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W I R E L I N E
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EXCEPTIONAL SPORTS
PERFORMANCE INSPIRES
NEXEN EXCELLENCE
In recent years, Nexen’s management has sought to evolve
the company’s performance to become a truly
‘Best-In-Class’ operator. To inject creativity and eradicate
entrenched ways of working, Nexen’s leadership team
examined the outstanding sporting excellence of Olympic
athletes for inspiration in motivating their entire workforce.
They understood that workforce collaboration and
two-way communication was crucial to achieving cultural
transformation through new experiences, beliefs and
behaviours that deliver top business results and a common
language that drives accountability both individually and
collectively across the business.
To help achieve ‘efficiency of execution’ in every aspect
of activity, both on and offshore, Nexen invited Olympic
rower, Cath Bishop, to its Leaders’ Forum in 2014. Cath
outlined the philosophy behind the ‘marginal gains’ theory
that came to public attention when Sir Dave Brailsford
became the British Olympic Cycling Team’s performance
director. The doctrine is about targeting opportunities to
make small incremental efficiency improvements, which,
when added together, deliver significant improvements.
The resulting new practices at Nexen have improved
productivity offshore from five and a half hours to over
eight hours per shift, while the company’s new mindset and
behaviours are embodied in a business model known as
‘The Steps to Accountability’, which includes a commitment
to effective planning and each person holding themselves
and others to account for achieving superior results. This is
now making a difference to the company’s success as one of
the largest oil producers on the UK Continental Shelf, along
with a suite of tools to equip employees in implementing
the culture change and to naturally engrain the new ways of
working into everyday tasks.
Ray Riddoch, Nexen’s managing director UK and SVP
Europe, explains: “Efficiency of execution is the core
value, along with excellence in health, safety and
environmental performance. We encourage this
approach throughout every department in the organisation,
no matter how big or small the task. Our highly effective
mechanism ensures all good ideas are gathered, evaluated
and shared across the company. It is important to ensure
collaboration at all levels and acknowledge how someone’s
input has contributed to our aim of reducing the lifting cost
per barrel.”
Nexen has applied the approach to improve the efficiency
of the safety briefings it provides to the 1,000 or so new
workers or ‘green hats’ who descend on Nexen’s assets each
year. What this means in practice, is that if ten scaffolders
are required for a job, contractors provide five seasoned and
experienced offshore workers together with five staff new
to the platform, creating a ‘buddy system’ that ensures rapid
and effective dissemination of key safety procedures and
allows Nexen to increase productive time per green hat.
Another example of the cultural shift and commitment
to more effective planning is the approach now being
taken to well intervention operations.
Nexen deploys a tool in the planning
stage to measure the condition
of internal components within
oil wells which, together with
predictive technology, allows
highly accurate virtual well
interventions to be modelled.
The process has transformed
the ability of engineers to
visualise the wellbore, select
the appropriate tools
before the
intervention
takes place and,
as a result,
reduce the time
required to
return the well
to production.
Efficiency spotlights
An Efficiency Spotlights section on Oil & Gas UK’s website showcases case studies from
companies that are addressing costs by working smarter.
Wireline
presents just some of
the good ideas being put into practice and delivering value.
CASE STUDIES
EFFICIENCY