Knowledge portals support widely distributed oilfield projects

This paper documents how Project Knowledge Portals facilitate knowledge capture, validation, preservation, and sharing across widely distributed oilfield projects. These portals serve as the project focal point for the capturing of key project objectives, plans, processes, and activities. In addition, the portal connects the project to all other distributed projects, experts, and corporate knowledge repositories. Projects can be held to the highest Quality, Health, Safety and Environmental (QHSE) standards by means of a transparent and easily auditable, web-accessible management system. By storing project data on a secure web server, employees worldwide can have access to the content anytime and anywhere. Currently over 300 projects with project knowledge portals have been developed. Benefits of the implementation of the project knowledge portal include the reduction of lost project data, enhanced collaboration between projects and technical experts, minimization of travel, and reduced intranet bandwidth consumption. Project files are classified according to stringent confidentiality standards. Selected files may be made available to specified clients and subcontractors allowing cross-organizational teams to effectively share data, hence significantly reducing administrative engineering.