Drilling to the Core of Training and Education

Facing a wave of retirements and a shortage of experienced replacements, this oil company developed a comprehensive development program for employees at all stages of their careers.

Training and education are vital to maintaining Saudi Aramco's presence in today's marketplace. For more than 75 years, it has met challenges as a national oil company by accelerating the development of professional staff, applying unique company-specific inventions for oil and gas technologies, and providing leadership with tools to proactively manage the technological development of the workforce.

To meet long-term interests and growing challenges in more complex environments, the company's leadership undertook a bold initiative to build a training facility and design an integrated, responsive, customized professional training and development program to support exploration and production.

Time for transition

During the 1980s when oil prices were high, the company engaged in a recruitment campaign to hire professional engineers, which resulted in an increased inflow of petroleum engineering students. However, when oil prices decreased in the early 1990s, the company, and the industry, curtailed recruiting, which led to fewer students entering the profession.

The engineers hired 30 years ago are now close to retirement, fewer replacements will emerge in the next five years, and it takes about 10 years of training in various disciplines to develop the competencies to oversee project development. To respond to these challenges, Saudi Aramco saw 2010 as the year for transition.

A 140,000-square-foot training center was constructed at its headquarters in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, to train Saudi Aramco geoscientists and petroleum engineers. The Upstream Professional Development (UPD) Center has 18 high-tech classrooms with wall-to-wall viewing screens, LCD touch screens with 3-D capability, and breakout areas. The center also provides a drilling simulator where participants perform operations on a simulated rig, including inspecting rock and fluid properties "down hole" and viewing the sedimentology and stratigraphy of rock outcropping.

Curriculum elements

The company's UPD program will become an ongoing, future-paced initiative for upstream operations (exploration and production) technical staff. The curriculum and program will provide the resources needed to bridge the experience gap between young and experienced professionals, connect upstream disciplines in collaborative environments, and confront challenges that Saudi Aramco faces in a global economy.

"In the UPD [Center], participants build relationships and habits that encourage critical thinking and the exploration of all options. We are not only providing training that is collaborative, but communication that is collaborative," says Khalid Zainalabedin, director of continuing excellence.

The UPD curriculum targets the significant phases of the geoscientist's and engineer's career. The professional onboarding program is a first-level program for new hires, and covers their first six months of job-specific training. The second stage is the independent contributor program, with learning content focused on supporting the accelerated development of new geoscientists and engineers. The third and final level program develops the senior professional.

The initial audience comprises the eight upstream job families: geology, geophysics, drilling and workovers, petrophysics, reservoir engineering, production engineering, facilities engineering, and upstream computing. For every job family, the curriculum progresses from new hire to independent contributor to senior professional.

In the initial onboarding portion of the curriculum, students from all job families gain a breadth of information on the business, the contribution made by each discipline, and the integrated workflows required to find, develop, and deliver oil and gas. This also is an opportunity to introduce nontechnical soft skills critical for successful technical performance.

A course-dedicated professional development advisor (PDA), who reports to a management team, a supporting advisory committee, and a group of subject matter experts (SMEs) collaborate to determine the critical company-specific knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to be an independent contributor in a particular job family. This group also determines the training required to support the needs of the senior professionals in the discipline.

Each job family quickly delivers critical knowledge and skills using a curriculum that represents a balance between classroom and on-the-job training. The goal of every flagship course, each of which lasts two weeks and is discipline specific, is to expose the young professionals to Saudi Aramco's operations, techniques, and best practices.

Each discipline PDA/SME team is responsible for the content of a flagship course, which provides a bridge between the knowledge gained at a university and the practical requirements of the job at Saudi Aramco. The courses are intended to help young professionals be immediate contributors, meaning they will become employees who can feel comfortable enough in the work environment to contribute even though they will require significant support.

