Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

(10 min read)

Please forgive me for straying momentarily from the core engineering discussions on this forum. I recently had a very positive experience at BP which gave me cause for introspection about my own and indeed the army’s approach to promoting positive mental health in the workplace.

Every Thursday afternoon, my department (Projects and Modifications) has an informal, no agenda “virtual coffee” meeting. The conversation usually meanders from COVID, to the dreadful Scottish weather, to Netflix, to weekend plans etc. Perhaps mindful of the fact that some personalities are naturally more dominant in driving the conversation, the P&M manager took the time to ask every single person on the call – “how are you doing XXX? How are things at work? How are things at home? etc”

The frankness of the responses were very surprising to me. Rather than just giving stock “yes all good here boss” responses, people were very open, with some sharing that they were feeling anxious and stressed right now, and explaining the contributing factors to their feelings. These statements were met with warmth and heartfelt support from the rest of the team, with several people going out of their way to offer help in any way that they could.

It’s immediately apparent to me that BP has developed a very inclusive, supportive culture, to the extent that staff feel empowered to be fully open and honest, displaying vulnerability without fear of judgment. Mental health struggles are wholly destigmatised, with an acceptance that periodic struggles are a natural part of modern living, and are no less common than physical ailments. Great emphasis is placed on personal well-being as a significant contributing factor to business success.

After this experience, I took some time to reflect on where we are in the army, and whether we could learn anything culturally from our civilian counterparts. In the broadest sense- I feel that the following comparison sums up the difference between BP and the Army.

At BP, your personal struggles, once shared, become the team’s struggle. The success of the team depends on the collective finding a solution. In the Army, it is generally expected that you deal with your own problems, in order to be able to contribute to the success of the team.

This comparison is, of course, tinged with personal experience and as such is likely to be subject to all associated biases. I’ve expanded on some of my reflections below; I’m very keen to generate some discussion about this and by all means feel free to flat-out disagree with me if you think I’m way off the mark.

• The army, culturally, has arguably not yet made the leap of de-coupling an individual’s periodic/episodic mental struggles from their general strength of character. This is a contentious point, but I would argue that there exists a heightened reluctance to speak up if you’re struggling, for fear of being adjudged to be a weak person/leader compared to your peers, in the eyes of the chain of command. I think this is also exacerbated by the disproportionate emphasis (particularly in the officer corps) placed on promotion, meaning individuals may sacrifice their own mental health for fear of losing a competitive edge.

• The army can sometimes overstate the “warfighting organisation” mentality, to the detriment of team cohesion. What I mean by this is that we ought not to list mental fortitude as an expectation of a soldier on operations, without first creating a culture in barracks that promotes and develops it as a key soldiering skill. I’m not for a second suggesting that we shy away from the harsh realities of what the army exists for, and what it can ultimately be expected to do on operations, but creating circumstances whereby a soldier’s mental health is nutured and developed to the same extent that physical health currently is would arguably contribute to greater operational effectiveness. That starts with enabling an environment where everybody feels empowered to be their raw, honest selves. The hierarchical system that we adhere to doesn’t necessarily marry neatly with this, but it shouldn’t be an insurmountable obstacle.

This blog wasn’t intended to be a slanderous indictment of the army as an employer that doesn’t care about the mental well-being of its people. Of course we all care. Indeed, mental health awareness (most notably with PTSD diagnosis and treatment) has made great strides forwards even in my short time in service. But we can do more. Having seen at BP how effective teams can be in such an inclusive, accepting environment, I feel obligated to personally improve my approach once I get back in my green pyjamas. As shown in the example of our virtual coffee meeting, the culture starts with strong leadership to set the tone. I would urge every one of us, as officers, to do more, listen more and help more, for the good of our people and the army.

If I may be so bold as to interrupt Claire’s blog very briefly, I’m having a couple of issues with BP’s principal contractor and I’m keen to gauge the opinion of those out there in the PET ether.

Bit of background:

For the overwhelming majority of projects, repairs and construction activities, BP does not have a competitive tendering process. Instead, all work is given to the chosen Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor, Wood Group. Wood have a 5 year contract to be the EPC contractor of choice, an agreement which is due to expire in 2021.

The contract runs on a cost reimbursement basis. This is common practice throughout the oil and gas industry.

The issue:

My question is this:

If a contractor comes up with a project execution plan (PEP) that is not fit for purpose due to their misinterpretation of an SoR, should BP be liable to pay for the costs incurred when reworking the plan?

One of the projects I’m working on at the moment is a modification to the cooling medium system on board Glen Lyon FPSO. To alleviate cavitation in a bypass valve caused by excessive pressure in the system, it is proposed that the system operation be modified so that one out of three (1oo3) pumps is operational at any one time, rather than 2.

