The student magazine explaining the oil and gas industry

al manhal
Number One 2012

f o u n t

o f

k n o w l e d g e

Cogeneration: The heat is on!

HAWA: helping PDOs women to help themselves

16

A day in the life of...

18

PDO archive

al manhal number one 2012

We urge our youth to take advantage of the opportunities available to acquire knowledge... we always call for the development of... the peoples scientific capabilities, technical skills and technological expertise in order to meet societys urgent requirements and needs...
His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said

Production Manager Eitidal al Busaidy Design Consultants United Media Services LLC Translation & Editing Al-Zaki Abdulhamid, Saleh al Alawi, Yaqoub al Mufargi & Mohammed al Oraimi Printer Bishara Establishment LLC Advisory Board Suleiman al Manthari, Petroleum Development Oman Dr Saleh al Anbouri, Ministry of Oil and Gas Dr Rashid al Maamari, Sultan Qaboos University Tahira al Lawti, Ministry of Education Salim al Aufi, Petroleum Development Oman Abla al Riyami, Petroleum Development Oman Prof Sobhi Nasir, Sultan Qaboos University Amran al Marhubi, Petroleum Development Oman Dr Zaid al Siyabi, Ministry of Oil and Gas Address editorial correspondence to: Eitidal al Busaidy at eitidal.busaidy@pdo.co.om or al manhal, HXM/23, PDO, P.O. Box 81 Muscat, 100, Oman
2012 Petroleum Development Oman
Articles from al manhal may be reprinted without specific permission on condition that: the text be neither edited nor abridged; the magazine and Petroleum Development Oman be credited; and a copy of the reprinted article be provided to al manhals managing editor.

Distributed every quarter to Sultan Qaboos University, local private and government colleges, and schools.

al manhal number one 2012

BLOWERS

16

14
MMF WASTE WATER TANK FILTERED WATER TANK

AERATOR RAW WATER TANK

RAW WATER SUPPLY WELLS

FILTERED FEED PUMPS

MULTIMEDIA FILTERS

18

SWD WELLS

2nd PASS RO PUMPS

CARTRIDGE FILTERS DWD WELLS BFW TANK RO REJECTS PUMPS 1st PASS RO SKID

1st PASS RO PUMPS

2 Cogeneration: The heat is on!

When projects like PDOs Qarn Alam thermal EOR initiative need both heat and power, the energy efficient solution is cogeneration. al manhal explains how the process works

9 HAWA: Helping PDOs women to help themselves

PDO womens network, HAWA, was created with the objective of creating an environment in PDO for women to help themselves, al manhal looks at the impact made by this pioneering initiative...

14 How PDO delivers major projects

The oil and gas industry never stands still. At PDO, work goes on day after day to develop new opportunities for producing hydrocarbons, the revenue from which has done so much for Omans prosperity.

16 A day in the life of...

Dr Tasneem Pervez, Associate Professor & Assistant Dean, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU)

18 Keeping PDOs business critical information safe and secure

In more than 40 years of doing business PDO has generated an awful lot of paperwork. Contracts, correspondence, survey data, design blueprints and countless other examples make up the millions of documents that must be preserved for legal reasons or simply for future reference.

>>
al manhal number one 2012

Technical article

Cogeneration: The heat is on!

al manhal number one 2012

When projects like PDOs Qarn Alam thermal EOR initiative need both heat and power, the energy efficient solution is cogeneration. al manhal explains how the process works

