Building multidisciplinary teams
in the oil and gas industry
Oilfield Workshop is an interactive business simulation in which teams run a virtual oil-producing company: they make operational, technical, economic and management decisions, and see the effect on results immediately.
The training makes the links between departments tangible — how the work of each one feeds into production and economics — and builds the habits of working effectively in a multidisciplinary team:
Participants take on functions that mirror the organizational structure of a real company. Each department owns its area of work, and the overall result depends on how well they act together.
Teams handle the full scope of the work: exploring and appraising accumulations, building out the field and bringing it on stream, then analyzing and optimizing production and the development system.
Teams can test hypotheses, watch the consequences of contentious decisions play out and learn from mistakes without putting a real project at risk.
Teams go the whole way from analyzing the input data and forming a strategy to planning operations, evaluating the outcome and correcting course.
Participants do not sit through lectures. They plan the work themselves, allocate the resources and own the consequences of what they decide.
The training shows how decisions in geology, drilling, reservoir development, production and economics turn into concrete operational and financial results.
The training runs on proprietary software that combines an interactive model of an oil-producing company with a reservoir development simulator built on 3D digital reservoir models.
Several teams working the same case raises engagement and makes it easy to compare different approaches to managing a field.
The training joins operational processes, a 3D digital model of the field and company economics into one interactive learning loop.
Seismic exploration, prospect search and appraisal, well log interpretation, well and reservoir surveillance, development design and analysis.
Vertical, directional and horizontal wells, and sidetracks into bypassed reserves.
Well pad construction, pipelines, well testing, selection and optimization of operating regimes, and pressure maintenance.
Cost and budget planning, contractor management, oil sales, strategy, goal setting and control, and staffing decisions.
The loop never stops: teams receive data, take decisions, order the work, analyze the results and the reporting, and correct their strategy.
Teams receive the case data, monthly reports and the results of every completed operation.
Technical departments analyze the data and plan the work; the finance department prices it and issues the order to a contractor.
The software recalculates field performance. The changes appear on the interactive screen.
Teams get feedback on their exploration and development strategy on the interactive map.
The recommended team is 12-15 people in person, or 6-8 for the online format. The director can move staff between departments to reinforce whichever discipline the team's strategy needs.
The format makes the consequences of a decision visible fast, and it is far easier to agree on how to improve the way we take them.
It was genuinely useful to see the whole picture — how the day-to-day work of my department feeds into the economics of the field as a whole.
Great practice in cross-department collaboration: everyone ends up with a shared view of the goal.
After the training it is easier to justify decisions and align on them across departments in a real project.
A good balance between technical depth and the management and collaboration side of the job.
Excellent team building: you build communication around a shared goal and compete with the other teams.
