To meet one of SPE’s strategic priorities, capability development, the Society has partnered with International Human Resource Development Corporation (IHRDC) to offer the SPE Competency Management Tool (CMT) free to its members. The tool can be used to assess the competencies needed to perform specified key technical jobs in the oil and gas industry.
Based on assessment results, the tool will identify competency gaps and help members develop individual learning plans to close these gaps. Learning plans will refer users to SPE training resources, along with resources offered by sister organizations, such as the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), and also to generic course titles reflecting those offered by third-party course providers.
In developing a learning plan, the user will be able to choose priorities for closing competency gaps, select the most appropriate learning resources, and determine the pace at which learning should take place. The SPE CMT will give the user flexibility and a chance to take ownership of his or her professional development. Employers, meanwhile, will benefit from the consistency in skills and improved productivity that their employees are able to achieve.
The “pilot” status of the SPE CMT is designed to gauge the level of interest for a service of this nature. Upscaling the tool to its full scope of service will require significant investment in time and resources, which can be justified only if the results of the pilot validate the need for such a level of service.
Published global trends show an ever-increasing demand for professional development of the workforce to meet future energy needs. That, along with the recognition that the onus of personal development in the oil and gas industry today rests largely with the individual, should be sufficient justification for such a service. However, one cannot ignore the fact that major oil and gas companies, including many national oil companies, have been preparing for the “big crew change” for some time and have developed in-house capabilities for competency assessment and development.
Competency development, certification, and training activities are not new to SPE, which was a forerunner in recognizing the need for competency guidelines to define minimum aptitude levels for petroleum engineers and establish future industry standards. These competency guidelines are in place today on the SPE website. What is new is the ability to offer an intuitive, user-friendly platform where members can take control of their personal development by
- Completing self-assessments
- Using the assessment results to identify skill gaps
- Designing learning plans to close these gaps
- Tracking progress as they complete the learning plans
Development of the Tool
Given the industry’s urgent need to accelerate competency development, offering a competency management tool with specific jobs serves two purposes: It provides immediate help to the industry, although for a limited number of jobs, and it establishes the need for such a tool on a sustained basis. The pilot SPE CMT covers 11 key technical jobs at two different career stages (Table 1).
Once the SPE CMT has been available to the membership for a year or so, information about its use will be analyzed to determine if it is worthwhile to expand the scope of the pilot. Based on the above observations, it was decided that the most cost-effective way of offering the tool to the membership was to partner with an existing training company. The contract was awarded to IHRDC based on the criteria specified in a request for quotation.
Modifying Competency Models
As part of the scope of work, IHRDC provided a job description for each of the selected jobs along with a corresponding job competency model. Once this was done, discipline experts reviewed the job descriptions and the competency models, seeking external input where possible. The idea was to look at each job not only on a standalone basis, but also in how it would interface with the others in the types of multidisciplinary teams that are often formed to manage assets, and to minimize gaps and overlaps as much as possible. The resulting job descriptions and the competency models are part of the SPE CMT.
While acknowledging the importance of soft skills in technical jobs, determining how many and which ones should be included for this pilot project was a challenge. In the end, the focus was primarily on the key technical and petrotechnical skills required for each job. As a result, it was possible to build competency models consisting of 25 to 37 competency units. Table 2 summarizes a SPE CMT competency model for a production engineer.
A Brief Description of the Tool
During the pilot phase, the tool will be used to assess competencies exclusively for the 22 jobs listed in Table 1. Depending on the pilot program results, other job titles may be added. The CMT pilot incorporates three phases: self-assessment, view assessment results, and build learning plan.
- Self-Assessment. In this initial phase, an SPE member selects a competency model that best reflects his or her job tasks and responsibilities. The member then evaluates his or her current levels of competency against the levels that the job requires.
- View Assessment Results. Based on the self-assessment results, the CMT identifies “gaps” between the member’s current and required competency levels.
- Build a Learning Plan. The member can work individually or with a supervisor to determine the priority in which gaps should be addressed and select from among a list of learning resources that have been mapped to each competency.
The resources for building the learning plan are contained within the CMT and include offerings available through SPE, SEG, and AAPG. Where those associations do not provide such resources, selected third-party courses are listed. Once a user has completed the prescribed training resources and/or other learning events, he or she can put this learning into practice in the workplace. Users can reassess themselves after either partial or total completion of the learning plan to ensure continual development and improvement.
Fig. 1 (above) pictorially depicts IHRDC’s competency management system. In the pilot phase, the SPE CMT does not include the functionality to verify competency assessment results. This functionality can be added in the next phase if sufficient interest is expressed by members.
