Q&A

1. Tell us about your data management professional journey. What did you aspire to be when you started your career?
   I moved to Canada in 2003 and landed my first job in the oil and gas industry. The company I worked with invested in me by sending me back to school to further my education. At Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, I studied geophysical and geological applications and shortly after I started working as a Geoscience Technologist.
2. Tell us why taking the CPDA™ exam became a priority.
   While working with a major oil and gas company in 2013, I was selected to participate, together with another one hundred data professionals from all over the world, in the pilot exam at PPDM. After that exam, I was really interested in obtaining the petroleum data analyst designation and adding the accreditation to my portfolio. In 2015 I was able to sit in the exam once again and obtained my designation.
3. What tangible and intangible benefits have you gained from being a CPDA™?
   The most important benefit for me is industry recognition, I was able to move forward in my organization and also my professional network increased.
4. You are an active volunteering member of the PPDM Association. Tell us how serving on a committee has elevated your level of knowledge in the data management profession. By participating as a volunteer in the certification committee, I interact with like-minded professionals and broaden my knowledge for data management processes and procedures. I am also keeping up with new industry trends and regulatory requirements.
5. If you could be the CEO for a day in an E&P company, what advice you would communicate to your leadership about data management?
   I think that people and good data are the main assets of any company, especially in the oil and gas industry where accurate data directly impacts our chances of success. Unfortunately, in the last years, data management professionals were extremely affected by layoffs and shuffles, new technology and so on. What I would like to communicate to the leadership is that we need to find a balance between experienced data management professionals, their knowledge, and implementation of new technology.

Alex Ross is a data & information savvy geoscientist who closes the gap between the business and IT. Building on degrees in Geology & Sedimentology from London University, his early career saw him implementing geological workstations in Shell UK. This was followed by 19 years in Schlumberger Information Solutions in a variety of roles including geoscience software technical support, marketing, sales and operations management. For the past number of years Alex has provided specialist oil & gas data and information consultancy services to Santos, Beach Energy, Origin Energy, SA Department of Energy and Mines and SRA IT in the UK, USA and Australia. Branching out into the mining industry has revealed many similarities in geoscience data & information business needs. Based in Adelaide, his leisure time is spent cycling and researching the links between geology & wine.

Alex is a member and Certified Petroleum Data Analyst (CPDA™) of the PPDM Association, where he is also co-chair of the Energy Data Management Certification Committee, Alex works tirelessly to advance our professional discipline.

Q&A

1. Tell us about your data management professional journey. What did you aspire to be when you started your career?
   I describe my career journey as a happy accident. After graduating from London University with a geology honours degree, I wanted to join Shell UK at a time when a PhD was required to be an oil company geologist. Fortunately, Shell was recruiting IT graduates and I was placed in the exploration department providing geotechnical data and applications support. From there I had an amazing time focussing on applications and data at Schlumberger for many years - working and living in some amazing parts of the world. The majority of my more recent career is as a consultant specialising in delivering improved data insights to energy and resource companies. It continues to be a lot of fun. I’m fortunate to really enjoy my job and work with some awesome people.
2. Tell us why taking the CPDA exam became a priority.
   Short answer – Trudy ever so nicely twisted my arm at the 2015 PPDM Brisbane conference! CPDA™ had just started - I had a look at the benefits and it was clear it was a key differentiator in a competitive job market. I’m proud of being the first CPDA in Australia.
3. What tangible and intangible benefits have you gained from being a CPDA?
   Great satisfaction in helping others in their data career journey.
   
   Working with a great group of people at PPDM, in the broader CPDA™ community and on the CPDA™ committee.
   
