Maximizing the Benefit of Performance Improvement Initiatives in Oil & Gas

Oil and Gas players these days are challenged with several external factors that can potentially corrode their profit margin. Factors such as new environmental policies, demand for higher quality products, growing investments in renewable energy sources, and global geopolitical events – all contribute to today’s market dynamic uncertainty and product price volatility. As a solution, building a more resilient business model with a robust cost structure will be essential for the Oil and Gas operators to secure a more sustainable future.

Identifying the Need for Performance Improvement Initiatives

Among all available opportunities, selecting the correct project and executing it effectively will be critical for today’s oil and gas business. Without proper execution, approved projects can result in poor performance and low return on investment. A common root cause of the failure of these projects is the lack of active team collaboration.

A strong team culture that fosters productivity and understanding is essential for the project to be successful. Through our experience, a more engaged project team tends to execute more efficiently, reduce project risk, and capture more benefits through continuous identification of new opportunities.

Building Successful Team Culture in Oil and Gas:

Through our projects with more than a dozen refineries we identified some key enabling factors of a successful team culture:

• Roles and responsibilities of team members are clearly defined (RACI charts)
• Leads for main work areas are employees with strong experience and acknowledged by the team members as an authority
• Strong project management culture and project infrastructure – focus on specific deliverables and timeline
• A shared vision of project purposes and goals
• Culture of cooperation and inclusivity – everyone contributes to solving problems
• Frequent and regular measurement of performance indicators is critical!

With years of expertise in oil and gas performance improvement projects, we had success in helping customers to improve their team performance by defining clear roles and responsibilities, avoiding conflict and drawbacks, and ensuring productivity through constant monitoring of critical key performance indicators. With data collected and information interpreted in a standardized format across customer facilities, we provided structured reviewing processes for these projects and ensured timely corrective actions to safeguard the delivery of the project.

With a people-centric project delivering methodology, we helped our many customers across the globe to successfully achieve excellent performance results where some of these initiatives were previously identified, the project established but eventually ceased to continue due to poor team management. We engaged client organization from top-to-bottom to ensure we always have a comprehensive view and a clear understanding from a different perspective.

Click here to learn more about how to set quality targets and achieve them.

This blog is authored by Anas Dabbakh and Kai Wan. Anas is a Senior Engagement Manager and Kai is an Engagement Manager at Trindent Consulting.