REPORT

Resilience in distributed teams. A field study of drilling and well operations in the Sub

Surface Support Centre, StatoilHydro

Aud Marit Wahl, MARINTEK Stig Ole Johnsen, NTNU

Eirik Albrechtsen, SINTEF Technology and Society

Report no. SINTEF A13034 – Program 4.3 - 2009.10.28

Open

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Executive Summary This report discusses safety related challenges and possibilities in Drilling and Well (D&W) operations performed by StatoilHydro (SH) in a resilience engineering perspective. The study focused on the Sub Surface Support Centre (SSC) in SH, with main attention to distributed work and information sharing between the centre and other units in the D&W network. Distributed work and information sharing between the Sub Surface Support Center; the onshore operation support of the Snorre B platform; and the Onshore Support Centre at the drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling Services was studied. The SSC aims at establishing an overall picture of the drilling activity in SH and were not preoccupied with detailed knowledge of individual well operations. The centre observed and analysed drilling activities, mainly on requests from different operation units. Several disciplines in D&W are represented in the centre. The SSC personnel cooperate and share knowledge continuously, increasing their situational awareness and contributing to learning in the unit. The members of the SSC centre pointed to their advisory role in the D&W network, particularly the overview of the activities in all operating units makes it possible to communicate best practice between different operating units. The centre gives special attention to proactive information in weekly handover meetings between shifts. Information on unusual or demanding operations and possible pitfalls are discussed during these meetings, thus improving the ability to foresee and avoid unwanted situations as well as supporting shared situational awareness among the members in the centre. The observation study indicates that the role of the support centre is an important contributor to resilience in distributed work by enabling three abilities: - Foresight by use of information on drilling activities (e.g. daily drilling reports and

Look Ahead) and interdisciplinary experts in the D&W network - The centre could be used as a resource and support function for the line organisation

when coping with ongoing trouble. Not being a formal unit of the emergency organization increases the ability to be flexible and think outside the box during a non-normal situation

- The centre has an overview of the drilling activities and performance of several installations. As a result, the centre has a potential of sharing experience both regarding normal operations and incidents, thus being an important actor when it comes to learning from the right lessons

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Table of contents 1. About the study ............................................................................................................ 3 1.1 Method ................................................................................................................. 3

1.2 Analytical perspectives ........................................................................................ 4 2. Subsurface Support centre ........................................................................................... 6 3. Onshore Operational Support ...................................................................................... 8

3.1 Snorre B ............................................................................................................... 8 3.2 Odfjell Drilling Services ...................................................................................... 9

4. Information Sharing Across Units ............................................................................... 9 4.1 Look ahead – an internal information tool in SSC ............................................ 11 4.2 Daily performance measures.............................................................................. 12

5. The Subsurface Support Centre’s role in Drilling and Well operations .................... 13 6. Discussion: resilience in geographically distributed teams ....................................... 14

6.1 Further work....................................................................................................... 16 7. Conclusions................................................................................................................ 16 References.......................................................................................................................... 17

Abbreviations DN Drilling Network D&W Drilling and Well IO Integrated Operations KPI Key Performance Indicator MTO Man, Technology and Organization ODS Odfjell Drilling Services OSC Onshore Support Centre RE Resilience Engineering SH StatoilHydro SNB Snorre B platform SSC Subsurface Support Centre

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1. About the study This field study is part of a large research program related to Integrated Operations (IO) in Norwegian Oil and Gas industry performed by the IO-centre at NTNU, supported by the Norwegian Research Council. More information about the program and the different projects is found at www.ntnu.no/iocenter. The goal of the current study is to identify opportunities for creating resilience related to distributed collaboration in the Drilling and Well (DW) operations performed in StatoilHydro (SH) The Sub Surface Support Centre (SSC) in SH was the main focus. The project has analysed distributed work and information sharing between the Sub Surface Support Center and two other units in the onshore operation support of the Snorre B platform (SNB); the onshore operations centre with SH and the Onshore Support Centre (OSC) with the drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling Services (ODS). See Figure 1, showing the key organisational units involved in one drilling operation in StatoilHydro.

