An Interactive 5-Day Training Course
Best Practices in Surface Production Operations Management
Best practices for running safe, reliable production operations
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Duration
5 Days
Price
$ 4,000
Starting From
22 Feb 2027
Best Practices in Surface Production Operations Management
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Best Practices in Surface Production Operations Management - SF-BPSPOM-PEA27
| Code | Date | Time | Duration | Location | Currency | Early Bird Fee Per Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SF-BPSPOM-PEA27 | 22 - 26 Feb 2027 | 10 AM CST | 4 Hours / Day |
Online |
USD |
4000 |
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Best Practices in Surface Production Operations Management
A management-level course on running surface production operations. It covers production surveillance and deferment accounting, maintenance and reliability strategy, asset integrity and inspection management, operating procedures and management of change, process safety and risk management, operating cost control, competency and shift organisation, contractor management and structured performance improvement. The focus is operational management rather than process or equipment design.
Description
A production facility is designed once and operated for decades. Over that period the difference between a well run operation and a poorly run one is measured in uptime, in integrity incidents, in operating cost per barrel and in the number of times a plant trips for a reason that was preventable. Those outcomes are not determined by the design; they are determined by how the operation is managed — whether losses are measured and attributed, whether maintenance is planned around failure mechanisms or around the calendar, whether procedures are current, whether change is controlled, and whether the people on shift have the competence and the authority to act.
This course covers that management ground. It addresses the production operating philosophy and the organisation that delivers it, production surveillance with deferment and loss accounting, the maintenance strategies available and how to select between them, reliability analysis and root cause investigation, asset integrity and inspection programmes, corrosion and ageing plant management, operating procedures, permit to work and management of change, process safety management and major accident hazard control, operating cost structure and cost control, energy and emissions management, competency development and shift handover, contractor and service provider management, and structured performance improvement including benchmarking and continuous improvement methods. The material is aimed at people who are accountable for a plant rather than for a calculation
Operational performance is easy to describe and difficult to achieve. The plant should run continuously at its capacity, produce on specification, consume as little energy and chemical as possible, remain within its integrity envelope, and never harm anyone. Every operating organisation states these objectives. The variation between organisations lies entirely in the systems and habits that translate the objectives into daily behaviour.
The starting point is measurement. An operation that does not account for its losses cannot improve them, because the causes remain anecdotal. Deferment accounting — recording every barrel not produced, attributing it to a cause, and analysing the pattern — converts a general sense that the plant runs badly into a ranked list of specific problems. The same principle applies to maintenance: without failure data and analysis, maintenance defaults to fixed intervals that are either wasteful or inadequate, and rarely correct.
The second element is control of change and of condition. Most serious incidents in process operations trace back to a modification that was not properly assessed, a procedure that no longer matched the plant, a protective device that had been overridden, or degradation that inspection did not detect. Integrity management, permit systems, management of change and process safety practice exist to close those gaps, and they work only when they are applied consistently under production pressure rather than when convenient.
The third element is people. Plants are operated by shift teams whose competence, judgement and communication determine how abnormal situations end. Competency frameworks, training, handover discipline and clear authority to shut down are as much a part of operational performance as the equipment is. This course treats all three elements as a single management system.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Establish a production operating philosophy and an operations organisation aligned to it
- Implement production surveillance, deferment accounting and loss attribution and act on the results
- Select appropriate maintenance strategies and build a maintenance programme around actual failure mechanisms
- Apply reliability analysis and structured root cause investigation to recurring failures
- Establish asset integrity and inspection programmes including corrosion and ageing plant management
- Develop and maintain operating procedures, permit to work systems and management of change processes
- Apply process safety management principles and control major accident hazards
- Analyse and control operating cost, energy consumption and emissions
- Build competency frameworks, shift organisation and handover practices that support safe reliable operation
- Run a structured performance improvement programme using benchmarking and measurable targets
Organisations sending participants to this training will:
- Increase production uptime and reduce deferment through systematic loss identification and elimination
- Reduce operating cost per unit produced without compromising integrity or reliability
- Strengthen asset integrity management and reduce the risk of major incidents
- Improve maintenance effectiveness by targeting actual failure mechanisms rather than fixed intervals
- Raise workforce competency and improve consistency of operation between shifts and sites
- Establish measurable performance standards and a working improvement cycle
Participants will:
- Manage a production operation against clear performance measures
- Identify and eliminate the real causes of production loss rather than the visible symptoms
- Build maintenance, integrity and inspection programmes that are technically justified
- Apply process safety and management of change discipline under operational pressure
- Control operating cost while protecting reliability and integrity
- Lead shift teams and contractors effectively and develop their competence
- Production and operations managers and superintendents
- Field and plant supervisors and shift leaders
- Production, process and facilities engineers moving into operational roles
- Maintenance, reliability and integrity engineers and their supervisors
- Health, safety and environment professionals supporting production operations
- Asset managers and technical authorities accountable for facility performance
- Contractor and service provider management staff working on operating facilities
Module 1 — Production Operations Framework and Organisation
- Operating philosophy and its translation into daily practice
- Operations organisation structures and accountability
- Roles of operations, maintenance, engineering and integrity functions
- Operating envelopes, limits and authority to act
- Documentation hierarchy: philosophy, procedures, work instructions
- Interfaces with subsurface, projects and commercial functions
