SO WHAT has FPAL achieved after 13 years? At a recent industry forum held in Aberdeen, senior management presented the familiar “is the glass half full or half empty?” routine as a way of reviewing the impact that the supply-chain gateway organisation has had since it developed out of the CRINE initiative in 1996.
There are certainly a lot of positives, with record numbers of suppliers and purchasers benefiting from reduced effort in the pre-qualification process. Older readers will remember how difficult it was to get their company on to the approved vendor lists of all of the big operators and how much duplication of effort this involved.
Other successes include the widespread use of an industry standard two-way performance measurement tool and a reduction in multiple supplier audits with the introduction of the Verify shared audit scheme.
So what about the half-empty viewpoint? The FPAL steering committee, under the chairmanship of Ian Donaldson, of Talisman, met in May to discuss this very point. The committee, which also includes senior representatives from Shell, BP, Chevron, E-on Rhurgas, Aker, Subsea7, Petrofac, AKD, Wood Group, EIC and Oil & Gas UK, is aware that company-specific pre-qualification questionnaires are still being used, even though the information is already available via FPAL.
The committee is determined to stop this wasteful activity, especially with the renewed focus on costs caused by the dip in oil prices, and it has resolved to ask all 87 FPAL purchasers to examine ways in which this problem can be eradicated. SMEs with first-hand knowledge of receiving pre-qualification questionnaires asking for duplicate information also have a role to play and are encouraged to diplomatically ask their customers to reform their ways. Those who are reluctant to do this can contact FPAL’s Malcolm Wilson at malcolm.wilson@fpal.com for a confidential discussion about how to fix this problem.
A co-ordinated effort by the whole industry is required to ensure that we use existing tools such as FPAL, model ITTs and Logic contracts effectively, and SMEs have an important part to play in this process.