Figure 1. Key organisational units involved in drilling operation

In addition to these units we find service providers such as Schlumberger and Geoservices supporting different phases or parts of the operations. We did not have the opportunity to include these in the study and they are not pictured in the figure.

1.1 Method The study followed an ethnographic1 tradition (Hammersley & Atkinson 1995). This approach is used in several workplace studies (e.g., Suchman 1987; Heath and Luff 2000; Engeström, Yrjö & Middleton 1996; Tjora 2005). It makes it possible to focus on existing work practice “in situ”. It enabled us to get to know the company better and create a holistic picture of the communication and cooperation between onshore units in the D&W network in the company in a relative short period of time. The research design combined different methods to understand the current work practice in the different units that were visited; participant observation, informal interviews as well as document studies were used to gather information. In addition to observations, we participated in a meeting discussing implementation of suggestions from SSC, giving advice. The fieldwork lasted five days, from 24/11 to 28/11 2008. The SSC were visited the first two days, then one day with the onshore operational organisation at Snorre B, finally two days with Odfjell Drilling Services. We were two researchers collecting data. We made field notes, took some pictures and collected written material such as power point presentations, daily drilling reports and drilling programs. Some of the information was sensitive and is not included in the report, but was nevertheless valuable in creating a holistic understanding of the work practice.

1 Ethnography is a methodological strategy to provide descriptions of social phenomena, by use of different methods (observations, interviews, document studies, questionnaires etc), very often by field studies.

SSC SH Onshore Support SNB

Odfjell Onshore Support Centre

SNB offshore operations

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1.2 Analytical perspectives This study followed an MTO (Man, Technology and Organization) approach to analyze safety opportunities and challenges in distributed teams. MTO is a perspective that points to the importance of assessing human, technological as well as organizational factors in research studies. This study focuses on organisational aspects in the analysis, but the two other aspects in the MTO model are also considered. It is valuable to look at the interplay between all the three factors in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of safety in an organization. The findings in this study are discussed with a focus on situational awareness and resilience engineering. The first concept is a central perspective in research on teams and the latter belongs to a school found in safety research. Below follows a brief introduction of the two concepts.

1.2.1 Resilience Engineering The need for a more comprehensive approach to safety taking the increased complexity of organisation, technology work and workplaces into account, has been recognized in recent research. The resilience engineering (RE) perspective gives several examples on this e.g. Woods (2003) Hollnagel et al. (2006). Resilience as a concept has been used in crisis management and organisational safety studies (e.g. Weick and Sutcliffe 2007; Hollnagel et al. 2006). Weick & Sutcliffe (2007: 71) describe three characteristics of resilience: the internal and external ability to absorb strain and preserve functioning despite the presence of adversity, the ability to recover or bounce back from unexpected events and the ability to learn and grow. Several definitions of resilience are given in the resilience engineering tradition. Hollnagel (2006) says “the ability of a system or an organisation to react to and recover from disturbances at an early stage, with minimal effect on the dynamic stability”. Woods (2006) focuses on unanticipated disturbances, his definition is “how well can a system handle disruptions and variations that fall outside of the base mechanisms/model for being adaptive (adaptive defined as the ability to absorb or adapt to disturbance, disruption and change)”. In Westrum (2006) resilience has three major meanings: - Foresee and avoid - resilience is the ability to prevent something bad from happening,

another term is “requisite imagination” - Coping with ongoing trouble - or the ability to prevent something bad from becoming

worse, - Repairing after catastrophe - or the ability to recover from something bad once it has

happened Hollnagel et al. (2006:348) describes resilience as a form of control related to variability: “A system is in control if it is able to minimize or eliminate unwanted variability, either in its own performance, in the environment, or in both. The fundamental characteristic of an resilient organization that it does not lose control of what it does but is able to continue and rebound”. According to Hollnagel (2007)2 a resilient system has three main qualities: It can respond to regular and irregular threats in a robust, yet flexible, manner. It can flexibly monitor what is going on, including its own performance. And it can anticipate disruptions, pressures, and their consequences. Since variability is a fact of life, safety must be achieved by controlling performance rather than by constraining it.

