Creative Task Force Engineering
Authors: Allen T.O. 
Published: December 2007

Task force engineering, used as a supplement to conventional staff engineering, can increase the profitability of special oil industry projects. A particular advantage is that it makes it possible to give projects. A particular advantage is that it makes it possible to give specific recognition to the work of the individual engineer.

Introduction

Petroleum engineering has been a recognized profession Petroleum engineering has been a recognized profession for some 40 years. During this period tremendous scientific progress has been made in drilling, in producing oil and gas, and in understanding petroleum producing oil and gas, and in understanding petroleum reservoirs and producing mechanisms. Petroleum engineers can look with pride on their collective contributions to petroleum technology. However, there appear to be more problems of a professional nature today for individual petroleum engineers and engineering management than ever before. From the engineer there are frequent complaints of too little responsibility and authority, insufficient job challenge and opportunity, too much subprofessional work, inadequate recognition and salary, and poor evaluation by management of the relative contribution by individual engineers. Management appears to be concerned with engineer shortages, engineer obsolescence, high cost of engineering, and resignations of experienced engineers to change companies or to leave the industry. Peter Drucker in referring to work in large organizations stated "there are not enough job opportunities for those young people who need challenge and risk." We in the oil business pride ourselves on the degree of risk and challenge offered by the petroleum industry. However, we find today that Drucker's statement is applied to our business to a greater degree than most of us would like to believe.

One approach at solving such professional problems has been to bring social scientists or industrial psychologists into the company. General Electric, psychologists into the company. General Electric, Texas Instruments, Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, and other companies have employed industrial psychologists for a number of years. There has been psychologists for a number of years. There has been considerable experimentation to learn how to organize work groups effectively and how to motivate scientists and engineers. Out of this experimentation by engineers, researchers, and psychologists has evolved the idea of the creative engineering task force. Over the past 10 years, by enhancing engineer motivation and at the same time increasing profits from engineering, the task force has been proved as an organizational system that can alleviate many of the petroleum engineers real and apparent problems. Task force engineering supplements rather than replaces conventional staff petroleum engineering. With the task force system, an petroleum engineering. With the task force system, an engineering group, including a small number of creative engineers (profit generators), is assigned a major project for which the project leader has full responsibility and authority for the group effort and budgeted project expenditures.

The modus operandi contributing to the success of task force engineering includes the following:

1. Planning task force engineering as an investment on which profit must be made on the same basis as a new well, waterflood or pipe line. Charging engineering costs directly to each project and analyzing direct benefits from engineering on a project basis permits more accurate evaluation of profits from engineering.

JPT

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