al manhal number one 2012

Technical article
4

Qarn Alam power plant station with Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) Regular readers of al manhal will know that PDO is not just an oil and gas producer, it is also a very big power generator. Over the years the company has built power stations right across its concession area, giving it the capacity today to generate up to 1000 MW of electricity at any given time. One of the most recent power plants to get fully up and running is at Qarn Alam, but this is a facility with a difference: as well as generating around 200 MW of electricity each day, it is also helping to supply a critical ingredient steam to one of PDOs ambitious Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) programmes. As our photo feature on pages 14 & 15 explains, the Qarn Alam thermal EOR project is set to finally unlock the full potential of one of PDOs earliest and biggest hydrocarbon finds. For this main feature, were concentrating on the principles and practical application of cogeneration, the process by which the Qarn Alam plant makes use of the waste heat from generating electricity to produce the thousands of tonnes of steam that are being injected into the reservoir every day. Cogeneration, also known as Combined Heat and Power (CHP), is a proven concept. Indeed the first known exponent was the legendary US inventor Thomas Edison. His Pearl Street Station, built in 1882, was not just the worlds first commercial power plant; it was also the first CHP facility, producing electricity while using waste heat to warm neighbouring buildings. Cogeneration has since been used extensively in the United States as well as in Europe. In Germany, for example, a growing proportion of household heating is provided via waste heat. Its also commonly found in industries that utilise both electrical power and steam, such as paper mills, desalination plants, refineries and chemical plants. The principle even extends to your car, which uses heat from its running engine to feed the air conditioning system on a cold day. Within the oil and gas industry, waste heat from power stations has been used for thermal EOR projects in Canada for some time. However, within the Middle East region, PDO is very much a pioneer for this technology, alongside Occidental, which is deploying it in the Mukhaizna field using waste heat also supplied by PDOs Mukhaizna power plant cogeneration facilities. The principles behind cogeneration Cogeneration can be utilised within a wide range of power generation facilities, including gas turbines, steam turbines, nuclear plants and even biofuel engines. In Oman, as with most of the Gulf region, the most common form of power generation is by gas turbine. The turbines themselves are cylindrical tubes with fan blades attached, which look similar to the blades you see in an aircraft engine. The blades are spun by hot gas, which is created by burning a mixture of compressed air and natural gas. The spinning motion drives the generator that produces

al manhal number one 2012

Technical article
5
electricity, a process that also generates an enormous amount of heat: the hot gas exits the system at around 600C. In an open cycle power station the hot gas is simply pumped into huge cooling towers, before being released into the atmosphere. With closed cycle such as cogeneration it is captured within the system so its thermal energy can be put to good use rather than be wasted. The difference in efficiency between an open cycle and a CHP power plant is enormous. Standard gas turbine plants operate at between 28% and 34% efficiency, but add in a cogeneration element and that efficiency rockets to 60% or even 70%. All this extra efficiency is not totally free, of course. Cogeneration presents significant technical and operational challenges, which PDOs power team must rise to. And the extra equipment required so that cogeneration can be utilised for a steam EOR project work (see panel) is very complex and expensive. But with fuel gas in ever shorter supply, as well as becoming increasingly expensive, the overall savings can make the difference between a project such as Qarn Alam being viable or having to remain on the drawing board. Meeting the future power challenge Theres little doubt that cogeneration will be a bedrock of PDOs future power provision. But its not the only reason the company can look forward to a future where power provision becomes less of a headache. Over the past few years PDO has worked hard to reverse what up to that point had been a trend towards ever-increasing power requirements. On the demand side, the cost of power is now a more transparent element of each project, leading to greater efficiencies. On the supply side, older power stations will be decommissioned in favour of newer, more efficient technology that requires less fuel gas for the same output. PDO is also working more closely with the government, putting in place strategic initiatives to share generating capacity by creating links between the state grid and PDOs own network of power lines. One of the first such connections was the Nizwa Nahada Link, which enables either PDO or the government to share spare power from each other should they experience a peak in demand or an interruption in supply. The link is constantly energised, with the electricity flows monitored and a financial adjustment made between the two parties at the end of each accounting period. Power sharing in this way eliminates the need for each side to maintain reserve generating capacity (known as spinning reserve capacity), which by nature has to be kept in a ready state at all times, effectively wasting precious gas.

Elevated photo of the Qarn Alam steam plant

al manhal number one 2012

Technical article
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Steam injectors at one location, which is the first well to inject steam

So successful have these arrangements been that further interconnectors between the two grids are being installed, the most recent one between PDOs plant in Marmul (at Harweel) and the under-construction government power station in Salalah. In addition, as previous issues of al manhal have reported, PDO continues to investigate sources of renewable energy,

notably solar power. But its taking better control of power use and power production that is really making the difference, enabling PDO to confidently predict a fall in its gas usage for power generation between now and 2020, a remarkable achievement in an era of ever more intense and power-hungry oilfield activities.