2 Presentation at ”Sikkerhetsdagene” 2007

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1.2.2 Situational awareness The most used definition of situation awareness (SA) is “… the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future” (Endsley 1995:36). There are different definitions of the concept, see Stanton (2001), we have used the most referenced definition of SA from Endsley. Suchman (1996) describes how the actors in a control room come to awareness of the problems at hand from their particular organizational and physical place, how they develop a shared orientation to the situation and establish places for their joint work. She points to how the location of the room, organizational, spatial and temporal, sets up the conditions within which the work gets done Endsley et al (2001) discusses SA in distributed teams when the members are separated by distance, time and/or obstacles. Interdependency between team members creates a higher need for shared SA since they operate on a common set of data and the assessment and actions of others can have a large impact on the assessment and actions of the individual. The actors thus need to develop a shared understanding of the situation at hand. Garbis & Artman (2006) underlines the importance of looking beyond the individual operators and include the whole team when building situational awareness. They point to the need for establishing mutually shared goals between the team members and shows how artefacts as computer screens and various displays gives various information that needs to be interpreted and negotiated among the team members. This study uses the concept shared situation awareness to point to the creation of collective situation awareness between actors in a team across time and distance. In an Integrated Operations context, shared situational awareness between geographical distributed actors is an important premised for efficient collaboration. Not least when onshore and offshore are collaborating closer. In a discussion on shared situational awareness and organisational accident risks, Grøtan et al. (2009) describe shared situational awareness as a representation of the overlap between team members, or the degree to which team members possess the same shared mental models. Shared mental models are “…knowledge structures held by members of a team that enable them to form accurate explanations and expectations for the task, and in turn, to coordinate their actions and adapt their behaviour to demands of the task and other team members” (French et al., 2004).

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2. Subsurface Support centre The Subsurface Support Centre (SSC) in StatoilHydro is located in Stavanger. The centre provides multidisciplinary support and knowledge sharing by acting as a hub for communication between the discipline networks and the well and drilling units in SH. It consists of experts in drilling, technology, well technology, geology as well as representatives from the different disciplines in the drilling and well network in SH. Figure 2 shows the different roles that were represented in the centre during our visit.

Fixed Units

Discipline duty

Mobile Units

Drilling & Well Super Intendent

Drilling & Well Super Intendent

Drilling Plan Manager

Drilling Plan Manager

Well Plan Manager

Well Plan Manager

Analysis Engineer

Analysis Engineer

Operational Geologist

Well Control

Drilling Technology

Rock Mechanics

Fluids

Well Completions

Sub Sea

Operational Geologist

Figure 2. Roles in the Subsurface Support Centre (SSC)

The personnel in the fixed and mobile units have their permanent workplace in the centre. The roles of the discipline duty are staffed with persons representing the different departments in the network by sitting in the centre for only a defined period of time. The total drilling and well network consists of 200 experts, the organisation structure is showed in Figure 3. The boxes in the figure shows the different disciplines found in the network, the outer boxes relate the different disciplines to their main responsibilities. The SSC is placed in middle, giving it a role as supporting hub for all of the depicted disciplines. The dual direction of the arrows shows that the SSC also uses the different disciplines as support. The centre is dedicated to support all well and drilling operations on request from the different production units in the company. Their main task is detailed involvement in defined challenges in response to requests from operational units. It is emphasised that they aim to give support on a need basis from the production units. SSC is usually focusing on 4-6 wells at a time of approximately 45 ongoing well operations in SH.

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Figure 3. The Drilling & Well Network in Statoil Hydro. Source: Subsurface Support Center (SSC).

The centre contributes to the development of drilling programs by giving advice during method selection, risk assessment, peer review and peer assist. It also assists in drilling board reviews, experience search and risk analysis. In addition the centre perform analysis of operations, evaluate time- and depth based drilling and formation data and provide input to best practices and governing documentation. Figure 4 shows that the SSC has direct contact with the different discipline networks (DN) and the onshore operation support in SH. SSC has only indirect contact with drilling contractor and rig, usually via the operational unit e.g., when invited to join meetings by the drilling superintendent.

