Offshore staff
ABERDEEN, UK – The Oil & Gas Technology Centre is collaborating with Robert Gordon University (RGU) to identify behavioral barriers to technology deployment on the UK continental shelf (UKCS).
Currently the Centre is working with the UK industry on more than 50 field trials of new technologies but claims more needs to be done to help develop the full potential of the UK’s remaining oil and gas reserves.
The two-year research program with RGU will:
- Identify psychological factors that influence the deployment of new technology and tools across the UKCS
- Identify best practice to overcome any barriers, in part drawing on experience from other industries such as retail and automotive
- Develop a toolkit to support companies trying to deploy and adopt new technologies.
According to the Centre, the oil and gas industry has been working hard to address understand the human factors affecting safety, and many of the findings are relevant to the challenge of technology take-up.
David Millar, TechX Director at the Centre, said: “The race to be second in terms of adopting new technology is not unique to the oil and gas industry but has been a real barrier in recent years…
“Ultimately humans are the enabler or barrier to some of the new technology being adopted. So, we need to spend more time understanding the complexities of these human factors to ensure everything we do is for the benefit of the industry. We want to create a deep understanding and develop a practical toolkit with RGU that can be used throughout industry to help the deployment of new technology rapidly and make a real difference.
“There is an ever-expanding spectrum of new technologies out there that will help us maximize the economic recovery from the UKCS. If we understand what influences the decision-making process for adopting new technologies, it will make it easier for us to work with industry to transform the future of the oil and gas industry.”
Luca Corradi, Innovation Network Director, added: “Too often new technology succeeds at pilot stage but fails or takes too long to be widely adopted. This is rarely to do with the technical features of the technology and often a consequence of underestimating the human factors in technology deployment.
“This research program will help both technology developers and operating companies understand and address these factors to both improve the speed and success rate when developing or introducing new technology.”
10/05/2018