Steam Injection manifolds

al manhal number one 2012

Technical article
7

Inside the Qarn Alam cogeneration facility

Using cogeneration for thermal EOR purposes is highly efficient in terms of fuel gas, but at the same time it does add significant complexity to the overall process of extracting oil. As these illustrations reveal, the Qarn Alam steam EOR facility is, in effect, three facilities in one, which in turn prepare the water, produce the steam and then process the extracted oil.

BLOWERS AERATOR RAW WATER TANK FILTERED WATER TANK

RAW WATER SUPPLY WELLS

MMF WASTE WATER TANK

FILTERED FEED PUMPS

MULTIMEDIA FILTERS

SWD WELLS

2nd PASS RO PUMPS

CARTRIDGE FILTERS DWD WELLS BFW TANK RO REJECTS PUMPS 1st PASS RO SKID

1st PASS RO PUMPS

Water Treatment System

Our first illustration shows the water treatment section of the plant. To supply the project, PDO has drilled into deep-lying aquifers containing water not fit for human consumption or for agriculture. These lie around 30km from the facility, so the water is carried through pipelines then into the raw water tank, having passed through an aerator, where aerobic bacteria digest the biological wastes in the water. From there it passes through several stages of filtration, including Reverse Osmosis (RO), a process by which the water is passed under pressure through a semi-permeable membrane, which filters out dissolved minerals, organic heavy metals and microbial matter such as bacteria. The water is also desalinated, leaving it clean enough to drink, but more importantly clean enough to pass through all the remaining pipelines and other equipment without corroding them. Any waste water from this initial filtration process is injected back underground, in shallow or deep wells depending on its quality. The water thats ready to be turned into steam is then pumped into a Back Feed Water (BFW) storage tank.

al manhal number one 2012

Technical article
8

HRSG

HRSG HRSG

STEAM INJECTION WELLS

HP STEAM SEPARATORS

CYCLONE SEPARATORS BLOW DOWN PIT LP BFW PUMPS LP FLASH DRUM BLOW DOWN EXCHANGER

BFW HEATER

HP BFW PUMPS

DEAERATOR

BFW TANK

Steam Generation System

The process in this diagram starts in the Back Feed Water (BFW) tank in the bottom left hand corner. From there, the water is pumped at low pressure into an initial heating stage. This is so that cold water doesnt go directly into the Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSGs) which produce the steam. If it did, there could be a risk of thermal shock, causing damage to the HRSGs. The water also passes through a deaerator, because it must be completely oxygen free before entering the HRSGs. The HRSGs themselves act like giant electric kettles, heating the water to the point that it vapourises. At Qarn Alam not all the feed water is turned into steam around 20% remains in liquid form, as this acts as a wash for any impurities that might still be present. This waste water is pumped away into a cyclone separator for the impurities to be removed. The steam itself is siphoned off into a steam separator that removes any last droplets of water, which can go back into the loop to be reused. The dry steam can then be pumped through the injection wells and into the Qarn Alam reservoir, where it heats the rock and gets the heavy, viscous oil moving. A diagram of the production stage has been included for completeness, even though its not actually part of the cogeneration process. Here you can see the various separator tanks that remove water and other impurities from the oil, before it passes into storage tanks ready to be pumped into PDOs Main Oil Line and onwards to the export terminal at Mina al Fahal.

MPS TANK

TEST / SATTELITE SEPARATORS FWKO SEPARATORS WET OIL PUMPS GAS LIFTED PRODUCER WELLS

SATTELITE WET OIL STORAGE AIR COOLERS WET OIL STORAGE TANK INLET MANIFOLD APO WELLS

VRU CORRUGATED PLATE INTERCEPTERS (CPI) GAS COMPRESSOR

INDUCED GAS FLOTATION VESSEL (IGF)

GAS SURUBBERS

BUFFER TANK

DISPOSAL PUMPS

BOOSTER PUMPS

DEEP WATER DISPOSAL (DWD) WELLS

Oil and Gas System

Lots of thanks to Saif al Sumry & Adil al Busaidi (from PDO) for their help in the preperation of this article.

al manhal number one 2012

HAWA Networking

HAWA: helping PDOs women to help themselves

PDO womens network, HAWA, was created with the objective of creating an environment in PDO for women to help themselves, al manhal looks at the impact made by this pioneering initiative...

