SPE 104344

Technical Competence Assessment System for Oil & Gas Company Personnel;
Increasing Training Efficiency Through Short Courses
A.U. Dmitriev, SPE, and D.N. Brusnitsyn, Heriot-Watt Centre, TPU

Copyright 2006, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2006 SPE Russian Oil and Gas Technical
Conference and Exhibition held in Moscow, Russia, 36 October 2006.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE Program Committee following review of
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presented, have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to
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Abstract
It is obvious that the successful development of an oil & gas
company largely depends on a consistent system of personnel
training and development. To optimize such a system, there
has to be a method ensuring maximum training efficiency.
This method that takes into account most advanced Russian
and Western technologies was developed by Heriot-Watt
Approved Support Centre at TPU. This System of Assessing
Technical Competence of Oil & Gas Personnel is now
successfully
implemented
at
OAO
SibneftNoyabrskneftegaz. Assessing tools, including the software,
are used by the Company HR managers to assess technical
competence of the personnel without any outside assistance.
Recommendations for personnel development are further
taken into account when planning Companys technical
training programs for the employees. Skill assessment is an
established procedure used for identifying personnel needs for
technical training. Individual development plans for the
employees are developed for the same purposes, the next step
being the development of integrated corporate training
programs. When a certain stage is completed, another
assessment is performed in order to monitor employees
progress or adjust the plans.
This article covers various issues of applying skill assessment
techniques based on the experience with OAO SibneftNoyabrskneftegaz (Noyabrsk, Russia).

Task Description
Any company that is selecting training courses for its
employees needs to resolve several issues (same issues are
faced by the training centres as well), i.e.: which courses are
really required by the industry? what are the most vital topics?
what would be training needs of particular employees and
which training provider would be able to satisfy them? Thus, a
mechanism that would ensure maximum training efficiency is
very much required.
With this in mind, experts of Heriot-Watt Aproved Support
Centre offered an implementation of technical competence
assessment to OAO Sibneft-Noyabrskneftegaz; this method
allows most careful adjustment of personnel training process
to the needs of the company and its business. Besides, this
method would allow the oil company to monitor personnel
development, and at the same time, allow Heriot-Watt Centre
to identify companys actual training needs in order to update
its short courses offered at the Russian market of educational
services. Similar competence assessment procedures are used
by most Western oil companies and now emerge in Russia.
The project was started in 2005, and now its on its way.
Assessing tools, including the software, are used by the
Company HR managers to assess technical competence of the
personnel without any outside assistance. Recommendations
for personnel development are further taken into account when
planning Companys technical training programs for the
employees.

Stages of Technical Competence Assessment

Centres task was to analyze the activities and assess technical
competence of personnel involved in Supervising Office and
Chief Geologist Office of OAO Sibneft-Noyabrskneftegaz
in order to provide recommendations for development,
technical training and ways of increasing overall efficiency of
the personnel related to the aforementioned offices. To do it,
the Centre consulted most prominent experts from various oil
companies and developed the workflow for the project. It was
decided that the personnel assessment would be profile-based.
The implementation of profile-based approach requires deep
analysis of requirements to the employees assessed that would

allow comparing them to each other directly. All the tools and
deliverables were integrated into the System of Assessing
Technical Competence of Sibneft-Noyabrskneftegaz
Personnel, a software product developed by the Centre. The
purpose of the system is to provide centralized storage of
certain HR information related to personnel assessment,
provide the tools for the Customers HR Department to create
technical competence profiles and use them for assessing
personnel competence without outside assistance. This
software product offers automated assessment (in 3 ways:
testing, self-assessment, expert assessment) and presents the
deliverables in the suitable form, which allows making
managerial decisions.
The project was based on the Technical Competence
Assessment Flowchart (Figure 1).
Stage 1. The first stage is the analysis of the activity that a
particular office is involved into and the analysis of role that a
particular specialist is supposed to play (typically set out as a
job description). This allows identifying inefficiency in
business process organization and increasing personnel
awareness at the very initial stage of the project. Any issues
identified at this stage are ducomented and further included
into the final recommendations report.
Another activity taken at this stage is building a catalog of
professional criteria. This set of characteristics and
requirements to the employee, varying depending on the job
description, is the foundation of the profile-based approach.
Characteristics (indices) should be described and grouped into
a certain number of categories. Each level of requirements is
related to a certain index and should be described as well.
Each level of requirement corresponds to a certain skill level
of the employee. The catalog of professional criteria allows
taking into account requirements stipulated by the peculiarities
of a certain job and the quality of the personnel.
Identification and development of the criteria is possible only
through knowledge and experience of the experts involved
into the corresponding area of petroleum industry.