This proposal was successfully modelled by Genesis, the BP front end engineering and design (FEED) contractor. Within the SoR, there was a requirement for Wood Group to validate this modelling by way of a live off-shore trial. The main requirements for the trial broadly consisted of:

1. Ensuring there was enough cooling duty to meet system requirements, when running 1oo3 pumps.

2. Ensuring flow induced vibration (FIV) was at tolerable levels within the suction and discharge pipework of the operational pump.

3. Adjusting the temperature set-points for the system working fluid.

When I say “misinterpretation” above I was being generous. In Wood Group’s PEP, they had not made provision for adjusting the temperature set points within their trial procedure. This was stated clearly within the SoR and, if that in itself wasn’t exacerbating enough, Wood Group representatives were also present (and paid handsomely for the privilege) throughout the FEED stages of the project and were fully aware of the option generation and selection!

Upon reading their PEP, I immediately flagged this omission and asked them to come back to me with an amendment to their trial procedure, to include the set point adjustment.

Their cost estimate was adjusted accordingly. Whilst the inclusion of the set point adjustment within the trial procedure is an acceptable reason for an up-arrow in costs, I was surprised to find that they had also charged “management fees” for the reworking of the PEP and the accompanying estimate.

To my mind, it feels wrong that they are seeking reimbursement for rectifying what was unquestionably a mistake of their own making.

In lieu of having access to the full terms and conditions of the contract, I sought counsel from my line manager who advised that whilst their charges are not in the spirit of good partnership, I should authorise the “management fees” in the interests of not causing unnecessary delays to the project. BP’s design philosophy, generally speaking, is almost always driven by time constraints and schedule deconfliction, my cynical view is that Wood Group are very wise to this fact and will look for opportunities to exploit it to benefit their bottom line. With no competition when it comes to the awarding of work for BP, it could be argued that Wood Group fully has BP over a barrel.

It seems to me that BP is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It would be wholly impractical to tender for all projects and modifications in the North Sea (my asset alone has over 30 ongoing projects) but by signing up to a fixed term EPC contract with a single supplier, they are opening themselves up to exploitation, especially when operating under cost reimbursement terms. Whilst in this instance the “management fees” amounted to a little over £1000, these incidents are not one offs; extrapolated across the entire North Sea portfolio, the overall cost to the business is likely to be significant.

Interested to hear your thoughts, and whether you’ve had any similar experience.

Thought I’d share with you all my slightly chaotic first experience of being responsible for a contractor deploying off-shore!

Background

The Glen Lyon Floating Production Storage and Offload (FPSO) vessel (pictured) requires an upgrade to their existing Helideck Management System (HMS) to bring it into line with upcoming legistlation changes from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), no later than 31 Mar 21.

I am the project engineer responsible for delivering the upgrade.

Fugro Engineering (HMS vendor) had taken part in trials with the CAA earlier this year and as such, their HMS was the first to be certified as compliant with the new legislation. It was decided that although they will not be the chosen vendor for the installation, we should employ Fugro to conduct a survey of the existing HMS and ask them to come back to us with a detailed gap analysis and proposed modifications. This gap analysis would then form the basis of the client SoR that I am writing later this year.

I liaised with Fugro and arranged that 1 x service engineer would deploy off-shore for a period of 7 days to conduct the survey. They requested that I provide them with an array of documentation (block diagrams, commissioning reports, general arrangement drawings) prior to deployment. After checking that releasing documentation to Fugro was ethically sound from a commercial perspective (they are a competitor to our existing HMS vendor), I obliged. I would later come to regret not asking them whether that was all they required.

Finally I warned off the off-shore team that there would be a contractor deploying to conduct a survey of the HMS.

What Happened

On the first morning of the survey, after conducting a visual inspection of the system and looking through physical documentation, the Fugro engineer then inserted his own USB hard drive (big no no!) into the BP system to, in his own words, “download recent service visit data for data integrity verification”.

This hard drive then “accidentally” fell off the desk and swung into an open cabinet beneath and hit what I can only imagine was a big red button. This consequently managed to shut down the Integrated Marine Monitoring System (IMMS) and the Differential, Absolute and Relative Positioning Sensor (DARPS). In short, this meant that the whole HMS was effectively shut down, meaning that no helicopters could take off or land. The engineer was unsurprisingly stood down, pending a review of the incident.

Key Mistakes

Thankfully there were no serious consequences arising from the incident and the HMS was back up and running in short order and the engineer erased all of the data extracted from the system onto his hard drive. There were a few key mistakes leading up to the incident which could have easily been avoided:

1: Failure to confirm data requirements. As mentioned above, I had naively assumed that the documentation I had sent over prior to the survey was sufficient for their needs. I should have confirmed this and asked whether there were additional data requirements from the live system. This would have then enabled me to warn off the off-shore team, who could have ensured that the engineer was adequately supervised.