Figure 4 SSC Relation Map. DN=Discipline Networks,

Snorre B

Drilling Contractor Odfjell

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3. Onshore Operational Support The onshore organization in StatoilHydro supports the offshore installations before and during drilling operations. The drilling superintendent is the main communication node between the offshore and onshore organisations. The other main part of the onshore support is the drilling contractor (also showed in Figure 1). In addition there are several subcontractors providing specialised drilling services, e.g. Schlumberger and Geoservice. Usually the different support functions are geographically dispersed, making communication technology an important tool in the cooperation between the different units. In this study we visited the onshore support to the Snorre B platform and their current drilling contractor, Odfjell Drilling Services.

3.1 Snorre B The Snorre B installation (SNB) is a combined drilling, production, and injection semi submersible platform with 140 available beds, operated by StatoilHydro since 2001. It is located 150 km northwest of Bergen at the Snorre field and consists of two sub sea production templates and one injection template. SNB produces both oil and gas (www.statoilhydro.com).

Figure 5 Picture of Snorre B (source: www.statoilhydro.com)

The onshore organization supporting the offshore D&W operations at SNB is placed in Stavanger. The collaboration room located here is used for daily meetings between onshore and offshore and the Odfjell onshore support centre. The Drilling Superintendent and the Odfjell-Liaison uses the room as their permanent workplace. Presence of other disciplines depends on the phase of the operation and the tasks to be done. The drilling superintendent had experience in using the SSC, and regarded the centre as an asset providing advice whenever needed. The SSC is mainly used as support in the operation phase. Other engineers in this part of the organization were less familiar with the SSC, e.g., one of the drilling engineers was not aware of the possibility to use the

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centre as a resource during development of drilling programs. It seems like the centre could be consulted more, particularly as a resource in planning of well programs, e.g., during method selection and peer assist meetings. The drilling superintendent would also like the advice from the centre to be more concrete; he regarded it as an advantage if they could give specific suggestions or solutions to problems.

3.2 Odfjell Drilling Services The current drilling contractor at Snorre B, Odfjell, has established an Onshore Support Centre (OSC) for Sleipner A, Snorre A and Snorre B at their location in Sandsli, Bergen. Each of these units has its own collaboration room, but the three are co-located in the same centre. The collaboration rooms are used for daily video conference meetings with the tool pusher, drilling manager and drilling superintendent – typically morning and afternoon meetings. Only one person has permanent workplace in the room, this is the “onshore rig responsible”. Other personnel attend when needed e.g., onshore maintenance lead. The design of the centre makes it easy to share resources, for instance procurement. The close location of the three units also supports formal and informal experience sharing between the different members in the centre, e.g. by sitting in meetings or in discussions with colleagues. The operation of the collaboration rooms was efficient, with sharing and improvement of common documents between SNB, OSC and offshore. The Odfjell organisation were focused on continuous improvement of their operations, and employed a person, “kontinuerlig forbedringsleder” [In English: continous improvement manager], to improve routines and systems. Odfjell does not have any direct co-operation with the SSC. Most of the personnel in the Odfjell Collaboration room that we talked to had heard about the centre but were not familiar with its function in SH. The Odfjell representatives would like to get to know the SSC better, in order to be able to use their expertise and collaborate more. Today they use the network in the SH line organization when they need support from SH in ongoing drilling operations. The drilling superintendent in SNB is their main contact in SH.

4. Information Sharing Across Units A daily drilling report was used by all three units. Figure 6 gives an example of such a report. It is used during the daily morning meetings between onshore and offshore SNB and Odfjell OSC. The data supports discussion and information sharing between the units. It describes the drilling activities the last 24 hrs and shows the progress with respect to the drilling program. The driller is responsible to fill in the description of the operations following the timeline in the report and hands over a copy to the offshore drilling supervisor. The information is qualitative, largely based on the subjective interpretation of the driller / assistant driller who fills in the information following the progress (or lack of progress) in the drilling process. This information is used both in daily performance management and in the “Look ahead” (a internal reporting tool updated weekly showing information on ongoing drilling activities. Further description below).

