and will be able to take over the retired employee's position. Moreover, there will be no substantial setback to the organization in achieving the organizational strategies since technical capabilities is retained through systematic knowledge transfer process. Implementing a proper succession plan process within the company is one of the significant initiatives to support the development of technical capabilities and leadership capacity to address the challenges like growth in production targets and handling maturing and more complex fields. The proper succession planning and management will also overcome the challenges of selecting the top performers and pooling the talent with equipped technologies. The approach adopted will not only solve the problem of emerging big crew change but also help in achieving the company's strategic goals.
Effective competency development of a technical staff is a combination of awareness, knowledge, skills and attitude that must be demonstrated in order to meet the performance standards required of their jobs. A competency model supports effective learning and development of technical work-force besides, helping objective performance appraisal and systematic career growth. These will result in improved job satisfaction, better talent management and employee retention. Such approach of competency modeling of different job families in Upstream National Oil Companies will empower them to achieve their goal with admirable clarity, better hydrocarbon discovery index cum increase in production and field management expertise. The present paper focusses on an approach to the identification of Senior Employees under different subsurface groups with proven track record with coaching / mentoring abilities and utilizes them to develop not only the new hires but also the mid-career employees as subject discipline experts. It emphasized on a well-defined technical career recognition scheme for their technical contributions and provided them with a career path that offers recognition and reward. The paper emphasizes the need of utilization of these internal resources of discipline experts to develop few in-house courses and workshops for new hires to operational employees (mid-career level employees). The paper illustrates the utilization of discipline experts as coach / Mentor for in-house OJT programs to upgrade the skill requirement of technical manpower. These discipline experts act as assessor for in-house training courses also. Besides, they help in developing a customized competency matrix based on the critical business need of the company. This is a cost effective approach with win-win situation for the employer and employees.
The advancements in drilling technology have led to rapid and sustained improvements in drilling operations. This gradual development of tools and techniques has resulted in time savings and safety improvements. The number of directional and horizontal wells is growing every year and many of these are being drilled in more challenging oilfield environments such as deep gas fields, carbonate reservoirs and high pressure-high temperature zones. There is also an increasing demand for precision directional and horizontal drilling in mature oil fields. Such advancement of technology and tools require an appropriate approach of developing the available technical manpower with related drilling competencies. Therefore, a competency based model becomes essential for National Oil Companies (NOCs) to develop their technical manpower to keep pace with the technology development. Effective competency development is a combination of awareness, knowledge, skills and attitude that must be demonstrated to meet the performance standards required for their jobs. The paper emphasizes the need for a customized competency model for a drilling engineer in order to meet the major challenges as mentioned above. The Drilling Competencies in an Upstream National Oil Company needs to be categorized in three main disciplines which are Drilling Engineering, Drilling Operations and Drilling Techno Commercial. Therefore, exposure to these core competencies is essential for an effective drilling engineer. A case study of an Upstream Oil & Gas Company has been illustrated in this regard. The implementation of the Drilling competency model will result in improved job satisfaction, better talent management and employee retention. Such approach of competency modeling of different job families in upstream NOCs will empower them to achieve their goal with admirable clarity, better hydrocarbon discovery index cum increase in production and field management expertise. The proposed Drilling Competency Model can serve as a guide for other National Oil Companies in their endeavor to achieve excellence.
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