2: Inadequate Survey Scope of Work. The “normal” procedure for off-shore surveys is the production of an “survey scope of work”, which is typically produced by the off-shore sponsor. This job fell between the cracks because the survey was co-ordinated between the Aviation Technical Advisor and my department, both of whom are on-shore. The consequence of this was that when the engineer arrived, the off-shore team were not entirely sure what the purpose, scope and limits of his visit were, which ultimately resulted in the incident occurring. It was an assumption (that word again) of mine that the off-shore team were fully aware of the survey and would be on hand to ensure that it went smoothly.

3: Inadequate off-shore induction. The particulars of BP’s policy on IT security were not included within the induction briefing given to the engineer, specifically the use of unauthorised USB devices.

Key Takeaway

*Stakeholder Engagement is vital!* “Stakeholder engagement” is a phrase that I have glibly written numerous times of the course of phase 1 exams and projects. This experience has certainly brought to the fore that the lack of it can has calamitous consequences. As a project engineer and single point of accountability in BP, there is a lot of work that goes on around me and it is ultimately up to me to ensure that everybody is suitably informed, briefed and fully understands what is happening, when and by whom. This is doubly important in the oil and gas industry; I’m in the awkward position of being ultimately responsible for contractors off-shore, without the luxury of being physically present to ensure that it runs smoothly!

Making assumptions is a dangerous game and a mistake I will certainly not make again. To finish with the universally applicable advice of my first Troop Sgt – “Sir, it’s good to trust, but it’s much better to check”.

Greetings everybody from North East Scotland!

The relative utility of taking on a client-side role during phase 2 was a subject that I broached in my most recent AER. Following on from this, I’m keen to stimulate a discussion amongst my wider peer group, past and present, as well as academic and military staff, as to the merits (or otherwise) of taking on such a role when compared to the more “traditional” phase 2 experience of working for a principal contractor.

As a basis for discussion, I’ve included below what I believe to be some key pros and cons of working in such a role, based partly on my experiences to date at BP. My intention here is not to launch a scathing indictment of client-side roles, more to enable a forum for people to share their lived experiences.

Pros

Risk Management Exposure – As the client’s representative, it is highly likely that risk management and mitigation will feature very highly on your list of priorities, due to the accountability that you have to the end user. In BP speak, you are the ambassador for ensuring that the business priorities (read design philosophy) are adhered to and are empowered to hold the contractor accountable. This in turn gives you more license to “steer the ship” in the name of ensuring that business priorities are met and ultimately that the benefits are realised by the end user.

Refinement of Engineering Vision – On the client side, the production of a fit-for-purpose Statement of Requirement (SoR) is arguably the most critical responsibility. Even the slightest ambiguity over the course of a complex project could lead to significant divergence from the initial vision. Being on the client side offers the opportunity to practice the art form of being specific but not prescriptive in your needs. This in turn forces you to practice using engineering judgment to get to the core of the problem and articulate this in a simple, easy to understand way.

Comparatively Slower Day to Day – As the principal contractor is likely to be shouldering the majority of the day to day management of a project, this could enable the opportunity for a PET student to diversify his/her range of responsibilities, with a view to ticking off some of the more niche areas of the UK SPEC/ICE competency requirements. This could, for example, take the form of leading a design review (if, like me, your phase 2 and 3 is combined), taking on a sustainability initiative and chairing a business ethics working group.

Cons

Costing/Scheduling – In many cases, the exposure on the client side to costing and scheduling for one particular project is confined to setting the initial goal posts, followed by scrutinising and responding to any requests for change. This then limits a students learning potential by not having the opportunity to experience the complexities of day-to-day project management, the pressure of operating under financial headroom and the engineering challenge of using the resources and subcontractors at your disposal to complete a project before a deadline.

Construction Practicalities – Whilst refraining from using any ivory tower analogies, the argument that not having day to day site management experience is a disadvantage is a valid one. A client-side attachment limits exposure to the complexities of getting a project off the ground in the real world. This is particularly relevant when considering our future roles within 170 Gp; not having a depth off on-site experience could lead to the setting of unrealistic targets (scheduling, buildability) for MCFs or other contractors.

Implementation of Relevant Legislation – A client side attachment limits a student’s experience of actually implementing pertinent legislation – HSWA, CDM Regulations, IET Wiring Regulation etc, alongside secondary or locally produced standards (JSPs, BP ETPs etc). This blind spot in competence could limit a student’s pragmatism in the future, for example insisting on implementation of British Standards in construction activities on operations, despite the practical constraints of doing so or the irrevelance or certain guidelines to the situation at hand.

If you’ve made it this far, well done and thank you! I’m very interested to hear what other people’s experiences have been, on both sides of the fence. Feel free to let me know if you think I’m way off the mark!