>>
al manhal number one 2012

HAWA NETWORKING
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Some members of the Hawa network team. We want to give PDOs women an opportunity to interact and learn from each other. To create an environment that will help them to develop their careers. That quote comes from PDOs Gas Director, Abla al Riyami, who also happens to be a founding member and present-day Chairperson of HAWA, the PDO womens network. As someone who has risen through the ranks to take charge of a frontline division, Abla offers a wonderful example of the potential for female employees at the company. When she previously spoke to al manhal back in 2007 (see issue 4 of that year), Abla talked about her career progression and paid tribute to the people whod acted as mentors in her early years at PDO, adding: What counts and has helped me a lot is working with some extraordinary people who are willing to cooperate as a team to get things done. This ethos of helping people to help themselves is what has driven HAWA since its foundation. The birth of HAWA HAWAs history can be traced back to the 2007 edition of the Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition (known as GEO), which is held each year in the Kingdom of Bahrain. GEO is one of the keynote events for the top players in the regions oil and gas industry, and for 2007 a special womens forum had been programmed to run in advance of the main conference. Abla was invited to speak at the forum, and she takes up the story: I attended as a speaker, but there were four other PDO ladies who were attending as participants, most of whom I hadnt met before. The forum was all about how we could learn from each others experiences and when it finished I asked the PDO delegates if there was anything they felt we could do differently in our company. Abla al Riyami, Gas Director, launching the HAWA network We had a good discussion, after which we agreed we should meet again once we had returned to Oman. This was the seed from which HAWA grew. Those five pioneers Abla, Farah al Belushi, Anouk Creusen, Salima al Mahruqi and Aisha al Sariri became HAWAs founding members, with Abla taking the chair and Anouk fulfilling the role of Vice Chairperson. Today, Abla continues to chair the HAWA committee, while a number of newcomers have taken on the roles of some of the other founders, including Nadya al Batashi who became Vice Chairperson earlier this year. While women make up the majority of the committee, it does boast two male members, something that Abla sees as important to the networks aims with regard to inclusivity. Abla continued: Right from the start everything was done on a voluntary basis there was no push from senior management, although they have been extremely supportive of us, sanctioning the funding for and taking part in our various learning and development activities.

al manhal number one 2012

HAWA NETWORKING
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HAWA today personal development comes first All women employed by PDO automatically become members of HAWA upon joining the company, while male employees can sign up to be friends of the network if they wish. The programme of events available to HAWA members each year is focused on knowledge sharing, skills development and personal networking. One of the highlights is the annual geological field trip, which is aimed at technical people, such as petroleum engineers, geo-scientists and surface engineers. Originally involving a visit to rock outcrops in the Muscat area, the trip has steadily broadened its scope and this year members visited the outcrops around Jabel al Akhdhar for the first time. Speakers, both internal and external, have been invited to speak at HAWA-organised seminars, e.g Malak al Shebani, Owner & Managing Director of Creative Links, Dr Thuweiba al Barwani, Associate Professor at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Manal al Abdwani, Chairperson of Oman Flour Mills and Director General of Planning and Follow-up the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, who talked about their experiences and Raoul Restucci, PDO Managing Director, who addressed the energy challenges. But the biggest long-term impact will almost certainly be made by the mentoring circles that HAWA has initiated. These provide an opportunity for recent joiners and younger members of staff to seek the advice and support of senior figures within the company, including present Managing Director, Raoul Restucci. Not surprisingly, Abla also makes herself available as a mentor. She commented on the programme: The idea is to offer the ladies a year of intensive mentoring. The mentees are picked to produce a mix of different ages, disciplines and backgrounds and, once chosen for the programme, they can nominate the mentors they prefer to work with. At HAWA mentoring circle lunch Weve read chapters of the book together and discussed examples of what the author is talking about, either from within PDO or other organisations. This has been followed up with case studies. They have been good sessions, which have helped us to open our eyes on how to deal with certain situations, Abla continued. The other important strand of HAWAs work is charity. The network one charity event a year, the Iftar, a fast and auction for charity has been running since HAWA was established. The mentoring sessions themselves are not prescribed; instead the mentors and mentees are given the freedom to work out which topics they want to cover. For Ablas mentoring sessions in 2010/11 the group has been reading and discussing the book Primal Leadership, which is a noted text on the topic of leading with emotional intelligence. This is a management skill that is defined as being able to identify, assess, and control both ones own emotions and those of others.