- Setting operational performance objectives and standards
Module 2 — Production Surveillance and Loss Management
- Production accounting, measurement and data quality
- Deferment definition, categorisation and recording discipline
- Loss attribution and the difference between cause and symptom
- Production potential and capacity determination
- Surveillance routines, exception reporting and alarm review
- Well and plant performance monitoring
- Loss ranking and prioritisation of improvement effort
- Reporting production performance to management and partners
Module 3 — Maintenance Strategy and Execution
- Maintenance types: corrective, preventive, predictive and condition based
- Criticality assessment and equipment classification
- Reliability centred maintenance principles and application
- Building a maintenance programme around failure mechanisms
- Planning, scheduling and work order management
- Shutdown and turnaround planning and execution
- Spares strategy, critical spares and obsolescence
- Backlog management and maintenance performance measures
Module 4 — Reliability, Failure Analysis and Improvement
- Failure data collection and equipment history
- Reliability measures: availability, mean time between failures and uptime
- Bad actor identification and analysis
- Root cause analysis methods and investigation discipline
- Distinguishing technical, procedural and organisational causes
- Corrective action tracking and verification of effectiveness
- Condition monitoring: vibration, thermography, oil analysis and performance testing
- Building a reliability improvement programme
Module 5 — Asset Integrity and Inspection Management
- Integrity management framework and its components
- Degradation mechanisms in production plant
- Corrosion management: monitoring, inhibition and inspection
- Risk based inspection principles and planning
- Pressure systems, vessels and pipework inspection requirements
- Safety critical elements and performance standards
- Ageing plant, life extension and fitness for service
- Anomaly management, temporary repairs and deferral control
Module 6 — Operating Procedures, Permits and Management of Change
- Procedure development, validation and periodic review
- Start-up, shutdown, abnormal and emergency operating procedures
- Permit to work systems and isolation practice
- Confined space, hot work and high risk activity control
- Management of change: technical, procedural and organisational
- Temporary modifications and their control
- Override and inhibit management for protective systems
- Documentation control and as-built accuracy
Module 7 — Process Safety and Risk Management
- Process safety versus occupational safety
- Major accident hazards in production operations
- Hazard identification and risk assessment techniques
- Layers of protection and barrier management
- Safety instrumented systems and their integrity
- Relief, blowdown and flare system management in operation
- Process safety performance indicators, leading and lagging
- Incident reporting, investigation and learning transfer
- Safety culture and its practical indicators
Module 8 — Operating Cost, Energy and Emissions Management
- Operating cost structure and cost drivers in production operations
- Unit operating cost analysis and benchmarking
- Chemical consumption analysis and optimisation
- Energy consumption, efficiency and utility optimisation
- Flaring and venting reduction
- Emissions monitoring, reporting and reduction programmes
- Cost reduction without reliability loss: what works and what fails
- Budgeting, forecasting and cost control practice
Module 9 — Competency, Shift Organisation and Contractor Management
- Competency frameworks and assessment for operations roles
- Training programmes, simulation and on-the-job development
- Shift patterns, manning levels and fatigue management
- Shift handover practice and communication discipline
- Control room management and alarm handling
- Contractor selection, mobilisation and supervision
- Contract structures and their effect on behaviour
- Managing the operator-contractor interface on live plant
Module 10 — Performance Improvement and Operational Excellence
- Defining and selecting operational key performance indicators
- Benchmarking against internal and external comparators
- Structured improvement methods and their application to production
- Debottlenecking and capacity improvement in operating plant
- Digital tools, data systems and remote monitoring in operations
- Sustaining improvement and preventing regression
- Operational readiness for new facilities and modifications
- Building an improvement plan for an operating asset
Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.
Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.
This course is led by a production operations and integrity management specialist with more than 20 years in the oil and gas industry, built on running the plant well — uptime, integrity, cost and the people who deliver them.
He currently holds operations and asset integrity leadership responsibility with a major operator managing surface production assets, covering production surveillance, maintenance strategy and process safety — the disciplines that keep plants running safely and profitably. Earlier in his career he served as an operations engineer on major producing assets, leading reliability and performance improvement initiatives on some of the industry's most operationally demanding facilities. Across two decades he has taken several operating teams from reactive maintenance through to disciplined, high-performing operations.
That operating background shapes how he teaches. Delegates learn not only how operations are meant to run, but how they actually run in the field — where uptime is really lost, why maintenance and reliability strategies fail to deliver, what drives integrity incidents, how competency and contractor management affect performance, and how operations and management teams resolve these issues together. Every module is anchored in real plant performance data, operating decisions and lessons from producing assets.
His subject coverage spans the full operations management chain: production surveillance and loss accounting, maintenance and reliability strategy, integrity management, operating procedures, process safety, competency, contractor management and performance improvement.
He has delivered production operations and management training for many years across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia, working with mixed groups of engineers, operators, supervisors and management at every level of experience. He is an active contributor to industry forums on operations excellence and asset integrity.
His approach is practical, discussion-led and grounded in real plant operations — not the textbook.
Frequently Asked Questions
All course bookings made through PEA are strictly non-refundable. By registering for a course, you acknowledge and accept that all fees are payable in full and are not subject to refund under any circumstances, including changes in personal or professional commitments or partial attendance.
PEA reserves the right to make reasonable adjustments to course content, trainers, or schedules where necessary, without entitling delegates to a refund. Comprehensive details of each course — including objectives, target audience, and content — are clearly outlined before enrolment, and it is the responsibility of the delegate to ensure the course's suitability prior to booking.
For any inquiries related to cancellations or bookings, please contact our support team, who will be happy to assist you.
