Abstract In today's mature North Sea environment every effort must be made to increase efficiencies in order to increase the return on investment of both operators and contractors.
A new contracting strategy has been introduced to improve drilling efficiency, while ensuring all well quality measures are met. As a result of this strategy, the BP Bruce field is one of BP's most effective, fully integrated North Sea drilling operations.
This paper describes the steps taken to successfully implement this strategy and the benefits that have resulted.
Introduction Over the past few years integrated contracts in various forms have been the subject of a great deal of discussion. During the early 1990's the Bruce platform was constructed and commissioned, representing one of the last major projects of its size to be undertaken in the North Sea. This project provided an ideal opportunity to develop and implement a contract strategy that would take into account past success and new ideas.
This paper describes the overall contract strategy development and the process by which mistrusts suspicion, personal and corporate egos endemic to traditional contracting relationships were overcome to create a Team (comprising Operator, Drilling Contractor and Service Contractors), capable of working out any issue no matter how sensitive, without reverting to traditional attitudes at the first disagreement.
The Bruce strategy was developed to link well planning and design with the execution process, thus closing the loop to deliver continuous performance improvement. This placed increased emphasis on the contractors' involvement in the overall operation and concentration on delivering a quality end product instead of services alone. The strategy is not about the selection of lead/prime contractors or the development of a "hands off" turnkey-style operation but rather one of involvement, equality and teamwork.
The key to the success of this strategy is the development of strong intercontractor/operator relationships, which allowed barriers to be crossed with little acrimony, while at the same time accelerating the team-building process. We describe one major issue the Team confronted, the development of a quality-based incentive scheme that entailed several opportunities for potential conflict.
The relationship-building process set the foundation for the project's long-term success. Implementation of the Bruce strategy is already delivering substantial benefits to all parties.
The model adopted by BP in the formulation of its drilling strategy changes the role of the operator from one of performing tasks to one of managing those tasks. This allows the operator's own staff time to perform "value-adding activities and true management of the business," not managing the operation.
The benefits to BP are in releasing staff to fulfill the following essential functions:
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