HAWA donation to the Early Intervention for Children with Special Needs

al manhal number one 2012

HAWA NETWORKING
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Iftar encourages non-Muslims to undergo a sponsored fast to raise money from colleagues and friends. In addition, PDO employees and their families can donate items to be auctioned at the Iftar gathering, which is a party to mark the end of the fast. This years event raised Rial 9,500, a sum matched by PDOs corporate charity budget, which has been donated to various good causes across Oman. With these solid foundations under it, Abla sees a bright future for HAWA in the years to come. She

noted: Weve made a good start and we feel this success is down to the fact that weve stayed focused on our founding principles around learning and development. We would like to do more on the technical development side, as well as gaining more exposure among young women at college or university who might be encouraged into this industry. In time wed like to be known as one of the best organisations of this type in the Middle East region, Abla concluded.

Honourable Sheikh Khalfan al Aiseri giving a lecture at the Iftar

al manhal number one 2012

HAWA NETWORKING
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The meaning behind the HAWA name and logo

The name HAWA is the Arabic translation of EVE, the mother of all. It was adopted by PDO womens network as a perfect exemplar of its aims towards diversity and inclusiveness: all women are welcome into the network, regardless of their social status, race or background. In the logo, the sun appears as the pupil of the eyehence symbolising light and knowledge or a bright future women can achieve by networking.

Many thanks to Abla al Riyami (from PDO) for her help in the preperation of this article.

al manhal number one 2012

Project execution
14

How PDO delivers major projects

The oil and gas industry never stands still. At PDO, work goes on day after day to develop new opportunities for producing hydrocarbons, the revenue from which has done so much for Omans prosperity. These opportunities come in all shapes and sizes. PDOs exploration department continues to discover new oil deposits, while the rapid pace of technological progression within the industry (and the strong oil price) sometimes enables the company to take a fresh look at fields where production has not hitherto been viable. An example of the latter opportunity is the Qarn Alam field, which is the scene of a ground-breaking Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) project. For this feature we use the Qarn Alam steam injection project to help illustrate the stages PDO must work through to get such an endeavour off the ground

Qarn Alam: Tapping the full potential of a blockbuster field

The Qarn Alam field was discovered in 1975 and at first it contributed around 10% of PDOs daily production. However, within a few months the flood of oil had slowed to a trickle. Further investigation revealed that the reservoir rock was not sandstone, as commonly found in Oman, but carbonate. As such it offered very little porosity or permeability to help the oil flow, a situation exacerbated by the highly viscous oil found at Qarn Alam. In addition, the reservoir rock was fractured, which had given PDO something of a false impression of its quality, since much of the early production bonanza had been oil flushed directly from these fractures. At the time, and for years afterwards, the technology simply didnt exist to get at the vast bulk of Qarn Alams estimated one billion barrels of oil, so PDO moved on to other, better opportunities.

Identifying the opportunity

By the 1990s, EOR technologies were developing rapidly, so it was time to revisit the Qarn Alam field. The best way to get heavy oil moving through reservoir rock is to heat it up: in our last issue we looked at the various methods of thermal EOR, but many of these rely on the reservoir rock being more permeable and porous than Qarn Alams. It was clear that the nature of this particular reservoir would require the technological boundaries to be stretched, and this would be costly. However, with a potential prize of a billion barrels of oil there was no denying the scale of the opportunity, so the project moved forward to its next stage.