SPE 104344

Basic level (awareness). The employee is aware of the topic,

understands its major advantages and disadvantages.
Knowledge level (practical skills). The employee has attended
training courses, learned the methodology and is able to work
under supervision.
Profiling level. Proficiency. The employee applies the topic in
various projects; provides consultancy and guidance.
Each of the subsections of the catalog was described in terms
of these competence levels based on the character of activities
that the employee is involved into and requirements imposed
on him/her.
Stage 3. Assessment made in order to draw conclusions
regarding training needs of a particular employee, depending
on the job description and skill level.
The level of technical competence required to occupy the
position is contained in competence rulers (job technical
competence profiles), in order to identify actual competence
level of each employee, they were questioned.
Questionnaires were built by Centre experts from a pool of
questions developed for each profile section and approved by
Customers experts. Each question was assigned a certain
weighting coefficient according to the level of competence
(basic, knowledge, profiling). It was also decided that the test
is considered passed, and the employee is eligible for the next
grade if he/she answered more than 75% of the questions
correctly. Thus, for a positive result, the total approach of the
actual score towards the profile was supposed to be at least
75% (Figure 3).
Stage 4. Conclusions and recommendations.
The comparison of each employees actual competence level
to the required profile made it possible to draw both general
and individual conclusions based on assessment results.
Individual Conclusions

The Centre both carries advanced knowledge and possesses

expets with extensive experience in various areas of the
industry. Accumulation of these resources within the project
allowed identifying and describing the topics included into the
catalog, on a short-time basis. The catalog of professional
criteria created by experts of the Centre for OAO SibneftNoyabrskneftegaz at this stage of the project, became a
unique component and foundation for the subsequent actions
(Figure 2).
Stage 2. Building competence rulers (job profiles), positioning
of the topics selected from the catalog to competence levels
for each job to be assessed. This results in developing a
technical competence profile for each job, which actually
describes the requirements to knowledge and skills that a
person occupying a certain job within the company should
have. We used three-level competence system:

The individual conclusions reflect employees existing lack of

skill and knowledge. Based on competence levels and
priorities set forth in technical competence profiles, an
individual development plan is built for each employee. This
individual plan is regarded as a recommendation for additional
training and serves as a basis for building optimized
development programs for each employee (Figure 4).
All the results of technical competence assessment are stored
in employees personal record in the System of Techcnial
Competence Monitoring.
Based on integrated results, groups of short course attendees
are formed, consisting of employees who need technical
training and whose training needs are proved by their actual
competence level and job profile requirements.

SPE 104344

Recommendations regarding personnel training and

development schemes are of a private character; they are
based on both individual and general conclusions drawn from
assessment results, as well as on the results of activity analysis
performed suring Stage 1.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Thus, the method of technical skill assessment developed by
Heriot-Wat Centre and implemented at OAO SibneftNoyabrskneftegaz provides the following functionality:
audit of knowledge and skills of oil company
employees (particularly, after restructurization)
through a system of specifically developed
questionnaires;
identification of strong and weak points of companys
personnel, and the company in general;
assessment of companys or its business units
competitive advantages within the industry;
formulation of requirements to candidates aiming at
certain job positions within the company;
planning optimized training programs (increasing
training efficiency).
Based on the competence assessment performed in 2005 on
Supervising Office and Chief Geologist Office personnel, the
following actions were taken:
Individual conclusions were drawn from the results of
teehcnical competence assessment: weak areas of each
assessed employee were identified; individual training
recommendations were given, the priorities of training courses
to be taken were set, according to employees competence in a
given area.
General conclusions were drawn from assessment results;
mean level of personnel competence was determined.
Special software for HR departments was developed, allowing
automated skill assessment of employees and building
individual and group personnel development plans for the
company. This software allows repeated technical competence
assessment, thus, it can be used to monitor personnels
progress.
References
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Heriot-Watt , . , V

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SPE 104344

Analysis
of professional
activities
Knowledge
Skill
Experience

Role

Job Description

Catalog of Criteria
(characteristics)

Profile of required
competence

Assessment

General
conclusions and
recommendations

Analysis of
weak areas

Individual plans for

development and
technical training

Fig. 1. Technical Competence Assessment Flowchart

Fig. 2. Fragment of the Catalog of Professional Criteria (software screenshot)

SPE 104344

Fig. 3. Testing for the Profile Grade 1 Process Engineer, Supervising Office (software screenshot)

Fig. 4. Assessment Results for the Profile Grade 1 Process Engineer, Supervising Office (software screenshot)