Baqer Bahbahani, Superintendent of E&P Data Management with Kuwait Gulf Oil Company’s (KGOC) Joint Operations, offers ‘Ten Commandments’ for data management success. These evolved from lessons learned on KGOC projects and have been drafted with help from Schlumberger’s Abdelhak El-Hachemi.
1. Get active, efficient, genuine involvement of management (a must).
2. Embed domain-knowledgeable people in the team.
3. Implement in phases starting with most critical data (e.g. production) to get user commitment.
4. Measure ROI, have a metrics methodology prior to project initiation accountability of IM.
5. Pin IM objectives in core business KPI to get users’ commitment.
6. Avoid ‘ad hoc’ applications—it is better to wait for commercial products.
7. Identify key users’ requirements and focus on them (to get users’ buy-in).
8. Use a simple, user friendly decision-centric web interface to minimize training.
9. Document, document (again!), and keep documents updated for maintenance and ‘survivability’.
10. Expect resistance to change, this may be blatant or passive—human nature being what it is!
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