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Brian McRitchie

Refining my specific work problem and change statement

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Edited by Brian George McRitchie, Wednesday, 24 Nov 2021, 20:25


3.5 Defining your work problem and developing it into a clear statement  

As the oil and gas industry go through an energy transition away from the worlds reliability on fossil fuels, it does so by looking at technology and innovation and investing in this to ensure future renewable energy takes over from oil and gas. My organisation have therefore strategised an ambitious growth campaign over the next 5 years to ensure renewables and industrial markets are our main revenue streams. However, delivering complex engineering to these new market sectors is being carried out using outdated [oil and gas] processes which does not take into account upfront R&D resulting in late delivery and budget overruns. 

What problems are you trying to find out?  

How can improvements be made to the current outdated processes to allow efficient delivery in these new market segments.

Who are the target audience that you are interested in and report to?

The project will focus on three engineering departments, the business development department where the findings shall be shared with senior management within these departments.  These findings will be used to generate a new, more efficient process in delivering engineering solutions. 

Where does your project take place?

Both virtually and at my organisations premises in Aberdeen. 

When are you starting and for how long?

6th December 2021 until February 2022

Why is it valuable to study this problem or change?

As a result of poor oil prices (until only recently), the pandemic, a skills shortage as a result of redundancies and some leaving during the Furlough scheme, delivering complex engineering solutions to our clients (and new market segment clients) has been difficult with delays, inefficiencies and budgets over runs as staff struggle to deal with this influx. This is compounded by the processes for delivering R&D and engineering solutions either none existent or out dated. Making a change to the delivery process to add efficiency would better moral, stress, our reputation and client satisfaction.  

Rewritten statement  

As the oil and gas industry go through an energy transition, away from the worlds reliability on fossil fuels, it does so by looking at technology and innovation and investing in this to ensure future renewable energy takes over from oil and gas. However not all organisations (including my own) have changed their structures, processes or engineering strategies to suit the new wave of technologies, clients and market segments that this will bring. This has resulted in budget overspends, rework, reputation, resource issues and moral problems as Engineers struggle to deliver using old processes. This is further compounded by there being an implicit R&D strategy. The project will therefore identify where the bottlenecks are and by the use of concepts, theories and frameworks come up with a more efficient process for delivery to senior management. 




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