Sharing knowledge enables employees, companies, and the broader industry to reflect on lessons learned from previous projects and increases confidence in predicting outcomes of future projects. The identification of how to become more efficient and how to measure improvements in efficiencies can be revealed when this process works efficiently. The author explores the concept of continuous improvement, by presenting newly developed processes and evaluating subsea intervention case histories in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).

Knowledge sharing exercises can often be overlooked by companies urgently progressing through multiple projects. Best case scenario, lesson learned activities are completed in after action reviews, yielding the product of cumbersome spreadsheets, which can be easily misplaced or forgotten over time. Hess has developed an application for lessons learned, along with a structured process to maintain data quality. Recent interventions have both contributed to capturing new learnings and implementing those already identified into the planning phase of upcoming operations. Time and cost estimation accuracy and operational efficiency initiatives were then evaluated and compared to identify the true value of an effective lessons learned system.

Two coiled tubing (CT) interventions trialed Hess's new application and associated processes. The technical challenges of these projects were evaluated and compared to determine if effectively applying lessons learned could lead to continuous improvement. Observations demonstrated significant improvements to the accuracy of time and cost estimates along with enhanced operational performance, leading to time and cost savings. This practice has helped Hess to reduce the overall uncertainty typically associated with subsea well interventions and allowed for continuous improvement of well intervention performance.

This paper explores the concept and implementation of an effective system to manage lessons learned to achieve improved operational performance and efficiency. Implementing lessons learned and comparing similar projects, allows an engineer to measure precisely the improvement in efficiency. The paper concludes with the evaluation of the impact an industry wide knowledge sharing database could have, and the potential value it could provide to operators in the GOM region.

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