Brief: Using a Drilling Management

System To Build a Learning

Organization
Garry Hanni, SPE, and lmren Chambers, Amoco Exploration U.K., and Walter Quay, SPE, OGCI

Summary
A fundamental problem facing any drilling
organization is learning. The geologic envi-
ronment is never perfectly known, and the
organization is never entirely certain of the
best way to drill a particular well. This is es-
pecially true in areas where development
wells do not number in the hundreds. This
Garry Hanni is a senior staff drilling engineer for Amoco (UK) Exploration
Co., where he is team leader for the Drilling Management System
project. Hanni holds a BS degree from the U. of British Colombia. lmren
Chambers is a systems analyst In the Drilling Dept. at Amoco (UK)
Exploration Co. She ensures the Integration of all drilling computer
systems into the drilling management system. Biographical sketch of

Downloaded from http://onepetro.org/JPT/article-pdf/46/06/502/2223807/spe-28652-jpt.pdf/1 by guest on 13 February 2024

means that drilling organizations are faced
with the challenge of learning how to apply
technology better in a partially unknown en-
vironment. This paper describes a comput-
er-based management system to make orga-
nizationallearning a part of the way drilling
teams do their everyday business. The sys-
tem, the drilling management system
(DMS), uses commonly available software
on IBM-compatible PC's.
Fundamental Drilling Problem
This paper describes a software-assisted ap-
proach to implement the principles of learn-
ing organizations in drilling teams. This ef-
fort is supported by two basic points, either
of which might suffice as justification. First,
the U.K. government has mandated that op-
erators be able to demonstrate an auditable
trail for drilling operations by 1995. This
means that the basis for every drilling deci-
sion must be known and recorded. Second,
there are significant financial advantages
for drilling organizations that can learn
quickly. (Studies have shown that even
good drilling organizations spend 10% to
25% of their budget on learning; poor orga-
nizations spend more.)
The purpose of the DMS is to address
both issues by institutionalizing the features
of "learning organization." A learning orga-
nization defines specific goals linked to its
bottom line, remembers how decisions were
made, accurately monitors performance,
builds an accessible reservoir of experience,
and uses this experience to adapt its practic-
es to "do it better next time." The DMS insti-
tutionalizes these principles by making it
easy for drilling team members to perform
each of these functions as a part of their nor-
mal course of business.
Learning Organizations
Successful people learn all the time. Unfor-
tunately, organizations often are not very
adept at learning. The problem is that almost
all groups learn at a rate well below the ca-
pacity of their individual team members. In
Copyright 1994 Society of Petroleum Engineers
Walter Quay is unavailable.
fact, if the learning process is not built into
an organization's design, then it will not
necessarily learn from its mistakes or from
its successes.
The trick is to ensure that a drilling orga-
nization "learns" from its mistakes and cap-
italizes on its successes all the time. An an-
swer lies in the application of system
dynamics to the management process. To ex-
plain system dynamics management thor-
oughly we would need more space than we
have here. Fig. 1 shows a general diagram of
how to use system dynamics to build a learn-
ing organization. In short, a learning orga-
nization models its best guess of how to meet
its goal, uses this model to formulate a plan
of action based on the most likely scenario,
and specifically predicts the results of this
plan. After a plan has been put into action, its
effectiveness is analyzed by comparing the
predicted results with actual results. The rec-
onciliation of any differences between actual
and predicted results is then used to improve
the organization's model. Learning occurs
only when the model is improved.
If any of these steps are missing, the orga-
nization will not learn. The people in the or-
ganization may learn, but the organization
as a whole will not learn. An organization is
not learning if the information is lost when
people leave. When one person learns, the
organization does not necessarily learn. One
way to ensure that the organization learns is
to institutionalize the principles of a learn-
ing organization, with a working organiza-
tional model acting as the accessible reser-
voir of experience.
DMS Implementation of a Learning
Organization
The DMS is a tool that makes it easier for
learning to be an inherent part of a drilling
organization. Fig. 2 shows how the DMS
implements the principles of a learning or-
ganization. It defines each task during the
planning, implementation, and analysis of a
drilling plan. Each task has a specific goal,
defined assumptions, accountabilities, in-
put, and output. This way, the nonnal drill-
ing-improvement functions of planning,
implementing, and analysis will be based on
the best processes available, checked for va-
lidity, and directed toward project goals.
Further, a "model-improvement loop" en-
sures that the way drilling projects are
planned, implemented, and analyzed also
improves with time.
The system develops a way to build a
good, technical road map that can be used on
location to improve operations. The road
map includes policies, procedures, techni-
cal "how to's," technical backup, and the ex-
pectations of all team members in every
phase of planning/implementing/analysis.
To institutionalize learning, the DMS
must have "self-building" and "self-correct-
ing" features that allow it to grow easily
with time. In practice, this means that,
instead of revisions of a particular drilling
manual every few years, the DMS will cap-
ture new and better practices as they are de-
veloped and workto ensure that this knowl-
edge is readily available to all drilling
personnel.
Further, the DMS describes how a dril-
ling team should do its business and ensures
that the entire drilling organization knows
its role and focuses on continuously im-
proving drilling operations. The DMS orga-
nizes drilling plans and postanalyses at all
levels. This is not to say that the DMS pre-
scribes the best way to plan, implement, and
analyze a drilling operation. Rather, it is a
mechanism for easily capturing experience
and ensuring that experience is used to im-
prove plans and implementation consistently-
now and in the future. The DMS institution-
alizes organizational learning.
DMS Functional Specifications
Fig. 3 shows that the DMS is built to have
seven specific features.
1. Have process flow map representa-
tions of the work processes for planning,
implementing, and analyzing drilling op-
erations.

