Identifying Early Warnings in Drilling Projects and Finding their Relationships to the Outcomes and Problems of these Projects in Some Real Cases in Iran

Abstract

As projects increase in size and complexity, they become more difficult to handle. One of these large and complex projects is oil and gas projects. The current controlling processes of projects are not able to detect the problems in early phases of the project and are rather late leading to extra time and cost. One solution is to find symptoms of problems in the early phases. Due to the importance of drilling projects in upstream sector, the main objective of this research is to identify the early warning symptoms of problems in drilling projects and to find the relationships between selected early warnings with project outcomes and problems of these projects. To reach that aim, the early warnings have been recognized through literature review and interviews with experts. Then, case study analysis is performed to find the relationships between early warnings and project outcomes. All cases have been selected from previous completed drilling projects in one of the oil fields of Iran. Findings show that there is a relationship between early warnings, project outcomes and projects problems.