For each competency unit in a given competency model, four levels of proficiency have been defined based on international standards. Typical guidelines for the SPE CMT proficiency levels are described in Table 3.
In the job competency model, each competency unit is given a job-level requirement. This is the proficiency level expected from the SPE member in the job being evaluated. The competency unit for reservoir characterization (Fig. 2) is taken from a senior geologist for whom the job-level requirement is set at Level 3 (skillful application).
Identifying Gaps: Member Assessments
The traditional method of assessment is based on the National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) or the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) methodology. It requires a qualified assessor to assess each candidate on each skill required for the job through a combination of methods, including question and answer, demonstration, observation, and simulation. This process in the field typically takes a full day for each assessor and employee. The downsides to this approach include the length of time needed and associated disruption to the workplace, the high cost, and limited exposure to the employee (the assessor only sees a day in the work life of the employee).
SPE’s approach is designed to minimize the cost and time for each assessment by including the member’s supervisor in the process (if needed to validate the SPE member’s answers). The downside of having the supervisor as the employee competency validator could potentially be biased. The simple validation could be a set of multiple choice question/answer data banks that can be used to establish a self-validation.
As mentioned, the verification piece is not included in this version of the CMT, but it can be easily added if there is sufficient interest. A modified manual version of this verification process can be adopted, if desired, by the member. This process will consist of the member exporting his or her assessment results to Microsoft Word, pdf, or Excel, and discussing any differences of opinion with the supervisor. The employee may then modify his or her answers in the self-assessment tool based on this discussion.
Two-Stage Assessment Process
SPE Member Self-Assessment
- Completed for each competency unit
- Assessment guided by description on screen
- Judge own performance based on Levels 1 to 4 (SPE member does not know job-level requirement)
Supervisor Assessment
- Based on long-term observation of SPE member assessed
- Assessment based on performance criteria and description, not on job-level requirement
- Judge SPE member performance based on Levels 1 to 4
Once an SPE member completes the self-assessment and has discussed the results with his or her supervisor (if necessary) and the competency gaps have been identified, a learning plan is produced to prioritize and assist in closing these gaps.
Learning Plan Development
Learning plans are composed of individual training events that have been matched to the competency units in each job competency model. The current resource-matching matrix in the CMT includes
- SPE resources (instructor-led courses, conferences and workshops, SPE textbooks, monographs, and reprints)
- Technical papers offered through the OnePetro electronic library
- SEG and AAPG resources (instructor-led courses, AAPG e-learning symposia, conferences, or workshops)
- Third-party generic instructor-led classroom courses (where the name of the course provider has been deliberately withheld to avoid the perception of favoritism)
- SPE-approved IHRDC e-learning courses
- Focused work assignment or on-the-job training provided by respective employers
The information in this resource-matching matrix is current as of July 2014. The matrix can be easily updated when there is sufficient new information available to warrant a change.
The learning plan is a very important component of the competency management process. The results of the assessments, which are available the day after the self-assessment has been completed and submitted, show the gaps between the competency level at which the SPE member is assessed and the level required for his or her job. The CMT will show a one-page summary of the gaps. To develop the learning plan, the user will prioritize the competency units that show gaps with the top priority going to those that are most critical to the daily job performance and the safety of the individuals and others around the work site.
Thus, each SPE member’s learning plan will
- Address specific gaps based on the member’s current assessment results relative to the job requirements
- Be customized to individual needs by providing a learning road map to close any gaps
- Be prioritized based on safety and operational needs
Once a learning plan has been created, the learning period begins, during which the user takes the courses and attends the training events in his or her learning plan (Fig. 3). The schedule for this plan can be specified, including recurring requirements, and is an iterative process. At the end of the learning plan cycle, skill gaps that have not been closed are available for inclusion in the next plan.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the opportunity to work on this project and express their sincere appreciation to
- Ken Leonard and Tom Whipple, SPE, and Brad Donohue, IHRDC
- SPE’s Global Training Committee Members, especially Alan Johnson, Shell Europe; Jim Gouveia, Rose Associates; and Abul Jamaluddin, Schlumberger; Mark Stone, Department of Natural Resources, Queensland, Australia; and Sachin Mahajan, ADCO.
- SPE’s technical directors for their helpful comments
- Mike Britton, ConocoPhillips, for providing input on project management and facilities engineering; Terry Thoem, private consultant in safety, health, and the environment; and Amos Smith, Dubai Supply Company.