Drilling Technology Mastery - Complementing Drilling Engineers' Knowledge Acquiring Process

Abstract Proposal PCSB’s Drilling Technology Mastery program was initiated in August 2002. Conceptually, it was designed as a total competency development model for PCSB’s Drilling Engineering Department. The Program is built around a modular delivery format, and takes Engineers from a Foundation Level Certification, through an Advanced Certification, and finally Expert Level. The program combines core technical skills development, along with soft skills development. The result of this program delivers certified resources, delivering technical analysis and results in a more accurate and time-efficient manner. This allows for a greater confidence to PCSB in managing drilling risks, thus helping to manage the improvement overall safety of a project and also contributes to substantial reduction of overall project cost. This paper takes as its example, the Foundation Level Certification process, and illustrates the roadmap that a Drilling Engineer follows in terms of a structured modular training program, supplemented with mentoring sessions and, finally challenged by the sitting of a certification. The certification has been jointly developed by PCSB and Landmark, and allows PCSB’s Drilling Engineers to be ranked against standard benchmarks which have been based upon a competency set required for the successful completion of PCSB’s standard operational process. While the objective of the program has been to accelerate the engineers’ development process, the Certification process ensures a measurable and guaranteed capability from a Drilling Engineer on successful completion of this program. The program is complemented with an online skill matrix database; which allows management access a dashboard of their current resource pool, to allow more objective evaluation candidates for particular assignments. It also allows both managers and the resource pool a real time competency and tracking tool for developing career development plans. This program is greatly supported by the implementation of an Integrated Well Planning Workflow. This defines the process of completing Drilling Engineering analyses from the planning stage to daily surveillance routines.