IPA to Share Research and Best Practices With Member Companies During UIBC 2021
Independent Project Analysis (IPA) will hold its annual meeting of the Upstream Industry Benchmarking Consortium (UIBC) starting in November 2021. Presentations and working sessions for upstream sector owner companies that benchmark their capital projects with IPA will again share industry research and Best Practices through virtual sessions over several weeks. UIBC 2021 kicks off on Tuesday, November 9, 2021, with the welcome address by Carlos Tapia, Director of Energy Practice, followed by the keynote address given by IPA President and CEO, Edward Merrow. IPA will deliver each live webinar twice to accommodate different time zones. The conference will conclude in mid-December 2021, with a break from November 20 to 30, 2021, for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
Below we highlight the new industry research to be delivered for the first time during the UIBC 2021 webinar series as well as the sessions on focused topics:
INDUSTRY SURVEY: HOW THE CAPITAL PROJECTS INDUSTRY IS REACTING TO COVID-19
Throughout the pandemic, IPA has conducted surveys on the effects of COVID-19 on project costs and schedules. The objective of the surveys is to use the experience of estimators and planners to understand mitigation strategies for mid- to long-term disruptions and feed this knowledge into our clients’ projects and project systems. This webinar session outlines what we have found so far as the pandemic has progressed.
FOCUSED TOPICS: IMPROVING GHG PERFORMANCE OF PROJECTS—WHY, HOW, AND WHAT
Improving the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions performance of projects has become a significant concern for E&P owners/operators globally. This presentation will highlight the progress Industry has made in its journey to a low-carbon future, the tools and frameworks it is deploying to measure and improve its GHG performance, and how these changes are starting to manifest in less GHG-intensive hydrocarbon production.
FOCUSED TOPICS: THE E&P ORGANIZATION OF THE FUTURE
As oil and gas companies expand into new energies, they face critical decisions about how to integrate new energy ventures into their existing project organizations. These integration decisions have major, lasting implications on organizational efficiencies and long-term success. Companies may be under the impression that the best (or only) option is to keep new energies separate from their more mature businesses. This session will explore the strengths and weaknesses of various integration approaches and discuss what others are doing across the industry to help ensure today’s organizational choices foster robust businesses in the long run.
RESEARCH STUDY: AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN E&P
This study looks at how Agile, a methodology that has been around for 20 years, is now being used in capital projects. Although initially intended for the software industry, Agile has helped make positive change across industries. The study looks at the opportunities and limitations Agile provides when applied to projects that require large amounts of precise engineering and relative inflexibility in execution with a multitude of long-lead items.
RESEARCH STUDY: TOPSIDE MODIFICATIONS
Offshore revamp projects, or topside modifications, have historically been overlooked in the offshore E&P business—mostly because of their low capital cost relative to the installation of new facilities. As the offshore E&P business shifts its focus from building new topsides to maintaining or repurposing existing assets, the control and efficiency of these projects will come more into focus. The purpose of this study is to characterize the practices associated most strongly with better project predictability given a particular project context.
RESEARCH STUDY: PRODUCTION RAMP-UP PERFORMANCE
This study illustrates Industry’s performance for production ramp-up and the reasons behind it. Typical industry ramp-up curves are provided to serve as baselines. The study then illustrates the common failure modes behind slower production ramp-up. Finally, this study investigates what practices can be used to help improve ramp-up performance.
RESEARCH STUDY: BUSINESS FRONT-END LOADING (FEL) OF E&P PROJECTS
More than any other industrial sector, E&P projects encounter numerous obstacles and challenges as they move from discovery and early appraisal into scope development. Many E&P projects enter Select (scope development) with potentially crippling problems. Effort is then spent to develop these projects only to find that commercial, regulatory, carbon intensity, or political problems make further progress impossible (at least in the short term). This study is premised on the idea that having stronger and clearer deliverable requirements prior to entering Select would lead to a stronger portfolio of projects overall. The study focuses on what critical elements past projects that stalled in Select were missing when they passed the gate to enter that phase.
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