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Driving InsightsSuccess always demands a greater effort.bringing in additional sub surface assets, sothere’s a whole challenge there about how youselectively invest in your assets to set them upfor the next 10 -20 years of operation.What about the peoplewho work in this industry?DV: Companies are now actively competing forexperienced individuals, so you’ve got workforcestability issues and potential gaps that aredifficult to fill.DD: A massive demographic time bomb is aboutto hit the industry. If you look at the currentworkforce structure, the number of 50 year old,experienced engineers who will retire fairly soonis not being replaced by graduates coming in.So there’s a major worry about this knowledgeleaking out of the organisation. This lack ofreplacements came about because Oil & Gaswasn’t seen as a sexy industry for a while. It’sa tough industry, there’s a lot of travel. Somepeople like that and some don’t. The number ofpetrochemical engineers graduating these daysis nothing like it was in the 80s. So companiesare pinching people from each other. In thepast for example, a Shell employee would staywith the company for 30 years, but now peopleswitch company quite regularly.MT: Also a lot of the guys who were in chargeof Operations in the past have either retired ormoved up the ladder to other senior jobs in thecompany and are no longer around to advisetheir successors.What are the ‘ownership’challenges for an industrywith such a high dependencyon 3rd parties?MT: The context of the high dependency onthird parties is really how I read this question.I think it talks a lot to what was said earlier,in terms of the mobility and migration of keyresources from company to company. Whereashistorically someone would join an operatorfrom University and rise through the ranks andto extend it out to 40 - 50 years. They’re also48 64 CLOSEWORK® GLOBAL REVIEW 2012 be very much the company man, that aspecthas changed significantly. It’s rarer now to comeacross the company man, simply because peoplemove around as they see better opportunitiesfor career development. That’s become verymuch the culture in Aberdeen. In terms of peoplehaving the same level of ownership, I don’t thinkit’s quite how we would have envisaged it 10-15years ago. The whole ownership landscape haschanged quite significantly.DV: With a lot of third party contractors, it’sultimately a fairly transactional relationshipand that builds on this idea of not necessarilybeing a company or career man. You’re there todo a job for a defined period. Also with the shiftto shift rota, you’re living with the problem fortwo weeks, but you aren’t necessarily livingwith it week in and week out. It’s someoneelse’s problem when it comes to picking upthe activity for the next two weeks. So I thinkthere’s a whole range of ownership problems:the staff turnover that Mark talked about, theshift set up and the fact that 3rd parties arelargely driven by the transactional nature ofthe task and being remunerated, rather than along term interest and pride in the asset. Thisis always going to be a potential issue in anoutsourced environment.Based on your experience,what are the key requirementsfor delivering a successfulOil & Gas project - inparticular the challengesof delivering sustainablechange projects offshore?MT: I’m not convinced there are any uniquerequirements for Oil & Gas that are differentfrom any other project in a different industry.The ingredients of a successful project arepretty generic. What’s totally different about Oil& Gas, particularly where there’s an offshorecomponent, is that we’re dealing with a workforcethat is only there for two weeks out ofevery five. So in terms of success, it’s abouthow you structure the project to take thatinto consideration, because clearly not only