Are we making the best use of what we have...?

What are we doing with all the new found knowledge and technology....more importantly are we making the most of our valuable experience and linking it to the new knowledge and technology?

This post is not an original idea and has definitely been asked many times before, but in our industry I think we need to address the questions to make the progress that will make real differences....

After completing my recent BA Hons, I am now embarking on an MBA and will hopefully, god-willing be able to go further after that; why am I doing it is the key question...am I doing it to further my career, increase my salary and in truth the answer is no. I carried out the BA Hons. initially to gain knowledge after working in an environment i just did not understand....an office.

During the BA Hons I learnt a great deal and was told that I had great deal to offer and my experience was invaluable and that was by someone totally unrelated to my industry and to be honest it was refreshing to hear it and a bit of a confidence booster. From that point on I decided I will try and do something with my studies to try and help the industry that has provided me a career over the last twenty five years. I think we can help ourselves by changing the reactive culture to a proactive culture by utilising the knowledge and technology we have alongside the people with experience in our industry who have so much to offer and fundamentally understand this industry (and many are currently unemployed)....before they leave the industry and it's then too late.

I became interested with different business cultures and the huge part they play in society and industry. We appear to live in a throw away society and it appears not only are old outdated phones and laptops getting thrown away but also old 'outdated' people are finding themselves in the same scenario, with my own Oil and Gas industry a prime example....but in our case have we got the personnel to maintain and repair the old equipment and do the new generation fully understand the industry and the new technologically advanced equipment?

My questions are;

1. Are we making the most of new knowledge and technology?
2. Are we making the best use of our valuable experience?
3. How can we combine the two, knowledge and experience ?

I maybe wrong but university degrees seem easier to get nowadays than when I was at school, as then only the minority went on to university and actually I think we may have had more 'skilled' hands-on people then, than we have now.

As the 'skilled' personnel of today continue to throw things away and replace with new, can we say they fully understand to the degree the 'skilled' people years ago took pride in fully understanding the equipment and the operations; therefore had no issues repairing it. Are we allowing the 'skilled' people of today to throw away equipment rather than repair it and hence stifling their ability to actually try and understand how it really works? Is the fact you can get a degree online with little or no interaction with a lecturer let alone interaction with class mates (Not all have zero or limited interaction) having a negative effect on our ability to share the knowledge and link it with the experience?

Nowadays with more people having degrees, are they becoming watered down, are they wasted when you do not use the knowledge you have gained and not only that but evidence shows with all this new gained knowledge we possibly have not moved very far, as with the David Graeber article “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs” in which he argued that, in 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by the end of the century technology would have advanced sufficiently that in countries such as the UK and the US we’d be on 15-hour weeks. He goes on to say, ''In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshalled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.'' To the people in my own oil and gas industry my question to you is ask yourself, is your job a BS job? If it is, how can you change it and make it more rewarding to yourself and hopefully more valuable to the industry and society as a whole? Is the soul of our industry being scarred; if so, we need to talk about it, if it is scarred, we need more than a sticky plaster?

It is clear to see we have more educated people in this society but are we really using these educated people and progressing; in my own industry have things really moved that far?

In my time we have for example created a top drive to assist the drilling programme and then the next move was where we started to move automated rigs but have we reduced the accidents or even increased efficiency and with automation have we reduced the personnel we need on the asset, I think not and to be honest have we possibly increased personnel to cope with the paper shuffling required offshore to use this automated equipment? Are we working less hours as per John Maynard Keynes view that we would be working less hours? I fear not, I fear we are working more hours than ever?

I have to agree with David Graeber and sadly what we appear to be doing is stifling the knowledge and technology and experience we have and then when we see it not working, try come up with ideas on how to change the culture...a culture we have created by not using the knowledge and experience correctly in the first place?

Industry experience is key in the Oil and Gas sector and I have raised the question previously, are we using it to enhance our future or are we lazily misusing the knowledge and also releasing experienced personnel to suit the budget we have set.

I think we are at a critical point in our industry, falling oil prices and increased competition and some ideas that may work are, government bodies and industry regulators for example could assist this industry raise it's standards by possibly supporting partial salary payments of experienced personnel to come back into the industry and mentor and train the new generation, passing established proven experience that may help improve efficiency at least and save a life at best! Also we need to link this experience to the new technology and knowledge as it is a proven fact the best people to discuss how to improve how things work are the people on the coal face so to speak?

Another idea could be to force Oil majors, drilling contractors and service companies to ensure their employees have access to and carry out government approved, industry initiated and created training schemes in place, with a guaranteed percentage of funds regardless of operational profits to be invested every year and yes these training schemes are the ones that they will all say they already have but will forget to add they have cut recently to assist with slashing their budgets....therefore creating a negative effect on progress simply by putting profits first? Obviously we need profits for growth and to survive but surely we need to ensure we do not put profits over progress?

In our industry in these times, how we mix and use the knowledge gained from the degrees with the experienced gained by the hand's on guys could be a key to a successful and efficient future?

One example is in our industry we have little if any work on new build drilling rigs, in fact we have unsold rigs being left to rust away in many locations, surely we can use our knowledge and experience more wisely? Some of our good quality people are now driving for Uber to make a living; surely a waste of real talent? There must be a way we can use these experienced personnel and train the following new personnel very easily; Shipyard workers, Trades workers, Drill-crew and possibly even Managers and in training these personnel it may then open the chance to allow them to think differently with no operational pressure and possibly come up with better ideas for efficiency and effectiveness of the new technologically improved and possibly, just possibly we can actually use the knowledge and experience we have at our finger-tips and head for the 15-Hour week John Maynard Keynes thought we were capable of achieving... and in my humble opinion 15-hours a week maybe far off but we should be making better progress.

Is it time for us to change the culture from a throw away society to a 'Bob the builder' society...where we can fix it and start to make better progress for all concerned and not just shareholders ....oh yes we can :-)

Please feel free to send me your ideas for how you think we can change and also answers on the questions above and hopefully I can use it as part of my research, thanks!