Emerging Frontiers: The Progresssion of the SPE Strategy

Abstract

President's column As you may remember, SPE adopted a new Strategic Plan in March 2013. The plan revolves around four major objectives: Capability development Knowledge transfer Promoting professionalism and social responsibility Public education about the petroleum engineering profession and industry issues Since then, the Board committees and several Board-level work groups have been examining high-priority initiatives in each of these areas. Many of these were discussed at the recent Board of Directors meeting in Yangon, Myanmar. I would like to share with you updates on some of these important initiatives. Capability Development Our industry will continue to undergo a significant demographic shift over the next decade. SPE is devoting resources to support competency development (technical and soft skills) and assessment, assistance with the challenges of university faculty development and retention (to educate new engineers), and efforts supporting engineers in lifelong learning. So far the work group has addressed competency assessment and development in two ways. First the group mapped SPE products and services against several stages of life-cycle learning (pre-university, university, early career, midcareer, late career, retirement). SPE will be conducting a gap assessment and developing an action plan including a competency assessment. Ensuring that we have enough petroleum engineering faculty is a key element in capability development. This is a topic that is close to my heart. I strongly feel SPE should help support faculty to gain and retain the brightest for the future of our industry. For this initiative, the work group made several suggestions to tackle this issue that the Board approved. SPE held a Forum in August 2013 that resulted in a white paper, “SPE Forum Series: 2020 Foresight—Ensuring Educational Excellence for Upstream Engineering Resources,” available from OnePetro. Two pilot regional task forces are being established in the eastern US and Nigeria to identify and address local issues for university petroleum engineering education and to recommend actions. SPE’s Board agreed to enhance its faculty awards and grants program and to launch an R&D competition. Also, the Board approved a modification to the SPE bylaws to include a permanent Board position for academia. Knowledge Transfer Knowledge transfer is the backbone of SPE. It is our mission. So the quality, timeliness, and delivery of knowledge are imperative for the industry’s growth. This covers a number of initiatives, including maintaining the highest technical quality within SPE programs, enhancing volunteer participation, making knowledge available on demand and in user-friendly ways, and taking full advantage of communications technologies to disseminate information.