Case Study · Oil & Gas · Field Operations

From Scattered Skills to One Unified Talent Strategy

We helped a leading energy producer build a competency-based training program from the ground up.

Designed by their best operators, backed by real data, and wired into their career progression system.
The Stats

Decades of Expertise, Finally in One Place

5,000+

Skills catalogued and consolidated

39

Core competencies defined from identified skills

60

Positions mapped across operations

107

Subject matter experts interviewed

THE CHALLENGE

A Career Ladder with Missing Rungs

Our client had already done the hard part: They had grown and managed a very successful organization. But when you have years, geographically distributed acquisitions, differing workflows based on legacy, new, and acquired equipment, regulations, and climate, drift just... happens.

Veterans pass down knowledge the way it was passed to them: informally, on the job, one person at a time.

That tribal expertise is incredibly valuable, but it lives in people's heads, not in systems. Over time, the gap between what experienced workers know and what's written down in a job description or a training module quietly widens.

This is what growth looks like in practice! But it also makes answering strategic questions more difficult: what skills do we really need, at what level, in which locations, and who on the team actually has them?

They didn't need another off-the-shelf course catalog. They needed someone to meet with the people doing the work and turn what they already knew into something the whole organization could see, measure, and build on.

THE APPROACH: PHASE 1

Discovery & Role Analysis

Before we designed anything, we learned the work.

We started by gathering everything our partner already had: training materials, internal procedures, career frameworks, field documentation, etc., and used it to build a foundation of informed questions.

Then it was time to start downloading brains. We ran dedicated discovery sessions, one per role family, with cross-site representation in every meeting.

For many of these roles, it was the first time operators from different sites had been together discussing the same job.

We asked questions most training vendors never ask: What does your morning look like? How did you actually learn this job?
"If you could clone one person on your team, who would it be, and what do they know that others don't?"
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THE APPROACH: PHASE 2

The Data Story

Turning Operator Knowledge into Structured Data

"We always knew. Now everyone can see it."
After the sessions, we catalogued every skill and task mentioned across all role families. The raw data was massive, but our methodology compressed it into something usable.

We validated the final competency set across five business areas and all 60 positions, using a five-level proficiency scale to map seniority.

The result was a heat map showing exactly where skill expectations differed between sites, and why. In some cases, older equipment drove higher maintenance requirements. 
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THE BUILD: PHASE 3

Building the Learning Experience

Building courses the way operators think about the work.

Every course starts with subject matter expert download sessions. These are highly focused, procedure-level conversations that go deep.

Operators, engineers, and EHS professionals all contribute. Subject matter experts review every piece of content and every assessment question before anything is finalized.

All courses are built in Articulate Rise, SCORM-compliant, and are deployed to the Workday LMS.

We also created artifacts for integration with internal AI tools. In the future, operators will be able to leverage AI assistants to query and reinforce the training content directly.
"Engineers check the specs.

Operators check the reality."
THE OUTCOMEs

Learning Experiences, Engineered

Built Around Your Best People
The content in these experiences didn't come from a textbook. It came from our clients' best performers. These are the people who've been doing the work for years.
Designed for Capability
Every design decision asks: what will actually make this person better at their job and safer in the field?

That's a different question than "does this satisfy the training requirement?"
Data That Makes Decisions Visible
Our partner now has modern, operational data showing what skills are needed at what level, how those needs differ by location, and a learning pathway to level up their teams.

The result is an effective learning experience and a talent strategy.
LET'S TALK

This methodology is repeatable across any industry, department, or role.

If your organization is sitting on tribal knowledge that hasn't been captured, mapped, or turned into a growth path for your people, we can help!