502 June 1994•JPT

 Disturbances

Actions Results
The
Process

Measurements

Downloaded from http://onepetro.org/JPT/article-pdf/46/06/502/2223807/spe-28652-jpt.pdf/1 by guest on 13 February 2024

Fig. 1-A learning organization.

2. Allow these process flow maps to be
"nested" within one another.
3. Ensure that each task in the process
map includes a description of the relevant
what, how, who, when, how long, compe-
tencies, input, and output.
4. Link tasks with the appropriate soft-
ware used to produce or document the task's
inputs and outputs.
5. Link each task with appropriate re-
source material, such as policy manuals.
6. Provide a template for each task's input
or output.
7. Provide a mechanism for improving
the process map.
These features are implemented by using
the object-linking and embedding features
of commercially available software. The
system uses project management software
for flow charts or task lists that allow the
user to navigate around the system graphi-
cally while linked to technical software,
manuals, procedures, forms, and instruc-
tions. Links with word-processing, graphic,
spread sheet, help, technical, and database
packages mean that the input and output of
each task in the planning, implementing,
and analysis processes are linked with the
organization's "model" of the best way to
perform such tasks. Drilling personnel can
use the DMS as a road map of how to gener-
ate well plans or procedures, to implement
(or perform fast-cycle replanning), and to
postanalyze operations. Certain features of
the software also make it easy to capture
suggestions on how to improve the structure
oftheDMS.
Conclusions
The DMS is a PC-based software system de-
signed to implement the principles of learn-
ing organizations. It performs the following
tasks.
1. It provides a comprehensive descrip-
tion of the process used to plan, implement,
and analyze drilling operations.
2. The DMS provides an auditable trail to
meet 1995 U.K. governmental require-
ments.
3. It helps create drilling plans that meet
government requirements, company poli-
cies, and project goals and that reflect the
best experience and practices possible.
4. DMS helps make implementation pro-
ceed in the most efficient manner possible,
directed at achieving project goals, and pre-
vents items from "falling through the
cracks."
5. DMS helps make proper analysis occur
so that costly experience is captured andre-
tained.
The DMS is a drilling plan and posteval-
uation system. Drilling personnel would use
the DMS to ensure that all plans consider ev-
ery appropriate factor and that all postanal-
yses capture everything that was learned. In
practice, the DMS should minimize depen-
dence on individual expertise and experi-
ence by building a system by which the en-
tire organization learns and continually
improves not only the results but also the
process of planning, implementing, and
analyzing.
This paper is SPE 28652. Additional detail appears in the ex-
tended paper, SPE 28924, available from the SPE Book Or-
der Dept.

5. A pproprinlc
l. Work l'ruco.'" Flow M:lps
Resource l>m::umeniR
(llclp, l'ulicic>, ... )

• \Yh•I•Will/d...JI.apiJC"
• \Yho·wiiiW/didduia
2. I mhcddcd Mnps

tJ=rj__=:c=~=~=: :,~=:~: :.;-'~ ~'-"'~

• \Yittn•willil/didlchaflpcn

3. Links lo
___. A pproprlnlc
Tusks
L....------1 6. Me<hunlsnl lo Coplurc
Jlruccsslmprnvrnlellt
Su"~llons

~-...0

Orgnnlzalionnl Gools

Fig. 2-DMS implementation. Fig. 3-DMS functional specifications.

JPT • June 1994 503