Consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton believes that the oil and gas industry will face a shortage of skilled workers once the oil and gas industry recovers. The shortage is expected as many laid off workers move into other industries, and college graduates shift to more stable industries, Jim Kolodgie, principal with Booz Allen Hamilton’s civil and commercial group, told Rigzone in an interview.
Another reason for this shortage is that most companies are behind the technology curve with regards to advanced technologies for intelligent automation of reliability, human resource process optimization, global logistics and enterprise supply chain management, Kolodgie explained. Instead, capital is being redirected to critical programs and away from potential game changing operational technologies.
Booz Allen Hamilton also anticipates a shortage of skilled workers willing to travel to unstable regions for oil and gas work.
Referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”– which discusses how it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field – Kolodgie said he believes it takes longer than 10,000 hours for workers in the upstream and downstream oil and gas industries to fully understand their work. This will leave a significant capability hole.
“We believe that those visionary companies that bite the bullet and invest now can change the skills dynamic through automation of simple decisions, faster and deeper insights to solving a problem’s root cause and not the symptoms, and virtualizing the remaining experts so they can be leveraged globally without leaving their office,” Kolodgie commented.
In a recent report, McKinsey & Co. recommended that oil and gas companies consider digital technologies as a solution for boosting efficiency to create additional profits from existing capacity. McKinsey & Co. reported that effective use of digital technologies in oil and gas could reduce capital expenditures by up to 20 percent. It also could cut upstream operating costs by 3 to 5 percent and by about half that in downstream.
Investment in new technologies such as the Internet of Things is expected to eliminate some jobs, but create other work opportunities. In the case of IoT, field automation may eliminate some field jobs, but create jobs in a company’s central office, where fields are monitored remotely.
source:http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/147004/BLOG_Digital_Investment_Needed_for_Offshore_Talent_Shortage