Assessing the opportunity

In any PDO project of this scale the next step is assessment. Is it feasible technically? And do the finances add up? This is one of several key hurdles a project has to overcome before it is completed; its a very strict process of checks and balances to ensure PDO doesnt waste shareholders money on unviable flights of fancy. At Qarn Alam the decision was taken to run a small-scale pilot steam injection project before committing to the much more expensive full-field development. Steam was duly injected into the reservoir and the flow of oil picked up. Core samples were taken from the reservoir, the rock sample extracted from the area of steam injection was found to have been mostly drained of oil, whereas the core of rock that hadnt been reached by the steam was still full of oil. PDO had all the evidence it needed that steam injection could work.

al manhal number one 2012

Project execution
15
Selecting and defining the concept and Tendering
The next step was to select the best outline design concept for the project, a stage PDO calls Concept Selection & front end design. Once these were ready, the tendering process started. For Qarn Alam, various international companies were invited to tender, but in the first round of bidding none of their prices stacked up economically. However, QA steam team did not give up and went back to the drawing board to make the project economical again by changing the tendering strategy, and with the oil price surging upwards in 2005/06 a second tender was organised and this time the project proved economical. Now the project entered its next stage, which was adding further definition to the outline concept. That brought it closer to the critical point of any PDO project, when the companys shareholders either agree or decline to commit the funds to it. This is called the Final Investment Decision, or FID, and it is the most nerve-wracking moment for any project team.

All systems go!

For Qarn Alam the Final Investment Decision was successfully achieved in May 2007, with the project execution phase beginning almost immediately. This was no straightforward exercise Qarn Alam is the first Thermally Assisted Gas Oil Gravity Drainage (TAGOGD) project seen on this scale anywhere in the world. There was also the small matter of producing 18,000 tonnes of steam every day, something that required access to more than 40,000 cubic metres of water... in the middle of a desert. To overcome this challenge, PDO has drilled into deep-lying salt water aquifers, the contents of which are not fit for human consumption. The steam itself is produced in a highly economical fashion, using waste heat from the power generation facilities at Qarn Alam (see main feature) a move that drastically reduces the projects consumption of fuel gas.

The project is complete

Once the facilities are fully built and commissioned that is, all the equipment is thoroughly tested the project can finally move into its operational phase pumping the oil! The injected steam heats the reservoir rock to the get oil moving, with the fractures serving as conduits through which the oil drains under the force of gravity into producing wells strategically located at certain depth in the reservoir. The operational phase involves the routine maintenance required to keep the production facilities running, ensuring all the raw materials, such as chemicals, are well-stocked and of course dealing with any breakdowns and other issues along the way. There is a final stage to each project, which is abandonment. However, at Qarn Alam that point is a long way ahead all PDO facilities must have a minimum life of 30 years so the field will be able to fulfil its massive potential for many years to come.

Thanks to Sultan al Rubaie (from PDO) and his team for his help in the preparation of this article.

al manhal number one 2012

A day in the life of...

16

if the request is urgent I must drop everything else I am doing and get straight onto it!

Associate Professor & Assistant Dean, College of Engineering, SULTAN QABOOS UNIVERSITY (SQU)
Dr TASNEEM PERVEZ

8:00 a.m. Sunday

Teaching the next generation of Omani engineers and entrepreneurs
My working week starts with a two-hour lecture to undergraduates in SQUs College of Engineering. I also lecture on a Monday morning, and often I will prepare for these lectures at the weekend, where I have time to gather all the materials I need and to make sure that I am ready for any questions the students might ask me. After the lecture is finished I will spend time with the students, looking at their work and assisting them in any way I can. Teaching at SQU is not just about imparting facts and figures; the ethos of the university is geared towards knowledge that can be applied in business and industry, in order to benefit the wider economy. Thus, business and entrepreneurship is taught as a compulsory subject in our Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, with the aim of inspiring our students to eventually set up their own enterprises, which will not only generate income for themselves but also provide job/career opportunities to others.

