Project Management in High-Tech Organizations: A Field Study

1. Title:
Project Management in Oil & Gas Organizations: A Field Study

2. Investigators (co-investigators)
Rachmadi Indrapraja

3. Hypothesis, Research Questions, or Goals of the Project

Researcher seek to answer the following research questions:

How do people in oil & gas work organizations manage projects?

What tools and texts do they use?

How, and to what extent, do they collaborate in management?

How, and to what extent, do they share information?

What training have they received?

How has project management changed in their organization?

4. Background and Significance:

Researcher has involved in several projects in gas refinery plant. Most of his
activities are in technical part of the project. In improving his career, it is mandatory
to gain the latest knowledge and skills in project management.
In oil & gas, there are three (3) main activities: Engineering, Procurement, and
Construction (known as EPC). These steps are theoretically executed in series. Each
step contains various information from various functionality. Though main
information as guidance are derived from agreed contract between Client and
Contractor.
Modular organization is a common in project management of an oil & gas
organization. Each disciplines are rigidly separated. While connections of
information are rapidly increase across disciplines. These connections lead to more
collaboration within organization, but also a main problem: an engineer from
historically separated activities must collaborate and learn each others technical
documentation and product.
In this exploratory qualitative study, Researcher seek insight into how such
organizations manage their projects in the course of performing agreed contract.
Particularly, I want to know what tools and practices they use, to what extent they
use them in the course of collaboration and planning, and to what extent these
have changed other aspects of their organizations.

5. Research Method, Design, and Proposed Statistical Analysis:

Data collection involves these methods for exploring participants training
and practices:

Site interviews: Researcher will conduct one short (average .5

hour) semi-structured interview with a manager before
contacting participants. Interviews will be audio-recorded.

Pre-observational interviews: Researcher will conduct one

short (average .25 hour) semi-structured interview with each
participant immediately before each observation to collect
information about their professional biography and history with
project management, collaboration, and related tools and
practices. Interviews will be audio-recorded.

Naturalistic observations: Researcher will visit participants at

work and conduct 1-2 short (average 1 hour) observations of
each participant's work. During the observations, researcher will
record events relating to project management, collaboration,
information sharing, and training. Recordings will be in the form
of detailed field notes.

System monitoring: Participants will be asked to optionally use

system monitoring software RescueTime (rescuetime.com) for
two weeks, starting with the observation and proceeding
continuously until the end of the two-week period. This software
will record use of applications and websites and allow
participants to tag these applications according to use. To
preserve privacy, participants will be allowed to delete
application and website data before turning over data.

Post-observational interviews: Researcher will conduct one

semi-structured interview with each participant immediately
after each observation (average .5 hours). Interviews will be
audio-recorded.

Artifact collection: Researcher will collect artifacts from the

designer's workplace that are related to project management,
collaboration, information sharing, and training. Artifacts might
include copies or photos of project lists, to-do lists, training
documentation, generic contracts, screen shots, and email. To
ensure privacy of others, participants will redact artifacts before
turning the artifacts over to researcher.

6. Human Subject Interactions

A. Sources of Potential Participants. Researcher will recruit participants from
local Oil & Gas organizations. Participants will be a company employees working in
various vendors, contractors, and clients. Involvement should span within three (3)
months.

B. Research Protocol. Researcher will observe participants in their work settings

approximately 1-2 times; observations will be for approximately one hour.
Researcher will conduct 15-minute interviews immediately before and 30-minute
interviews immediately after each observation. Total involvement time will be 1.753.25 hours per participant, plus two weeks' system monitoring if the participant and
organization agree. During interviews and observations, researcher will identify
artifacts of interest; participants will redact these artifacts and present them to the
researcher.

C. Privacy and confidentiality of participants. Participants can choose to

discontinue participation at any time; if they choose to do so, their data will be
destroyed. Participants can determine acceptable times for interviews and
observations. The participants identity will not be disclosed in reports. Researcher
will refer to participant with a pseudonym and redact any identifying characteristics
in reports. Data will be kept confidential and secure (see D below). No publications
resulting from this research will include identifiers of participants or their
organizations. Finally, the researcher will explain to management it is entirely up to
team members whether they wish to participate in the study; the organization will
not require team members to participate, and team members can drop out of the
study at any time, for any reason.

D. Confidentiality of the research data. Research data will be kept in a locked

cabinet at researcher's office, on an encrypted laptop hard drive, and backed up to
a secure hard drives to which only the researcher has access. For interviews, (a) the
interviews will be audio-recorded; (b) the digital files will be coded so that no
personally identifying information is visible on them; (c) they will be digitally
secured with a password; (d) they will be heard or viewed only for research
purposes by researcher; and (e) after they are transcribed or coded, they will be
destroyed.

E. Research resources, including digital voice recorders and working space, will
be provided by the Research Lab.

F. Potential risks. The research may uncover weaknesses as well as strengths in

the participants work. Reports will remind readers that this should happen and that
the role of this research is to better understand the organizations' project
management as a whole, not to evaluate individual work styles. In addition, the
participants identities and organizational affiliations will be kept secret. Participants
will be assigned pseudonyms.

G. Potential benefits. This study will have implications for understanding project
management and collaboration in Oil & Gas Organization. In addition, the project
should serve as a way for participants to articulate, reflect upon, and justify or
improve their project management practices respective to knowledge work.

H. Sites or agencies involved in the research project. Research will be

conducted at the workers' workplaces.