   I’m delighted to say that shortly after achieving my CPDA™ I was successful in securing a new job – with the caveat that correlation isn’t always causation – but the optimist in me says it was!
4. You are an active volunteering member of the PPDM Association. Tell us how serving on a committee has elevated your level of knowledge in the data management profession.
   My passion for the benefits of CPDA™ continued as I was invited to be on the CPDA™ committee, and then became co-chair. It’s a wonderful way to network both internationally and within Australia. It’s not only what you know, it’s who you know! It also keeps me up to date with industry advancements.
5. If you could be the CEO for a day in an E&P company, what advice you would communicate to your leadership about data management?
   Data is an extremely valuable asset. Oil & gas companies are basically data companies who choose to explore for and produce hydrocarbons. The value of a company primarily comes from three factors.
   • Knowing the quality, completeness and timeliness of its data. It's never all going to be perfect but knowing allows a weighting to be applied to decisions made from it.
   • The applicability of the technology the company uses to analyse and make decisions on the data.
   • The skills and experience of the people who analyse the data.
   Data is much too often an underappreciated and underutilised asset. If stock markets allowed oil & gas companies to define data as an asset, budgets to leverage more value from it would dramatically increase.
   
   Improving data quality, completeness and timeliness is commonly “somebodies else’s problem” and that’s a challenge to overcome. For me this graphic sums it up.
   
   
   
   Oh yes and hire more CPDAs!

Olly Thistleton began learning the discipline 20 years ago on service desk teams for Venture’s various London-based clients, and now holds the position of Consulting Lead with Sword Venture’s Asia-Pacific Business Unit. He achieved his CPDA with Distinction credential in 2017.

Q&A

1. Tell us about your data management professional journey. What did you aspire to be when you started your career?
   It's probably different now data science is the cool profession everyone wants to do, but when I was young, careers fairs didn't have a data booth! I was interested in earth sciences, so my education headed down the rock licking route of becoming a geologist. I'd always enjoyed technology though, so when an opportunity came to work at an oil & gas data management consultancy, it combined both my interests, so I jumped on it, and I've never looked back.
2. Tell us why taking the CPDA exam became a priority.
   To be honest, it became a priority for me as I wanted to evaluate it for my team. There are lots of training courses and certifications in aspects of what makes a great petroleum data manager – geoscience, engineering, software, IT, behavioural skills, etc. There’s even a few in data management, albeit industry-agnostic. What’s as rare as hen’s teeth is something that ties all these aspects together. As soon as I heard about the CPDA, I signed up to take it and assess whether it was something my team of fellow petroleum data managers should be taking as part of their learning plans. And the outcome of my assessment… well there’s three more Distinction-level CPDAs out there… so far!
3. What tangible and intangible benefits have you gained from being a CPDA?
   The first tangible benefit, therefore, has been my ability to recommend it to my company and to other data managers as a valuable career development target. It wasn’t all about others though. As a data manager you’re always growing your skills, but some have certainly atrophied over time. Revision for the CPDA helped me refresh my knowledge in a broad range of subjects. Since obtaining my CPDA, whilst it’s not been an explicit requirement or preference so far (something I’d like to see change), it’s certainly been valuable with new clients in putting evidential weight from an industry recognised organisation that this person knows what they’re talking about!
4. You are an active volunteering member of the PPDM Association. Tell us how serving on a committee has elevated your level of knowledge in the data management profession.
   Twenty years after starting in this discipline, it really frustrates me that I still regularly meet fellow data managers who struggle communicate their value to their employers. With the squeeze on the petroleum industry in recent years, this has become even more critical for those competing for fewer jobs, or for those trying to quantify their skills to an employer in an another industry. I see my involvement with the professional development division of PPDM as a responsibility to our discipline to improve this situation. Something I believe we are making progress on. It doesn’t hurt that I’m working with a great group of people from around the globe. They all bring different viewpoints on the same goal, meaning I’m always keeping an open mind and learning new things.
5. If you could be the CEO for a day in an E&P company, what advice you would communicate to your leadership about data management?
   Most E&P companies are on a digitalisation journey and trying to become more data-driven in their business decisions. This has been beneficial in putting a focus on data and the need to make it work harder. Sadly however, there persists a view that buying the latest technology or putting data into the cloud will somehow make it better. I would encourage leadership to invest in a more balanced way. Technology enablers are important, but if data is not managed properly through appropriate processes by skilled people (such as CPDA-certified petroleum data managers), those business decisions are going to be data-driven in the wrong direction.