8:00 a.m. Monday

Research is my first love
Although I enjoy the teaching element of my job, I get most satisfaction from research. Im lucky in that during my time with SQU the universitys focus has shifted more towards research; today in the college, we are involved in research in a number of fields, including expandable tubulars, inert and swelling Elastomers, EOR, renewable energy, etc. Im pictured here beside the College of Engineerings Expandable Tubular Test rig, the only one of its kind in the Middle East region. We use the test rig to run experiments on different materials and specifications of expandable tubular, a product that has a number of practical applications within the oil and gas industry. Much of our work is done in partnership with PDO, but the rig is also available for use by other local, regional and international companies. The test rig offers the closest approximation to real world conditions thats possible within a laboratory environment.

al manhal number one 2012

A day in the life of...

17

Dr Tasneem Pervez arrived at SQU in 2000 as an Associate Professor, having previously studied and taught in the United States, Pakistan and Malaysia. He became Head of Department for Mechanical & Industrial Engineering in 2004 and Assistant Dean in 2010. As he explains, his present role involves both gathering knowledge and passing it on to others. To better illustrate this, weve spotlighted a few days in Dr Tasneems working life at the university.

8:00 a.m. Wednesday 2:30 p.m. Wednesday

Our research always has practical applications
To me, research must have two purposes: 1) to advance our current knowledge; and 2) to produce something tangible that can be applied in real world applications. We shouldnt do research just for the sake of it; we should do it to bring new solution that in turn can help to drive our economy forward. As well as my own research I also supervise the activities of the Colleges postgraduate students three, taking Masters Degrees and two, PhDs helping them to progress their studies. At SQU we are naturally very close to PDO, but my research activities also have an international focus: earlier this year I presented at an expandable tubular technology forum in Germany, which allowed me to get to know a number of the leading European companies working in this field. I also write and edit articles for international journals as well as contributing papers and reports to a wide range of other academic and industry bodies.

An academics life is not just about teaching

In some ways the final two elements of my role strategic partner and change agent are linked. To be a strategic partner I have to understand the business, where it is going and how its people can help it to get there. It means regular contact with Management and theres real scope for HR Business Partners to add further value to this aspect of our jobs. It also ties in to the fourth big element of my role, which is change agent. Businesses like PDO go through constant change and this inevitably impacts on its people, so my role is to help manage change so that employees know why it is happening and how they will be affected, as well as stressing the ultimate benefits so they will be more likely to buy in to the programme. Having such a wide variety of responsibilities makes this an exciting and multi-faceted job it also means I must keep a ready supply of sticky notes!

al manhal number one 2012

PDO Archive
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Keeping PDOs business critical information safe and secure

In more than 40 years of doing business PDO has generated an awful lot of paperwork. Contracts, correspondence, survey data, design blueprints and countless other examples make up the millions of documents that must be preserved for legal reasons or simply for future reference. For years, this paper-based information was stored in a somewhat haphazard way: several departments operated their own document libraries, while the central storage area was tight on space and didnt employ any professional cataloguing tools, making it a tough job to find anything. Now the company has rectified this problem by building its own dedicated Archive building, which opened its doors at the end of 2010. The building is home to around 12,000 boxes of documents, each one given a unique barcode so it can be easily located and reclaimed whenever a department wants it back. As this issue of al manhal went to press, the Archive team was completing the mammoth job of investigating the contents of every box, so that a more detailed list of what each one contains can also be made available. The Central Archives storage racking has been tailor-made to fit the storage boxes perfectly, so no space is wasted. Boxes are graded according to the regularity with which theyre likely to be required: material that could be called back in a matter of months is kept at the front while anything that is being stored for historical record is placed on the inside of the racking, an area known as the deep archive. Although there are an impressive number of boxes already in place, a good proportion of the previously archived material didnt even make it to the new building after a thorough inspection the project team filled up numerous skips with garbage! With the racking standing more than eight metres tall, the Archives workers use special hydraulic cranes to reach the upper shelves. The facility is also fitted with an elevator system which transports boxes to the storage area after they have been checked and catalogued. The Archive employs a web-based classification tool called Traxx which anyone in PDO can log into in order to locate and retrieve the material they need. This includes design blueprints of facilities and equipment spread throughout PDOs concession area, since the cabinets containing these were transported into the Archive building too. Thanks to Khalfan al Sinawi (from PDO) for his help in the preparation of this article Hydrolic Cranes PDO Central Archive Building

Traxx

al manhal number one 2012