Katy - Offshore Installation Manager

Length of video: 11 minutes 49 seconds

Name: Katy Barr

Job title: Offshore Installation Manager

[Text on screen: About Dunbar platform]

I am the Offshore Installation Manager or OIM for the Dunbar platform in the Northern North Sea for TotalEnergies. 

The water depth where I work is around 130 metres deep, so we have steel legs which reach down to the seabed and then the platform itself sits above the sea at a height of about 30 metres. 

We have what we call wells which are drilled into the reservoir in the ground where the oil and gas is. We pump the oil and gas out of those wells onto the platform where we have what we call separation facilities. The separation facilities are where we separate the oil and the gas from the water.

Now water has no value, so generally we would re-inject the water back into the reservoir and for the gas and the oil, we would export for sale. 

The platform has also got rooms and a gym and a canteen, or the galley as we call it, and a big recreation room. Then you might have some drilling or well servicing facilities as well to do some work on the wells.

[Text on screen: About the role]

The Offshore Installation Manager 's role means that I'm responsible for everybody on the platform and there's about 55 people there. I look after not only the technical and production side but also the welfare and wellbeing of everybody on board. 

That means that if something goes wrong for health, safety and the environment, then I have to make sure that we respond in the right way and make sure that everybody is okay in those situations.

On a day to day basis, it is to manage all of those people and to make sure everything is running smoothly. Making sure that we're meeting our production targets, making sure that everybody is staying safe and well on board, making sure that everybody is working safely, looking after the environment, making sure that we are not flaring too much, that we are not emitting any oil into the sea.

If there's an emergency on board, I will take control of the emergency. We call it command and control. Everybody has to do what I tell them in that instance. That is the main part of my job, being ready for emergency response should it happen. So my position is to manage everybody and all of the activities on board but also to be there in case anything goes wrong.

[Text on screen: Roles onboard]

My job is the top position on the platform. I'm the offshore Installation Manager. Beneath me I've got various different departments and there's lots of people doing lots of different jobs and different responsibilities on the site. 

So you'll have an Operations Superintendent and they will look after production and they'll look after maintenance. So the reason that we're all there is to produce oil and gas. The Production or Operations Superintendent will make sure that we're meeting our production targets every day and will work with the production team to do that. 

You'll then have a Maintenance Superintendent, so quite often you'll have to take equipment like pumps and compressors and machinery offline to be maintained. Similar to how you would fix a car. If it's running continuously, we have to maintain all of our equipment. 

You then might have somebody who works in drilling or well servicing and they'll look after when we have to do some work on our wells. 

We have somebody who we call the Chef Manager, or the camp boss, and he looks after the food, he looks after the rooms.

We'll have a Medic and they will look after everybody's health and wellbeing if there's an emergency. 

We'll have Technicians and we'll have Operators, Stewards and Stewardesses, we would have Chefs. It's a very, very varied environment. 

And then you'll also have groups of people, specialist people who'll come out to do specialist works occasionally on our various different pieces of equipment and activities.

[Text on screen: Well servicing]

I work on a mature asset. Dunbar is 30 years old and we export through another platform called the North Alwyn which is nearly 40 years old. So a lot of our wells are quite old. 

We do drill what we call infill wells which are existing wells, an old well slot as we call it. You'll drill into that and that helps maintain our production. 

Most of what we do on the Dunbar is called well servicing. You won't be drilling a new well but you will go in and you might reperforate. So if you think of a well as like a tube going right down its reservoir, could be a lot of kilometres down, it's going right down into the reservoir. And at the bottom of the well you use perforating guns which are explosives and they punch holes out of the edge of the tube and that allows the oil and gas and water to flow into the well. 

With well servicing work, you wouldn't be drilling a new hole, but you might go down into the well and you would reperforate. It's really, really clever stuff. It's really cool technology and the guys that run these tools and the engineers that engineer these well servicing programmes to do it, they're really smart because they're telling you what's happening maybe 10 kilometres down and 5 kilometres away by looking at just computer models or looking at the feedback that they're getting from their tools as it goes down the hole. What that does is we can improve our production to help maintain our production rates, but also use it if there's something gone wrong.

So say we have safety valves inside that tube. That safety valve can fail sometimes. You have to go down and replace it. You're working blind as nobody's ever been down there. Nobody's ever going to be able to see what's happening down there but the information that the guys that are operating these tools and designing these programmes can see from their equipment, it's really, really clever and a very cool thing to see when you're out on the site.

[Text on screen: What I love about my job]

I absolutely love my job in that I get to work with so many different people and no day is the same. Every day we are solving problems. 

The Dunbar installation is quite old, it's 30 years old now. Things do break as they would do with an old car but then there's also the people management side of it and I get to work with so many really cool and diverse people who are there to just do different jobs.

