Certification Process Built on Required Engineering Competency Standards Ensures Consistent Performance Levels and Defines Employee Development

Abstract

In today's robust hydrocarbon markets, complexity and volume of drilling and evaluation activity have grown to unprecedented levels. This is driving technology development and new application practices at a record pace. At the same time, the industry is struggling to grow the talent base to manage the increased workload. These issues have resulted in a need to track and ensure application engineer and geoscientist competency levels. To solve this challenge, the company developed a detailed process for individual competency assessment and employee development for various application disciplines. Certification is awarded in set disciplines when the necessary criteria have been met and competence has been successfully demonstrated to a technical experts' review panel. The required competencies for each discipline were developed from the expanded job functions expected of the experienced senior applications engineers and geoscientists, as well as expectations of the services provided in each discipline. From this, a competency assessment and tracking methodology was created. The methodology enables the assessment of an individual engineer's competency level so a tailored development program of training and mentoring can be developed. A formal mentoring system plays a vital role in the certification process. Assigned mentors offer valuable engineering and process guidance. The authors will describe a certification process and a methodology for competency assessment and tracking for application engineers and geoscientists. Finally, the authors will discuss how the program benefits raise the level of the company's technical expertise. Introduction Industry demands for the optimized application of drilling and evaluation technologies have led to challenges in developing and hiring application engineers and geoscientists with suitable competency levels. These challenges are attributable to the limited number of skilled industry professionals and the increased volume of drilling activity. For large companies, there is the added issue of tracking and understanding the skill level of its technical staff. These companies must ensure the knowledge of their application engineers and geoscientists is sufficient to successfully manage the industry's complex technologies. The lack of skilled application engineers and geoscientists affects oil companies and service suppliers. For oil companies, lack of optimization results in higher costs through an increased number of drilling days and/or reduced borehole quality, leading to delayed or reduced production. Service companies, as the suppliers of technical solutions, must ensure their products are used efficiently; otherwise, they run the risk of low performance and poor perception of their technologies. This, in turn, leads to rejection of services, which can be very costly when R&D for failed technologies is taken into account. The limited number of skilled industry professionals is a well-known issue. The Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) estimates that between 1980-1998, the industry staffing levels fell to 300,000 from 700,000. As of December 2006, the median age of all SPE members was 47. The industry is expected to experience a 44% attrition rate among petroleum engineers by 2010; more than 200,000 years of cumulative experience and knowledge will be lost in the next 10 years because of retirement. Almost half of the workforce will be new to the industry.1In an attempt to fill staffing gaps, companies are giving application engineering and geoscience disciplines expanded job functions. The complexity of solutions for optimized drilling and evaluation requires a full understanding of the technologies and the total drilling environment in which they can be applied. These professionals must have skill sets that span traditional drilling engineering and oilfield geoscience disciplines.