Enhancing Knowledge Exchange to Improve Performance in a Drilling & Well Portfolio on the Norwegian Continental Shelf

Abstract This paper aims at presenting the tool and the set of methods developed to enhance knowledge exchange across dispersed drilling and well teams working for various projects on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). This solution has a low threshold for entries, and it fills the gap between isolated project knowledge and high-level corporate project management solutions. The goal is to enhance knowledge sharing to improve performance. Four principles are followed: (1) A digital ecosystem that facilitates the knowledge exchange process is created. It includes a web application compatible with laptop and mobile usage, storage space, access and notification management, dashboards. (2) Metadata associated with entries are compatible with metadata used in other business systems. (3) Knowledge is classified along three different levels: experience, lesson learned, best practice. This enhances systematization and aggregation of insights. (4) A process supports the capture and the treatment of entries. It ensures content is reviewed, a digest is presented regularly, and value is extracted. The platform was run with the sole involvement of project engineers for one year. This first step was aimed at populating the database, developing workflows and adjusting hardware. During the second year, the field population was involved. Work processes were formalized. As population of the database continues, a second phase has now started where value creation is the focus with two main goals: (1) Identify areas that require deeper engineering studies. (2) Facilitate an exchange of local best practices. The next step is to leverage on machine learning and natural language processing technologies. Specifically, the team is now working on how to improve the identifications of connections between contents: single entries that may appear insignificant, once connected to others, show the development of weak signals that need to be addressed. The solution proves to be working, it is stable and fully scalable. After two years, the objectives are deemed successfully achieved: experience from the ground is gathered across projects; it is treated via formal processes before being made available to all projects of the company on the NCS. Finally, while performance increased, other units expressed interest in deploying the solution. In response, the tool was recently launched at a global level to simplify and enrich knowledge sharing between integrated projects. With this paper, we show an example of a cross-project knowledge sharing solution which builds on readily available digital tools. Its low-threshold mindset and the workflows developed enable detection and treatment of weak signals. The solution is a knowledge exchange tool tailored to the field which compliments higher-level corporate solutions with the goal of contributing to a relentless increase in performance.