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Figure 6. Example of daily drilling report, Snorre B. Information on drilling progress and deviations the last 24 hours.

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4.1 Look ahead – an internal information tool in SSC The “Look Ahead” is an information tool used in the SSC (Figure 7). It is so far an internal reporting tool that is not explored outside the organisational boundaries of SSC. It is a weekly updated PowerPoint presentation concerning ongoing drilling on all mobile and fixed units in SH. It is presented during Monday morning meetings and is primarily used to update the personnel in centre, focusing on new activities, changes in planned activities and discrepancies. The information is based on manual analyses of Daily Drilling Reports from the different units made by the drilling engineer that has had duty time during the last week. The presentation from the previous week is used as a template, adding information about changes during last week The data in the “Look Ahead” is used in a proactive manner by the SSC team, they focus on information about critical or non-normal operations during the meeting and decides which operations they should give extra attention in the coming week based on this information. This makes it possible to establish plans and create mindsets that support proactive focus, which is an important aspect of resilient operations.

Figure 7. Look-ahead front page

It was pointed out a need for a more standardization of information across units, particularly in order to lower the amount of manual collection and adaptation of information. Some sort of common “look ahead” report across onshore units and offshore could be established in order to stimulate information sharing and common “mental models” and key performance indicators across organisational boundaries. This can be engineered by establishing templates that uses of Daily Drilling Report as a basis for both “look ahead” with the SSC and by exploring the established set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) from Odfjell OSC. A common “up to date” report being accessible in all

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units would ensure a standardized use of the existing data in the organisation making it easier to create shared understanding between the teams. It would also be helpful to include an alert system with some sort of colour coding of normal, critical operations / performance indicators related to the drilling operations in the presentation. The way it is currently presented requires quite a high degree of familiarity with the operations in order to notice factors that may have a negative impact on the drilling operation. 4-5 of the ongoing drilling operations are usually given special attention by the SSC team, e.g., because of criticality or uniqueness of the operation. It would be an advantage if these operations were highlighted among the other information contained in the “look ahead”.

4.2 Daily performance measures In the OSC at Odfjell Drilling the onshore rig responsible makes a presentation of a key performance indicator (KPI) showing the distance drilled the last 24 hours on the (KPI) during morning meetings. It is used both daily and in the biweekly meeting related to crew change. Without going into details, the figure shows progress in drilling related to time used and drilled meters for the last 24 hours. This data is also used explain deviations to the drilling program, The KPI shows the performance the last 24 hours and is based on information from the daily drilling report found in the RigManager system and data from the drill pipes generated in the proNova software. The data is presented in a power point format, see Figure 8 for an example. In addition to the data presented through the proNova tool, the person responsible for the rig adds data into the figure manually. This is displayed as black text in the figure and gives additional information for direct or indirect causes for the deviations with respect to the drilling program, e.g. ROV repair. This information is usually taken from the daily drilling report (shown in Figure 6) . This set of performance indicators has been used since the spring 2008. It is principally used for discussions and experience transfer during the meetings. The aim of the KPIs is learning and organisational development. Since this is a new way of using KPIs in the organisation it is important to focus on positive trends, issues that can improve safety or other benefits in order to create trust to the system and avoid a negative focus,. A negative focus could be established by focusing too much on individual weaknesses or crew performance below expectations. The measures are done on a daily basis and this gives the possibility to establish proactive indicators. However, the system and processes must be explored and understood more fully in order to establish meaningful proactive indicators. The most important use of the KPIs so far has been the possibility to create organisational learning by comparing work practices between shifts. There has been identified some variation between crew performance, such as that night shifts progressing better with the drilling program than day crew. Of course there are several confounding variables influencing the outcome of the KPI, but it was underlined that differences between crews not necessarily indicated that one crew had better work practice than the other. Following the recommended best work may actually correlate negatively with fast work, thus a crew cutting corners and not following the procedures might improve their KPI but actually work more unsafe. It was pointed to the importance of presenting the indicators to the crew and to create an understanding of the result by discussion rather than trust the numbers merely at face value.

