In these pages we’ve often focused on “getting smarter with technology”, but we also need to get smarter with people.
At Tendeka, we believe that development of new technologies is critical to not only our organisation but to the industry as a whole.
We can’t do this without the right people.
Empowering employees and giving them space to be creative is a key driver for us in 2019.
We recently held a “Dragons’ Den” event which I, as a “dragon”, certainly enjoyed.
Our chief technical officer, Annabel Green, had organised technology away days with her team to brainstorm some potentially game-changing production optimisation technologies.
The result was four teams and technologies competing for research and development funds.
The event was held at Aberdeen FC’s Pittodrie Stadium, and I was not only impressed by the technical aspect, where I felt the solutions could hugely benefit our clients globally, but also by the pitches themselves.
Now the really hard work starts for the teams in taking these fledgling technologies to the next level. As Scottish entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne once said: “Good ideas rarely make good businesses”.
Our “Dragons’ Den” competition allowed our people to come up with technology ideas and provided a new way of getting our engineering teams working together.
Again, this aligned with our employee engagement and empowerment goals in 2019.
We are working hard to create a culture within the team that inspires, motivates and rewards people for their hard work.
I attended a recent industry event which presented a review of the oilfield services sector within the UK continental shelf.
EY indicated there were signs of improvement in the UK market in 2018 and this is expected to continue into 2019.
With at least 17 new developments approved in 2018, we are all going to have to find new, more streamlined ways of working.
The majority of the 1,355 companies analysed indicated an increase in turnover but had yet to see an increase in profit margins.
The supply chain is still being squeezed and we were asked our thoughts on what we thought were the barriers to growth.
Interestingly, the top answer was industry behaviour and culture.
We’ve all had the discussions on the dangers of returning to our “old ways” and driving another boom and bust scenario.
Only a behavioural and cultural change at individual, organisational and industrial levels can prevent this.
Personally, I see how the small changes that I can make in my own behaviours and communications can have a much bigger impact than I would have originally expected.
So yes, our transformational technologies like PulseEight will lead us to the fully digital oilfield, where our downhole smart devices are continually functioning, based on internal data acquisition and analysis, to optimise production.
But we also need to start working and thinking differently, much more openly, collaboratively and efficiently.
Tendeka will be exhibiting and presenting on ‘Challenges in implementing the digital oilfield – a real-world look at data retrieval, storage and efficient utilisation’ at the OMC conference in Ravenna, Italy on March 27-29.
Gillian King is vice-president Europe, Russia, CIS & Africa
