OEEC: Knowledge management is all about people, process and technology

On the second day of Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference 2016, Wednesday, October 26 the organisation provided the technical session named Knowledge Management.

Professionals of industry addressed the importance of knowledge within the oil and gas industry and explained the challenging part of getting people involved.

Companies want to know how they can collect and share their experiences, so they can make the industry safer, more efficient, cost-effective and also sustainable. “But due to the downturn the industry is going to a rough time and lots of knowledge has left the industry”, says Michael Nord, Principal Consultant from Fifth Business. He moderates this technical session and introduces the speakers to the audience.

During the session Saskia Rijtema, VP Technology at Heerema Marine Contractors, Rob van der Spek, Global Lead Knowledge Management & Road Mappnig Competence Centre at DNV, GL and Chris Fyfe, Knowledge Management Specialist at FMC Technologies spoke about their businesses, how they implemented knowledge management within the companies and which challenges they face during the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organisation.

At first Saskia Rijtema explains about how they created a system at Heerema Marine Contractors and collect knowledge by data. “We are good in feeding the system and data is coming in but it’s a challenge to make sure that people exactly use it as well.”

According to Rob van der Spek companies should make it simple for employees to share their knowledge. “It is really about people, process and technology”, Van der Spek said. “We should focus on combine data analytics and knowledge management. But also use smart standards and regulatory intelligence.”

He continues: “There is no one-size-fits all for implementing knowledge management.” Rijtema agrees: “The most important thing is that companies make use of a mixture of inventions.”

Chris Fyfe, who showed the audience the different platforms FMC Technologies created where the employees discover, discuss, capture and share knowledge, concludes that there are a challenges but also a lot of changes. “New technologies like video, 3d-printing and virtual reality create a lot of changes to use knowledge management and reaching your employees worldwide. But it is always important to keep in mind that knowledge management can only do with the budget that it has.”

Source: Navingo BV