One very practical way of acquiring workplace skills would be a project-based, on-the-job training programme for sub-surface G&G skills.  Feedback from trainees attending conventional 5 day classroom-based courses typically include the following comments:

• “The 5 day course was too short” but “we are too busy to be away from the office for more than 5 days!”.
• “There was not enough time to practice what you have taught us”.
• “We would like you to teach us using our own data”.

The solution could be to undertake training within the context of an in-house technical project, running over several months, pursuing your own business aims and objectives, using your own data, in your own offices.

The outcome would hopefully then be a useful technical outcome for your business as well as demonstrably increased technical competence of your staff.

Project Manager and Training Coordinator – Dr. Greg Samways

Your project-based on-the-job training programme could be coordinated and facilitated by Dr. Greg Samways who is an experienced technical project manager and trainer, with project experience in a great many areas of the world, gained over more than 25 years in the industry, in a range of basin and reservoir settings, at exploration and production scale, in clastics and carbonates.

Greg has been teaching industry G&G courses for the past ten years and is well-placed to facilitate and advise on wide-ranging, multidisciplinary projects at all scales.  Courses taught by Greg could include: Project Management, Basin Analysis, Play Fairway Analysis, Prospect Evaluation and Risking, Sedimentology, Seismic Interpretation, Sequence Stratigraphy, Clastic and Carbonate Reservoir Geology, Reservoir Quality Analysis, Reservoir Modelling, Wireline Log Interpretation for Geologists, Formation Evaluation, and Field Development Planning.

Training Programme Design and Delivery

The technical project training programme would begin with a project management workshop, during which the project team would learn the basics of project management by defining the project, project management systems and schedule for technical work.  The project could be scheduled over several months, with each phase of the technical schedule beginning with an in-house workshop to define the tasks, teach the required analytical methods and ensure that the project staff are clear on their workplan for the next work phase.  Progress would be monitored remotely by the project manager / trainer using a variety of monitoring systems (see the possibilities below).  Subsequent in-house technical workshops would review the results of the previous work package and induct the trainees for the next technical task.

Project Management and Project Definition

The most important elements to be established in this phase would be the Project Definition and the Project Management Systems, which are outlined below.

Project Definition

This would include determination of the following:

• Background to The Study: What do we know, what don’t we know.  This section identifies the technical needs for the project.
• Aims and Objectives: Establish the overall strategic goals and the specific objectives that must be achieved by the project.
• Database: Establish what data we have available or must be generated during the study.
• Methods: What methods are we going to employ in the study, based on the objectives and the constraints of the data.
• Deliverables: Exactly what deliverables will we generate to address the objectives.
• Staffing: Assignment of tasks and responsibilities within the project.
• Schedule: Determine the timescale for the training project.

Project Management Systems

There are several possibilities to address how the project progress will be monitored, reported and quality controlled, which could include the following:

• Collaborative Workspaces: Cloud technology could be used to create a collaborative workspace so that trainees and trainers can work closely together through the project, despite their geographic separation (e.g. MS Sharepoint or Google Docs).
• Networked Progress Meeting Database: Weekly progress meetings would be held with the trainer to discuss the latest project developments and focus the way forward during each stage of the project (e.g. conference calls, forum discussions).  This could be accessible to senior managers, who might also want to monitor project progress.
• Video Diaries: In addition to the collaborative reporting and progress monitoring database, trainees would be encouraged to report their progress with short video diaries explaining their work and the findings, using a free resource such as JING for workstation desktop recording (https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html).  This would be a great test of individual trainee understanding of their work.

Typical Technical Training Programme

Depending on the aims and objectives identified during the Project Definition stage, a training project programme would be created which could include (but not be limited to) the tasks listed below.

Core Facies Analysis

A chance to discover the value of your cores.

• Core and thin-section description.
• Determination of sedimentary facies and facies associations.
• Determination of geological controls on reservoir quality.
• Porosity and permeability modelling.
• Depositional modelling.

Formation Evaluation

Wireline log analysis and petrophysics for geologists, geophysicists, reservoir engineers and petrophysicists, with emphasis on integration.

• Well log facies analysis.
• Lithology, porosity and saturation determinations from logs.
• Calibration to core and special core analysis.
• Well log correlation using sequence stratigraphic principles.
• Rock typing, saturation height curves, fluid zone definition.

Seismic Analysis

A chance for everybody to gain some valuable seismic interpretation experience, using a platform such as OpendTect, if seismic interpretation licences are limited in-house (http://www.opendtect.org/).

• Structural and stratigraphic mapping.
• Seismic sequence stratigraphy.

Play Fairway and Prospect Evaluation

Integration of all the above for exploration-scale studies.

• Regional structural and stratigraphic mapping.
• Petroleum System Evaluation and creation of petroleum system events charts.
• Play definition and Play Fairway mapping and regional risking.
• Prospect identification, volumetric estimates and risking.

Reservoir Modelling

Integration of all the above for reservoir characterisation to get the most out of your in-house static reservoir modelling solution.

• Creating the structural and stratigraphic models
• Grid generation
• Stochastic and object modelling

Quality Assurance and Return on Training Investment (ROTI)

The quality of the work would be assessed throughout the training programme as part of the quality assurance process.  The results of the work could also be subject to peer review presentations and feedback during and upon completion of the work.  The leveling-up of staff competences could be managed using the the GeoLumina competence management App:  GeoSkills.