Success Stories

Facilitation – DWOP

The Challenge
Drilling a new well is always a complex and highly expensive operation for oil and gas companies.  A leading independent development and production business, always insists on getting all of the relevant partners and sub-contractors together prior to the start of the drilling campaign. They know that by taking time out to go through the programme in detail before work commences, they could flag up important opportunities for improving performance. These offsite workshops are commonly known as DWOPs (Drilling the well on paper). Enquest approached Wild Thinking with a brief to design and deliver a DWOP for a new campaign with the mobile rig. They were concerned that the usual DWOP format had become tired and that people’s level of engagement and participation was suffering as a result. Our brief was to rejuvenate the format and make sure that the session was a success for everyone involved.

Our Approach
The work started well before the session itself. We met initially with the key people to learn from their combined experience and create an approach that built on the best ideas. The key elements of the format were: sourcing a venue that created the right tone for the day; a dynamic agenda that took the attendees straight in to active discussions; facilitation that both kept the day moving and encouraged discussion on the really key opportunities; focused group work to allow everyone to contribute effectively to the discussions; short and well-structured presentations; opportunities for the smaller groups to feedback and to discuss issues across disciplines. The outputs were then captured and fed straight in to an Action planner.

Results
The Wells Team Lead commented: “Wild Thinking really helped us to focus on developing the format for the DWOP. They delivered a day that worked at every level for the attendees and for the business. We now have a number of performance improvements in place as a direct result of the session.” In our post-session feedback from attendees, they scored the day at 82%. Comments included: “Very well organised”, “Good structure to the day”, “Good venue, well structured, good participation”.