The instructional methods used in all three levels of the professional development programs include formal classroom training, self-study integrated with work assignments, simulated work experiences, mentored support, communities of practice and appropriate reference materials, and best practices. The overarching program goal is to equip all Saudi Aramco technical professionals with the knowledge and skills to contribute to the business efficiently.

Design process breakdown

Creating the UPD program required several steps and the assistance and collaboration of various employees.

Job analysis process. To establish an outcome-based course, we used a front-end analysis. This process involves working with identified key job performers to determine what work processes and tasks they considered critical to improve performance, and whether these are amenable to improvement through training.

Through structured interviews and observations, a content development team gathered significant details about job functions; job tasks within those functions; key performance elements that make up those tasks; key job outcomes; and the enabling knowledge required to perform the tasks (for example, the necessary tools, information sources, decision making, and critical technologies). The team comprised an instructional designer, a technical writer, a graphics professional, the PDA, and the lead SME, all of whom interviewed key performers in each discipline.

The design team then scrutinized the problematic work processes and tasks to combine them into an outcome-based curriculum. A framework was created to illustrate how work gets done, based on data analysis elicited from key performers.

During this process the team examined the complexity of each task and identified ways to achieve desired performance outcomes—including training, job aids, coaching, and computer-based training—for the proposed courses that were required in the established curriculum.

Define modules and lesson structure. Next the team conducted a more in-depth task analysis to design the content and to sequence the course activities. This process involved determining if and how to combine concepts and tasks into modules. It also required early identification of any potential confusion or interaction among modules that would interfere with learning.

Establish content schematic and define context. The design team next established the topic content schematic and defined the context of each course, addressing issues of prerequisites, and evaluation and content delivery.

Module design. The design team, PDA, and SMEs determined more specific details about each module, including module objectives, outcomes, instructional sequencing, and delivery methods.

A model guided the outcome-based design and development of the training course. This model suggests different types of delivery and practice activities. The model ensures that learners can demonstrate the desired performance level before returning to the job. Each stage in the model moves the learner progressively closer to performance in the job context.

Identify tools. The final stage of the design and development process was the selection of media, tools, and equipment needed for each activity. The team based its selection on the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective actions expected from learners.

Assessment and learning fidelity

The team ensured that the final course design and material reflected accurate information by:

• reviewing the module outcome chart and course introduction against module activities for cohesiveness
• reviewing the delivery method and pacing decisions and the module sequence technique against the activities documented
• reviewing activities against the concepts to ensure that the activities are in sequence
• reviewing the practice methods for relevance to the activities
• establishing the delivery of practice activities and including feedback mechanisms
• updating the objectives to ensure they match the content.

To help improve learning fidelity and transfer to the job, the design team developed a final task-simulation activity. The goal was to design a summary activity for each module with some type of simulation or critical incident technique, and then, at the end of the course, continue the activity and design it to be a seminal process.

When designing the evaluation component of the flagship training curriculum, the design team conducted a 360-degree review. Based on the feedback, the instructors, participants, and course administrators agreed to make four changes: strengthen activities by applying a formative assessment strategy; incorporate pre- and post-questionnaire content measurement using a technique called "knowledge stacking" in the course design; create a "topic review" PowerPoint slide for each topic that explains its purpose and discussion points; and summarize the content at each topic or module transition to allow participants to take one minute to transfer their learning into the action planner.

This outcome-based training approach fits the high-performance training model because of its potential for greater impact and cost savings. Focusing exclusively on what the employee must know to perform effectively usually will result in less time in the classroom because "nice to know" subject matter has been eliminated; job aids are used to augment or replace certain training; and real-time project-based learning activities motivate learners.

Curriculum Assessment

A 360-degree review was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum.

Instructor feedback—The participants were assessed, and then the results were used to adjust the instructional design.

Manager feedback—The participants completed several in-class activities in each module, which were designed to be job-specific tasks and required feedback to determine if the participants understood and could apply the task on the job.

Participant feedback—Most participants reported back to the design team that once they were back on the job they felt ready to perform as expected.