Project Management for Oil and Gas
Capital projects, turnarounds, and the systems that run them.
What makes project delivery hard in oil and gas
Since 2010, EPMA has worked inside energy project organizations in Houston and across North America. Upstream operators, midstream pipeline and terminal companies, refiners, and oilfield services. Energy project organizations do not fail for lack of effort. They fail against conditions the rest of industry does not face in the same combination.
Resource management and project intake
Most organizations know what every project should cost. Far fewer know what their people are already committed to. The next project gets approved on the assumption that capacity will appear, and whether the organization can absorb it alongside everything already running gets asked once execution is underway.
Disconnected project dashboards and reporting
A project reports on track until the week it was due. The signals were there months earlier, but cost sits in one system, schedule in another, contractor progress in a third, and the portfolio view is assembled by hand once a month.
Capital budget forecasting and spend tracking
Groups overestimate at budget time to protect their projects. Spend then goes untracked against plan, so the gap stays invisible. Finance wants over-allocated capital back in H1 while it can still be redeployed. By Q4 that window has closed and the only option left is to spend it.
Schedule integration across sites, regions and contractors
Every site, division and partner runs its schedule its own way. Different WBS, different levels of detail, different update cycles. When two of your own assets cannot be compared, nobody can say which project is behind and which one simply reports differently.
Cyclical workforce planning and contractor scaling
Oil and gas runs on contractors to a degree most industries do not. Capacity scales with commodity prices, and institutional knowledge leaves with every downturn. Every upturn means competing for the same schedulers and cost analysts as every other operator in Houston.
What we do in oil and gas
Project Management Consulting
We build and run the delivery capability rather than managing any single project.
- Delivery assessment. Where the capability actually stands before anyone spends money fixing it. Current state, the gaps that matter, and a right-sized plan rather than a transformation programme nobody asked for.
- PMO design and build. Standing up a PMO for a capital project organization, or rebuilding one that has drifted. Structure, roles, cadence and governance that fit how the business already runs.
- Project controls. Cost, schedule, estimating and change management. The disciplines that turn a plan into something you can hold a team and a contractor to.
- Portfolio governance. Stage gates people actually use, prioritization that reflects real capacity, and a decision rhythm leadership can rely on. Right-sized for where the organization is today and built to evolve.
- Resource and capacity management. Visibility into what your people are already committed to, so the next project is approved on evidence rather than optimism.
- PMO managed services (EPO®). For organizations that do not want to build and rebuild a PMO through every cycle, our EPO® runs it as a managed service. The capability stays constant while your headcount flexes.
- Training and enablement. Project management training and coaching, so the capability stays after we leave.
Project management consulting · PMO and project delivery · PPM optimization · Training
Technology Consulting
We are platform-agnostic by design. Most firms in this space sell one platform and make the problem fit it. We start from what your organization actually needs, then recommend accordingly, whether that is a platform you already own, one we partner with, our own product, or something built for you. A partner tied to a single vendor hands you that vendor’s roadmap, whether or not it still fits the way you work.
- Where we start. An assessment of the current environment and what the organization needs it to do. Platform selection comes after that, not before.
- Platforms we implement and optimize. OnePlan, edison365, the Microsoft stack (Project Server, Planner, Power Platform, SharePoint, Dynamics 365 Project Operations), and PPMX, our own PPM platform.
- Primavera P6 environments. Work in P6 shops takes three shapes: migrating off it where it no longer fits, consulting on the processes around it while leaving it in place, and supplying schedulers who work in it. Which one depends on the organization, not on what we would prefer to sell.
- Custom solutions. Where no platform fits the way an organization works, we build. That is a real option here rather than a last resort.
- Integration. Connecting PPM to the business systems that already hold the money and the work. ERP, CRM, financial and HR systems, so cost, schedule and resourcing agree without anyone entering the same thing twice.
- Automation. Workflow automation for the processes still running on email and spreadsheets. Stage gate checks, approvals and routing, status collection, resource and change requests. The work that happens between the steps, which is where delivery usually slows down without anyone being able to point at why.
- Reporting and business intelligence. Executive and portfolio reporting built on data the business already trusts. The month-end assembly of a portfolio view by hand is a cost most organizations have stopped noticing, and it is the first thing this removes.
Tailored PPM solutions · Automation and integration · Reporting and business intelligence · PPM support
Staffing
Four groups of roles, and they are not the same market.
- Project and portfolio management. Project managers, program managers, portfolio analysts, PMO leads and business analysts. The broader delivery population, and the largest share of what we place.
