Showing posts with label Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Process. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

This is How it Will Work

If you've worked in oil and gas accounting or administration, the earth science or engineering disciplines and have some ideas on how things could be improved. If the Preliminary Specification resonates with your understanding of how the industry should operate. Maybe you should be part of the user community and become one of the many participants that will work with our developers to provide the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. This would be a business decision on your behalf. After People, Ideas & Objects budget is funded a significant portion of our development costs are used to support the people who are involved in the user community. The revenues you would earn from being a user community participant would provide you with a good foundation for a new future in the oil and gas industry.

Consider for a moment that the industry would be changing structurally and substantially when we proceed. The producer itself would no longer directly employ any of the people involved in any of the administrative or accounting areas. This is a substantial reallocation of the General & Administrative costs of the industry to the service providers that as of today do not exist. And People, Ideas & Objects will be looking exclusively to the user community participants to form these new firms and establish these services for the producers. It is the user community participant who will be designing a new oil and gas industry, and the way that they will interact and engage with industry from a commercial point of view.

These services that provide the process management that the user community participant defines will make up the majority of the revenues that are earned by the user community participant / service provider in the new oil and gas industry. And they will be sizable. Depending on the process that is managed and the number of people that are employed by the service provider they will share in the “new” service provider “sub-industry” that they are creating that replaces the G&A costs of the producer firm. These are estimated currently to be in the region of $40 - 60 billion per annum in the North American oil and gas industry.

On a day to day basis as a service provider you'll be responsible for managing the process on behalf of your clients, the oil and gas producers. This will involve mostly automated processes that People, Ideas & Objects software and your staff will conduct to ensure that the producer maintains the most profitable means of oil and gas operations. The other half of your organization will be in a constant state of review of your processes and determining the ways in which they can be improved in terms of the efficiencies and costs to the producers, but also the quality of the products that are delivered. It will be this work that will involve the developers of People, Ideas & Objects in which you make the necessary changes in the software to increase the specialization and division of labor, incorporate new business models or provide business changes from the environment the producers operate within. This area of the service providers business will be very advanced and scientific in terms of the type of work that is undertaken. Providing much of the real value add in you firm.

This should help to further define the type of people that we are looking for to make up the user community participant. The number of service providers will be very large as the size of this industry is significant, as is the number of processes under management. If this appeals to you and you think that this is the future of how work will be undertaken in the oil and gas industry you should think about the future here. There is much to do in preparation. Preparation that needs to be undertaken for any future, such as the augmenting your technology skills with those Java and Relational Database courses. Risk? Sure there is risk, but the risk that the bureaucrats further destroy the industry is much higher in my opinion.

The Preliminary Specification and user community provides the oil and gas producer with the most dynamic, innovative and profitable means of oil and gas operations. People, Ideas & Objects Revenue Model specifies the means in which investors can participate in these user defined software developments. Users are welcome to join me here. Together we can begin to meet the future demands for energy. And don't forget to join our network on Twitter @piobiz anyone can contact me at 403-200-2302 or email here

Monday, July 12, 2010

Asynchronous Process Management Success

One of the cornerstones of the People, Ideas & Objects “Technical Vision” is Asynchronous Process Management (APM). I have described this type of functionality as it relates to communications, as a phone call is synchronous, and a letter would be asynchronous. The letter provides the communicator time to interact more deeply and to contemplate the response more thoroughly. Applying this communications metaphor to Process Management is directly applicable.


In a recent post we discussed the scenario around the timing of the voting and implementation of a plan to increase natural gas production. Where the participants within a Joint Operating Committee were asked to vote on a prescribed course of action. The description in that post imputed the implementation of the plan would be immediate, during the virtual meeting. In the real world, there would need to be time for each participant to consider their decision. The ability for participants to take the time to think what their next action will be, and based on those actions, implement and complete the appropriate management of the earlier initiated process.

Technology has expanded significantly in the past ten years. Particularly with respect to having multiple threads and multiple cores of application processing. Simply defining when an applications process can be broken down into multiple steps is easily handled by the developer and today’s advanced compilers. The problem with this processing is that the timing of each operation is unpredictable and therefore the sequence of when the program will be completed is random. In the oil and gas situation where partners were voting on a proposal for further operations, those operations would not be able to be commenced until the voting was completed, or adequate votes in the affirmative were received.

