Geological exploration on the continental shelf of the Russian Federation is one of the priority trends aimed at replacing hydrocarbon reserves. The exploration activities demand significant capital investments and are associated with high technological, financial, reputational, and environmental risks.
Efficiency of operations of companies involved into geological exploration for hydrocarbons is very much determined by post work analysis of problems and difficulties encountered during the work implementation, understanding of root causes of their occurrence and coming up with proposals to minimize their recurrence in the future. This comprehensive knowledge acquired during the project execution is called the project-specific lessons learned. However, some exploration companies frequently omit keeping records of the lessons learned or the records are kept improperly. RN-Shelf-Arctic LLC and RN-Exploration LLC propose and implement the lessons learned management system related to geological exploration within the license blocks of the continental shelf, helping to solidify the knowledge acquired during the project execution at minimum costs, to analyze a response to the project situations both in the past and in the future.
All the specialists involved in the project take part in a process of the lessons learned. A responsibility matrix is used to specify the responsibility of key participants of the lessons learned process. A Register of learned lessons is prepared based on the work results and a Schedule of lessons learned preparation is used in the annual planning process. Thus, all the activities are carried out taking into account the lessons learned.
Based on results of 2016 activities, the Companies compiled a register, which included more than 200 learned lessons. The experience gained in the previous years of operations had been successfully used in 2017. This way, an internal evaluation rating of the fieldwork supervisors has been prepared, unified terms of reference have been compiled, proposals on streamlining of a procurement process for geophysical activities have been made, requirements towards the ships and equipment have been updated, some corporate procedures have been modified.
References
1. PMBOK Guide, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, USA: Project Management Institute, 2013.
2. Aleshin A.V., An'shin V.M., Bagrationi K.A. et al., Upravlenie proektami. Fundamental'nyy kurs (Project management. Fundamental course): edited by An'shin V.M., Il'ina O.N., Moscow: Publ. of HSE, 2013, 500 p.
3. Bashuev S.D. et al., Kreativnye tekhnologii upravleniya proektami i programmami (Creative technologies of project and programm management), Kiev: Sammit-Kniga Publ., 2010, 768 p.