- Project controls. Cost analysts, schedulers (including Primavera P6), estimators, change analysts and document controls. Specialist roles with demand that spikes around turnarounds and capital project ramps rather than running flat.
- Project engineering. Project engineers, facilities engineers and discipline leads on capital projects. Owner’s-side engineering roles that carry project responsibility, which is a different hire from a project manager and a different hire from a design engineer.
- IT and technology. A heavy part of the book, and broader than project technology. Network engineers, security, developers, business systems specialists, data and reporting, infrastructure and application support. These are hired by the IT group inside energy companies whose own sector has nothing to do with technology.
Contract, contract to hire and direct hire. Every placement is W2, no C2C and no 1099. In an industry where contractor compliance gets audited, that is worth stating plainly.
Proof
Each engagement links to the full case study.
Halliburton, a global oilfield services company, replaced an aging project management system with Microsoft Project Server, integrated to its corporate ERP so progress capture and resource time entry stopped happening twice. Nine divisions had to agree on one approach. Project managers were trained through onsite three-day courses across international locations, and a third-party workflow tool was phased into the training materials and the custom reports. Result: visibility into planned work, actual hours and project costs, and lower month-end overhead.
Schlumberger, a global oilfield services operation, was running more than 100 significant projects at different development stages with no centralized EPM system, which made it hard to tell which were running smoothly and which needed attention. EPMA planned and implemented Microsoft Project Server, built custom reports that gave project teams the data they were missing, and delivered training to over 200 users onsite and by web conference, followed by an administration and support plan. Result: standardized timekeeping, progress tracking, scheduling and reporting.
Canrig Drilling, a manufacturer of oil-drilling equipment, had outgrown its project management tools, with limited resource capacity constraining productivity and no efficient way to report project status to its parent organization. EPMA optimized the PMO, implemented Microsoft Project Server, integrated it with existing systems and automated manual steps so project managers spent less time building reports. Result: resource capacity and utilization became visible, project costs trackable, and key business drivers allowed automatic prioritization of a growing project pipeline.
Schlumberger, a global oil and gas technology provider, moved an entire manufacturing facility across the country while keeping it operational and in full production. Four divisions with separate requirements were affected, the client had no experience relocating a facility, and much of the workforce did not move, creating a shortage of qualified resources. EPMA built schedules covering both decommissioning and commissioning, established a liaison between project teams and stakeholders, and shifted the focus from moving equipment to validating the processes needed to operate. Result: the plant shipped billable product three months ahead of the estimated timeline.
“We needed to find a way to report on our resource capacity to get a better understanding of our resource utilization, we also wanted to track the cost of our projects more efficiently. EPMA was fundamental in creating reports that would pull the data exactly as we needed.”
PMO Manager, drilling equipment manufacturer
Common questions
A project management consultant builds the capability to deliver capital projects predictably, rather than managing any single project. That covers PMO design and operation, project controls, portfolio governance, and the reporting that lets executives see where a portfolio actually stands. In energy it usually also means connecting that capability to the ERP and scheduling systems already in place.
Overruns are closer to the norm than the exception. The most common cause is the absence of a reliable feedback loop between what was planned and what is happening. Cost lives in one system, schedule in another, and contractor progress in a third, so variance surfaces weeks after it occurs. Add a workforce that turns over with the commodity cycle and the organization loses the institutional knowledge that would otherwise catch the drift early.
Build internally when project volume is steady and the capability is core to how you compete. Use a managed partner when volume swings with the cycle, because a PMO built in an upturn is the first thing cut in a downturn, and rebuilding it costs more than maintaining it would have. EPMA’s EPO® model exists for the second case.
Most run a mix: heavy capital projects in Primavera P6, corporate and IT portfolios in a PPM platform, finance in an ERP, and reporting in a BI tool or spreadsheets. The difficulty is rarely the individual platform. It is that they do not talk to each other, so no single view of cost and schedule exists without someone assembling it by hand.
Project and portfolio management roles are the largest group: project managers, program managers, portfolio analysts and PMO leads. Project controls follows, because demand for schedulers, cost analysts, estimators and document controls peaks around turnarounds and capital project ramps rather than running flat. IT and technology roles across network engineering, security, development and business systems are a large share, usually hired by the IT group rather than the project organization.
Yes, and that is the normal starting point. Most engagements begin by assessing what is already running, because replacing a working process is expensive and rarely necessary. Where a platform or process does not fit, we say so and show why.