Today, the software developer has tools that provide the ability to control the timing of dependent processing in the software. This opens the world of systems development to higher levels of performance, processing tasks in parallel shortens the processing time required, and allows for advanced Asynchronous Process Management such as the People, Ideas & Objects technical vision.

Society is put in peril when world oil production declines. There is evidence that the world's oil production has declined. Therefore the world needs to have the energy industry expand its production. To do so requires that we reorganize to enhance the division of labor and specialization within the industry. As has been proven, this reorganization could achieve far greater oil and gas production. Management of the industry is conflicted in expanding the output of the industry. The less they do, the higher the oil and gas prices and the better they appear to perform. This managerial conflict must be addressed and the performance of the industry unleashed. To do so requires the current management of the industry to fund People, Ideas & Objects and build the systems as defined in the Draft Specification. Please join me here.


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Sunday, February 21, 2010

Budget Conversation Part II

The question as to what happens after March 31, 2010 and we don't have our budget for 2010 funded. Do we pack up and go home? There is nothing worse for a project like People, Ideas & Objects to have been turned down for its funding request. It puts the entire project at greater risk of ever being funded. So what is the plan, what do we transition to if the funding for 2010 is not secured?

The cut and run mentality is something that I have great difficulty with. I don't start something to have it left unfinished. The fact that the budget possibilities are more limited do not deter me from proceeding with this project. The May 2004 Preliminary Research Report was named "Plurality should not be assumed without necessity" or Occam's Razor for a reason. I knew that this level of change would be difficult. The quotation that I used for describing this difficulty was from the 1997 Report to the World Bank.

This statement was written by Ernst & Young in a 1997 report to the World Bank, and was described as: “It’s not what you know that you do not know that hurts you. It’s what you do not know, that you do not know that will. It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to bring about a new order of things.” Knoop & Valor (1997)
What I do know is we have not attained success. On the other side of the coin, I know what dangerous means. We will continue on in some fashion irrespective of the outcome of this budget drive. In the event that we do not receive any support, what frustrates me the most is that we are effectively losing another year. One change that might be considered is that we immediately commence a budget drive for the entire design and planning stage. These have been costed at $150 - 200 million.

In terms of the context of energy, failure has consequences. If I have to live the consequences of this project for a while longer that is fine. I'm not dragging anyone or anything down in the manner that this project is being proposed. I want to establish an environment where the motivation is to succeed. And if that success is not attainable with the current configuration, we'll work with the communities [investor, shareholder, user and Community of Independent Service Providers] to get it right.

Join me here and lets work together in finding the right answers. If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Budget conversation

A quick note that one of the desired benefits of this first quarter 2010 fund raising drive. Is to prove the bureaucracy will not fall on its sword. Calling on the investors and shareholders in oil and gas to fund this software development is a reasonable approach to break this deadlock.

We see with the strong academic grounding of the ideas of using the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct. This method of organization and software development is a reasonable approach to the problems in the industry.

It is difficult to see the investors and shareholders directly funding these developments themselves. It is anticipated that they would pressure their management to participate. This can be achieved at few times and with few opportunities in the calendar year. And that time is coming quickly.

If the investors were able to have their firms vote on supporting People, Ideas & Objects at their Annual General Meeting (AGM). Would this be an opportunity to speak over the heads of the bureaucracy and get People, Ideas & Objects funded? The form of proxy is currently being developed for the AGM. Is this the means to have the 2010 budget funded?

If your an enlightened producer, an oil and gas investor or shareholder, who would be interested in funding these software developments and communities, please follow our Funding Policies & Procedures, and our Hardware Policies & Procedures. If your a government that collects royalties from oil and gas producers, and are concerned about the accuracy of your royalty income, please review our Royalty Policies & Procedures and email me. And if your a potential user of this software, and possibly as a member of the Community of Independent Service Providers, please join us here.

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Monday, November 02, 2009

Who has the money.