Not only do we work together but we all live together as well. And in my position, I can make a real impact on people's day to day lives and a real positive impact on people's day to day lives while we're on board. Putting extra money into the food budget means that we can give people really nice food which always cheers everybody up. We can buy new gym equipment which makes people's lives better on board. 

I am the boss of the whole place so I get to make all the decisions and get to be part of and involved in everything and it's really exciting and every day is completely different. 

You can go from solving a technical problem about something, to discussing what's on the menu for Saturday night, to working out how we're going to unblock the toilets, to then going outside and finding that the flare has blown out in high winds so we have to climb right up the drilling derrick a few hundred metres up in the air to get that re-lit. It can be really interesting and it can be really varied and it can be really tough, but it's a really unique job and a really unique position to be in.

[Text on screen: Qualifications and pathway]

My background, I have a degree in chemical and process engineering and I started work as a process engineer and went offshore and worked my way up to the OIM's position. 

Lots of other people will come from being production operators and production supervisors and then working their way up. Whether you're degree qualified or whether you come from a technician background or from a different background, there's lots and lots of different opportunities.

Some of the best people I've worked with offshore are people who've come through for example apprenticeship schemes. They generally give us our best technicians. 

Somebody once said to me that you have to go into a room to see what doors lead off that room and I think that's really good advice because if I'd never taken the chance offshore as a commissioning engineer, I would never have known that I loved offshore so much and worked my way up to OIM. 

But you do, you have to try these things and see where it leads and if it doesn't lead where you want to go, you take a step back and you try something else.

[Text on screen: Meta skills]

The meta skills that are important in my job are collaborating. You have to be able to collaborate with people from all different walks of life, all different backgrounds, all different disciplines. 

As a leader in that team, you're having to manage everybody and having to manage people who are away from home. They might have their issues on their minds that they're not necessarily 100% focused on work, and you have to be that leader to make sure that every day everybody is engaged in work, that they're focused, that they're working safely, that they're working towards the goals of the installation.

For example, my leadership skills, I always make sure my office door is open. I will let anybody at any time come in to have a chat with me about anything that's on their mind. It might be that they didn't have a great breakfast, it might be that they've got a serious safety concern about something on the installation. 

A leader for me is really important about being empathetic about people's needs because I believe if you give people the time and the space to come and speak to you and you listen to what's on their mind, they will then know that they're valued and they will then put their energy and effort and attention into working really hard for you and for the installation and you'll get the best out of people like that.

[Text on screen: Misconceptions]

I don't look like a typical OIM. Most OIMs are male and what I would say is as a woman offshore, it's actually a really fantastic place to work. 

There is a misconception that it's going to be an unwelcoming environment for women but platforms these days are modern workplaces. They're not boys' locker rooms. 

I would really encourage anyone who's thinking about it not to be put off by the idea that it's going to be a fully male environment because as a woman and I've worked offshore for a long time, since very early in my career right up to now, being able to lead in a different way to what might have been done in the past and I feel like I've got a real opportunity here. It's a real privilege to be able to do that and to lead in my own way and lead the team in my own way and make it a different environment for people to work in.

If anyone's thinking of shifting roles and they've maybe considered a career in operations or they've considered a career move offshore, I'd encourage anyone to try it. It really is an absolutely fantastic place to work. 

Operations is fast-paced. It's interesting. No two days are the same. You'll be thinking on your feet, you'll be working with some fantastic people and it really is an all-immersive role in an all-immersive environment. I wouldn't change it for the world. 

I feel like it's been one of the best things I've ever done. It's made me grow massively as a person and as a leader and I really feel like anyone who has any opportunity to spend time in operations and offshore operations, you should grab it with both hands and go for it because it's just brilliant. I love it.

[Text on screen: About TotalEnergies]

I've worked for TotalEnergies for 14 years now and they're an absolutely fantastic company to work for. They operate all over the world and they have around 100,000 employees. They're a French company, their headquarters are in France. They started off as an oil and gas company but in recent years very much moved to being a multi-energy company.

There's now real drive and real investment being made into those newer and renewable and cleaner technologies as well as a real drive making the existing oil and gas installations greener and operate cleaner as we move towards net zero in the future. 

One of the other things I love about TotalEnergies is all of the opportunities that it offers. There are opportunities to go and work abroad, we can have free French lessons, there's lots of focus on your personal wellbeing and lots of support for physical health and wellbeing, gym memberships and a big focus on work-life balance around the company as well. There are lots of mentoring schemes. 

TotalEnergies is really focused on being part of the communities that they work in worldwide, right from where I work in North East Scotland across the world and all the different countries that they operate in.