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Figure 8. Example performance indicators on drilling progress last 24 hours

It would be interesting to expand the use of these performance measures across the units influencing operations, from SSC, SNB Onshore support; ODS onshore support to SNB offshore operations. This could give a more holistic picture of the performance, giving better control and understanding of KPIs influencing performance and safety. Exploration of a common set of KPIs could enable learning across the whole value chain from SSC through SNB offshore operations. It would also be valuable in order to improve shared situational awareness between the different actors in the network by using the same concepts and key performance indicators as a basis to discuss productivity, safety, resilience and other common themes. The creation of situational awareness could be explored to identify common challenges and improve common work procedures.

5. The Subsurface Support Centre’s role in Drilling and Well operations The SSC has an overview of the activities in all operating units in SH. The unit observe and analyse drilling activity but act mainly in response to requests from operation units. They focus on an overall picture of drilling activity in SH, and not detailed knowledge of individual well operations. They communicate primarily with the onshore operational units in SH, and only indirectly with drilling companies - see Figure 9.

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Figure 9. Units involved in Drilling and Well operations in StatoilHydro. Size of arrows indicate amount of communication

The roles in the fixed and mobile units have their permanent workplace in the centre (Figure 2), but not all positions were staffed at the time of the visit. Discipline duty representatives have their main workplace in other units in the D&W network. This was not seen as an advantage by the centre lead, thus it was planned changes to this arrangement in the future. The cooperation between different disciplines in the centre is an advantage when it comes to experience transfer and establishing best practice across drilling operations The figure below shows the major units involved in Drilling and Well operations in SH. The arrows with thicker lines indicate amount of communication/ how often the units communicate. The SSC does not interact directly with the offshore units or with drilling contractor but the information sharing is more indirect via the discipline network or the onshore organization. Although representatives from all units may attend the same meetings it is not done on a regular basis. There was ac claim from the SSC that they wanted to be consulted more, e.g., by being used as a resource during method selection and peer assist in well planning. Being a new unit makes it harder to get hold of relevant information and to contribute in ongoing operations, thus the SSC needs to be more visible and promote its role in the D&W network in order to reach its full potential. When people are familiar with the centre, SSC is regarded as an asset. So far SSC is invited to meetings mainly in the operations phase and less in planning phase. More concrete advice from SSC was regarded as an advantage, such as specific suggestions for solutions. At the time of our study it was clear that the function of the centre could be better known among its users.

6. Discussion: resilience in geographically distributed teams As a general impression, the SSC is supporting safety by the proactive focus (the ability to foresee and avoid, Westrum, 2006) of the centre, the focus on enabling experience transfer and sharing knowledge of best practice between units. The centre strengthens collaboration between different professions in the organisation, because of the co-location and cooperation of different disciplines in the centre, in addition to exploration of virtual meeting arenas between SSC and onshore support or other units involved in drilling and well operations in StatoilHydro. The virtual meeting arena seems to increase collaboration and sharing of “best practices” among the involved actors. A quantification of the effect of these meetings related to safety and resilience could be useful, but does not exist at the present.