It should be no surprise to any one that the money that supports these developments and the Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP) comes from the oil and gas producers. I have spent a significant amount of time doing the research that supports the Draft Specification. The distribution of the ideas contained within that document has been heard far and wide. Time now to put this project into a commercial venture. This post sets out to detail how the money that supports the software developments and the community of people that will use the software in their future day to day operations.

Let me state clearly that the Users, People, or Community of Independent Service Providers (CISP's) are all one in the same. And the key focus of the quality and value of the software that is being made. I would hope that the involvement of the user has been clearly expressed in my writing over the past few years. User involvement is the critical and difficult component of how this business will succeed. Clearly, to my way of thinking the sustained commitment and enthusiasm of the user base has to be supported by a strong financial motivation. This post is how the user can make a lucrative and long term career and profession around this "ground floor" opportunity.

CISP's or users have two sources of revenue. One is from the producers they work with for the services they provide, and the second is for the work with the developers from People, Ideas & Objects. Making the application operate in the manner that the User needs in order to be effective in providing their services to the producer. The User being the critical hub of all activity in this community. All of this is high value added work and I can not think of many positions that would be more involved and interesting. Whether the individual who joins this community desires to be a sole proprietor or expand to a substantial firm, these options should be considered open and available.

All the work that will be commissioned by People, Ideas & Objects will be through a work order system. The Users participation will be very heavy at the beginning phases of development. Then when the specification is deemed by the Users to meet theirs and the producer's needs, the developers will begin the process of writing the system. It will be at that point the amount of time that the Users will be involved will decline slightly, limited to guiding the developers through the initial building process and defining and directing the future changes and enhancements they want in the system.

The users revenues from the producer will be for planning and implementing their system, training their staff, running their applications, monitoring and maintaining the firms use of the People, Ideas & Objects software. Anything and everything of an administrative, accounting, land, production, legal etc at the producer client. They will be well educated and senior enough to fully understand what the producer wants and needs. They are the people who know how to do the job, and they can detail these requirements to the developers to build the tools they need to do their job. Our collective objective is to ensure the producer is provided with the most profitable means of oil and gas operations.

The services to the producer are billed and managed by the users organization. People, Ideas & Objects does not foresee the need or desire to be involved in these operations. We are software developers.

So how does People, Ideas & Objects source their funding. The producers that use the software will be subject to a "rental" fee based on their production profile. And yes if a start up producer doesn't have any production then there is no software rental fee. And of course, for users that conduct work with People, Ideas & Objects developers, their clients lack of production does not preclude payment for their services in developing the software.

These rental fees are assessed on an annual basis and for 2010 the assessment will be $1.00 per barrel of oil equivalent per day. So a firm such as Exxon which has 3.921 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, their 2010 software rental assessment would be $3.921 million for the year. Conceptually when we include the National Oil Companies, International Oil Companies, Independents and start up operations. We could conceptually have a revenue stream of approximately $120 million. However that is probably far in excess of what will be realized. And that does not preclude us from increasing the $1.00 charge in subsequent years to a multiple of that.

These fees will be assessed on producers that have contracted with People, Ideas & Objects to participate in the further development of the Draft Specification. The obvious question is why would a producers do this? I think the development of this software under the direction of the user community. With the overall objective of providing the producer firm with the most profitable means of oil and gas exploration and production. The business model that charges the costs of development over the entire industry, once, is compelling and a significant reduction compared to the fees that are paid for SAP and Oracle. Simply there participation is a value adding process to their firm. Having the Users and developers working to most effectively run their firm.

Therefore any producer that wants to begin this process is welcome to join. I know that it is in the best interests of the Users not to identify themselves to a producer. I would caution anyone to do so until this process is moved further ahead. We are fighting the vested interests of management and they like nothing more then to attack any new and innovative way of doing their job. They have different ideas and they will use their budgets to exercise their desires. So please be careful. I will publish within this community a list of any producer that wishes to join this process and have paid their software rental. And to say that we may never see a producer step up is a real possibility. That is why I attempt to deal with the investors and stakeholders of the producer firms. They are the ones that must direct the management to fund these developments. If you know of someone who fits that description then please forward them this information. And please as always join me here.

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