Petroleum Data Management as a Profession
Philip C. Crouse and Associates, Inc., through Phlip C. Crouse, PE, a petroleum engineer by background, has been advocating the profession of petroleum data management for a number of years, believing that it is truely a new discipline requiring a new recognized petroleum professional for the 21st century oil and gas enterprise.
The new discipline requires a number of cross-functional, hybridized expertises, including computer science, information technology, document management, data and information managment (i.e. interoperabillity, integration, systems managment, software management, hardware management, security, and other functions). Often this hybrid professional comes from traditional backgrounds of geology, geophysics, and engineering disciplines.
Certification in data management is needed to help foster professionalism among and outside this group.
Philip C. Crouse has previously proposed the formation of a separate society or association that would champion and advocate the profession and education of this oil and gas community. A petroleum data managment association would link with all existing societies and their individual communities who are a sliver of the data management solution. The data managment community still needs further recognition within companies. Such recognition would strengthen the petroleum industry in critical ways as the data and information explosion can provide many new opportunites to make captial expenditures more efficient, while finding and developing petroleum assets with lower risk and more certainty.
The affiliation for this group should not be within engineering, geology, geophysics, or any combination of these groups. In studies carried out by Philip C. Crouse and Associates, Inc., it was clear that the majority of data managers and data management staff were not sufficiently respected by the traditional professionals in the petroleum enterprise. Yet, this group is the group that is critical for other functions to achieve work efficiencies, success and minimize their times to analyze, solve, recommend and implement.
"With Experience Comes Wisdom but the Trick is Linking Events and Processes to Get to Wisdom - This is the Purpose of the Data Management Discipline"
Philip C.Crouse
1. We must organize occurances or facts to get data.
2. We must organize data to get information.
3. We must organize information to get knowledge.
4. We must organize knowledge to get wisdom.
5. We must organize wisdom to achieve perfection.
6. We must have an understanding of best practices and
know our systems and structures to get past Stage 2!
Otherwise, we have squandered our data and investment.
©Copyright 2007, Philip C. Crouse and Associates, Inc.