SSC SH Onshore Support

RIG

Drilling Contractor Onshore

Discipline Network

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The SSC observe and analyze drilling activity with a focus on the overall picture of drilling activity in SH without a detailed knowledge of individual well operations, still the advisory role of the SSC may be regarded as a source for resilience in the sense of improved ability to anticipate and monitor (Hollnagel et al., 2006). Especially since critical drilling operations are identified and followed closely by SSC trough the “look-ahead” report, trying to foresee and avoid incidents. The overview of the activities in all operating units make it possible to communicate best practice between different units, maintaining resilience by preventing something bad from happening, coping with ongoing trouble by exploring best practice and avoiding drift of practice from written procedures as well as being an enabler for organizational learning. The centre consists of different disciplines that cooperates and share knowledge continuously – also important aspects in improving resilience as well as learning. One of the characteristics of a resilience described by Weick & Sutcliffe (2007) and Jackson (2008) is the ability to regroup and restructure during incidents and to focus on inter-element collaboration to support problem solving, this possibility that lies within the centre is not yet used to its full potential. The centre has a strong focus on proactive information, illustrated in the use of the ”look ahead”. This weekly updated presentation of all ongoing drilling operations in SH is used during the weekly handover meetings in the centre. It is a helpful tool in establishing shared situational awareness among the members in the centre. It focuses specifically on unusual or demanding operations and possible pitfalls is discussed during the meetings. This improves the ability to foresee and avoid unwanted situations, described as requisite imagination (Westrum 2006). This information should however be shared among all involved actors onshore and offshore including the drilling contractor, not only SSC. In 2004 there was a critical blowout at the Snorre A platform that could have resulted in a major accident. Statoil did say that the incident at Snorre A, among other things, was due to a lack of expertise and understanding of risky operations. If sufficient experts, such as SSC, had been involved in the planning of the complex well operations at Snorre A in 2004, the subsequent blow-out in 2004 could have been avoided. As a result, during operations the centre can utilize information found in e.g. daily drilling reports and the “Look ahead” as well as expert knowledge in the D&W network to uncover disturbances in a drilling operations at an early stage thus increasing the ability of the organization to prevent unexpected events with minimal effect on the ongoing operations On the downside when it comes to resilience is the still unclear role of the centre in the D&W network in SH. The drilling operator, Odfjell, had little awareness of the SSC and did not use SSC or collaborate directly with SSC at the time of the interviews. The unfamiliarity with the centre within the D&W network may prevent it from being contacted during critical operations or when there has been an incident. The members of the centre wanted to be consulted more, e.g., used as a resource during method selection and peer assist in well planning. Being a relative new unit in the organisations makes it harder to get hold of relevant information and to contribute in ongoing operations, particularly when they relay on invitation to participate from other units in the network. Documentation of common goals and discussions of how established goals can be attained could help to clarify the role of the SSC and create a positive environment of the

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SSC. It is thus suggested that the actors and units involved discusses and agrees on common mental models and common goals and vision in order to increase safety and resilience of drilling operations in StatoilHydro. The centre could be used as a resource and support to the line organisation during emergency situations. Not being a formal unit of the emergency organization increases the ability to be flexible and think outside the box during a non-normal situation. This is strengthened by the presence of multidiscipline personnel in the centre. Such a role could support the resilience of drilling operations, by improving the ability to cope with ongoing trouble (Westrum, 2006)

6.1 Further work The explorative nature of the this study indicates some themes that can be further studied in collaboration with the involved actors.. . It would be an advantage with respect to validity and reliability to gather a richer data material, e.g., further observations and formal interviews. The questionnaire in the CRIOP methodology, (Johnsen et al., 2008) can also function as a starting point for gathering more relevant and precise information. Further studies should also include how offshore operators perceive the role of the onshore actors. Based on the present observation study the following subjects are relevant for follow-up studies: how can shared situational awareness support resilience; what key proactive indicators related to resilience should be developed and shared among different actors in the D&W network; how can focus on resilience be improved by exploring expert knowledge among the involved actors; how can information and knowledge in the support centre be utilized in emergency handling (this subject is part of an ongoing activity at the IO centre program 4.3)

7. Conclusions The report presents the result of an observation study of geographically distributed work, by studying collaboration between the Subsurface Support Centre in StatoilHydro, the onshore operation support of the Snorre B platform and the Onshore Support Centre at the drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling Services. The study has the Subsurface Support Centre as its main focus and mainly studies information sharing and collaboration between these actors. The study does not include offshore operations. The observation study indicates that the role of the support centre is an important actor in creating resilience in distributed work by enabling three abilities: - Foresight by use of information on drilling activities (e.g. daily drilling reports and

Look Ahead) and interdisciplinary experts in the D&W network - The centre could be used as a resource and support to the line organisation when

coping with ongoing trouble. Not being a formal unit of the emergency organization increases the ability to be flexible and think outside the box during a non-normal situation

- The centre has an overview of the drilling activities and performance of several installations. As a result, the centre has a potential of sharing experience both regarding normal operations and incidents, thus being an important actor when it comes to learning from the right lessons.

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