The CRINE Initiative - Education and Training
Authors: Littlewood Stella  K. 
Published: October 2008

CRINE'S aim is to have everyone in the industry working in new ways and doing so because it is second nature. Such a culture change is only feasible through an extensive programme of education and training. This is under way, helped in many organisations by CRINE ‘champions’ driving the courses and training aids.

INTRODUCTION

CRINE, an acronym for Cost Reduction Initiative for the New Era, is an industry-wide programme now under way in the UK Continental Shelf oil and gas fields whose main objective is to achieve thirty per cent or more savings in capital costs and to halve operating costs over the next two or three years.

This will be achieved without prejudicing safety or protection of the environment, whilst ensuring economic extraction of remaining recoverable reserves, Also, through a change in attitudes and working practices, CRINE has strengthened the UK offshore industry's competitiveness world-wide and within the UK industry will sustain employment at a higher level than previously forecast.

There are four papers: the first paper explains the background and how the initiative was developed. The second is about the cultural change needed to gain acceptance for the new ideas. The third covers the ‘tools’ needed to make change possible: specifications, practices, quality/performance, while this, the fourth, deals with the education and training programme that will ensure the lessons learned stay learned.

EDUCATING AN INDUSTRY

It was recognised from a very early stage of the CRINE initiative that the overlying culture that had developed in the UKCS was characterised by entrenched attitudes, poor communication, lack oftrust and adversarial relationships at all levels. his was rooted in the management style and practices that had evolved over the years. It was also recognised that unless attitudes and behaviour associated with these practices changed there would be no significant progress in improving the North Sea cost structure.

The Culture Change Group was asked to establish a vision for the new culture, to develop a communication strategy, and a plan which would enable the industry to ‘buy in’ to the new culture - operators, contractors, suppliers and government bodies. It was believed that training and employee development programmed would play a vital role in supporting and effecting a cultural change, On one hand technical training would address the importance of fit-for-purpose design and simplicity in engineering solutions, and on the other, an equally important plan to effect an awareness for the need to change attitude and behaviour to support the cultural change.

Let me tell you about educating an entire industry: how we are achieving changes in our business practices that we would never have thought possible two years ago. Let me tell you about the processes that we went through to move an industry that currently accounts for 1,2% of our Gross National Product, whose capital expenditure last year was over E5 billion and supports more than 300,000 jobs directly.

Let me tell you about how we moved that industry towards a new era.