IPA Institute

Exploration and Production Project Best Practices

The IPA Institute offers the Exploration and Production Project Best Practices course for oil and gas exploration and production projects. This course focuses specifically on the practices and work processes related to the success of capital investments in exploration and production (E&P), and incorporates subsurface and offshore issues. Exploration and Production Project Best Practices is designed to provide participants with Best Practices and learnings that have been shown to improve capital effectiveness. This program is registered with the Project Management Institute (PMI), allowing attendees to claim 22 Professional Development Units (PDUs) upon completion of the course.

This program integrates findings from IPA’s extensive quantitative research that links project management practices to project outcomes. This research is based on IPA’s database of exploration and production investments. E&P capital projects are treated as whole assets; this means that all three functions—Reservoir, Wells, and Facilities—must be considered in managing the delivery of a successful capital project. All aspects are covered in this program.

The course focuses on practices and work processes linked to improved performance of E&P capital investments. This course uses learnings from IPA’s extensive database of upstream projects. The course will identify effective strategies for the following:

Defining the project to best meet business needs
Sharing key elements of asset definition
Building an effective team
Implementing contracting strategy
Improving the business value
Implementing technology improvements
Understanding and managing risks
Setting and achieving competitive targets
Controlling a project as it progresses through execution
Selecting the appropriate contracting strategy
Planning and scheduling projects

As the leading research-based consulting firm focused on the development of tools and methods to improve capital effectiveness, IPA has identified the major factors that directly affect the relative performance of capital projects. Most excellent project systems—those that deliver excellent returns on capital spent—incorporate the fundamentals of these key leading indicators into their work processes for projects. The program will cover these factors.

Course Content and Organization

The Exploration & Production Capital Project Delivery Excellence course is a 3-day training program. The course uses a combination of lecture, facilitated discussion, and case studies. Research findings are communicated through lectures. Participants share their experiences and relate learnings to their own experience through facilitated discussions. Case studies allow participants to apply course learnings to real projects. The training course is divided into a set of modules, each covering a specific topic important in the capital project delivery process:

Module 1: Introduction

After starting with instructor and attendee introductions, an overview of Independent Project Analysis is provided, including background information on the company's methodology, databases, and performance metrics.

Module 2: Pathways to Success

Participants will learn how to identify the actions and their timing that lead to successful asset outcomes.

Module 3: Team Effectiveness

Helps recognize why early team formation is critical to capital project success and explains IPA's Team Development Index (TDI). Best Practices for team development are also presented and discussed.

Module 4: FEL Introduction and Wells & Reservoir FEL

This early planning work, or definition, is called Front-End Loading (FEL). FEL is the process by which a company develops detailed definition of a capital project to meet business objectives. This module will help participants better understand the process of FEL as well as detail the component's of IPA's Reservoir FEL Index and Wells FEL Index. Finally, this portion of the course will help identify the aspects of Best Practical project definition for each Reservoir FEL and Wells FEL component.

Module 5: Facilities Front-End Loading

The Facilities Front-End Loading module identifies the key deliverables for each of the three phases of FEL and discusses how achieving a Best Practical level for each component helps to reduce risk.

Module 6: Efficiency and Effectiveness

Helps identify the key FEL 2 practices that provide a foundation for FEL 3 efficiency.

Module 7: Contracting Strategies

The four dimensions of contracting are explained, along with the considerations of selecting the appropriate contracting strategy. Additionally, this module helps distinguish between cost-effective contracting strategies and those that aren't cost-effective.

Module 8: Value Improving Practices

Value Improving Practices (VIPs) are defined in detail before presenting the upstream VIPs that correlate with better outcomes. The key practices for implementing VIPs are also shared and discussed.

Module 9: Project Execution and Controls

This portion of the course helps identify some of the causes of problematic projects and helps recognize the drivers that lead to poor Hook-up and Commissioning cost and schedule performance. While discussing project controls, the instructors will share IPA's Project Controls Best Practices that correlate with improved project outcomes.

Module 10: Project Risk Analysis and Mitigation

Explains the purpose of project risk management and shares some risk analysis tools and techniques. Participants will be better able to recognize the key elements of risk analysis that are considered Best Practices and outline the methods for the owner to assume risk, thus minimizing contractor risk premiums.

Wrap-Up

The IPA Institute instructors will summarize the learning outcomes of each module and will review the pathways to asset outcomes. For those interested in continuing education, a training path forward is also discussed.

Benefits

The training course’s primary focus is to present in detail the key learnings and practices for project planning and execution that lead to superior outcomes. The training course will provide the following:

Key elements of team effectiveness
Project drivers that lead to successful completion of each phase of Front-End Loading (FEL), the critical project definition phase, including the key deliverables that are required at the end of each phase and the objectives of each phase
Deliverables of FEL, including a detailed discussion of key elements of overall asset definition such as reservoir definition, drilling definition, fluids definition, site definition, engineering definition, and project execution planning
The important elements of contracting strategy and the implications of contracting choice on project results
Additional engineering Best Practices (Value Improving Practices [VIPs]) that Industry uses to leverage extra value from a solid project definition package
Tools and techniques for identifying and mitigating risks
Practices that are important in controlling projects as they proceed through execution
Research findings that can be used by owners to improve construction safety

Target Audience

The Exploration & Production Capital Project Delivery Excellence course provides a forum to discuss the factors that lead to competitive project outcomes. The program is intended for those currently in project manager positions and those who will move into the project manager role in the near future. In this course, we present learnings derived from the analysis of thousands of actual projects.

The exploration & production industry database encompasses a wide range of project sizes. However, the focus for the E&P Capital Project Delivery Excellence course is on the core of that business—projects greater than US$50 million but less than US$1,000 million—which is about 70 percent of all projects. Those smaller than US$50 million are addressed in a separate Small & Plant-Based Project Delivery Excellence Institute offering, and those larger than US$1,000 million are considered in the Successful Megaprojects seminar.

Claiming PDUs

Exploration and Production Project Best Practices is officially registered with PMI, which allows attendees to easily claim 22 PDUs upon completion of the course. Simply visit the PMI Continuing Certification Requirements site and submit the PDU Activity Reporting Form (Provider Number: 2767 / Activity Number: XXXCMD). For those claiming PDUs through other education organizations, please note that the duration of this course is 22 hours.

Exploration and Production Project Best Practices

Schedule

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Private program	Tuesday, September 21 to Wednesday, September 22 2010	Location: USA (Houston, TX)
Private program	Tuesday, October 12 to Wednesday, October 13 2010	Location: USA (Houston, TX)
	Tuesday, November 23 to Thursday, November 25 2010	Location: Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)
	Tuesday, November 30 to Thursday, December 2 2010	Location: USA (Anchorage, Alaska)