IADC: Connecting the world’s drilling community

By Stephen Colville, IADC president and CEO

2013 has been an incredibly busy and productive year for IADC, and it is only the beginning. As our positive momentum propels us into 2014 and beyond, our focus remains on serving as the catalyst for improved performance for the drilling industry, as well as offering the space for the drilling community to come together to make the industry better.

For the past 18 months, IADC has invested greatly in enhancing our value and support to members. Huge and urgent strides have been made to increase our organizational effectiveness and delivery globally. Major new projects and products have begun to roll off the “new IADC” production line.

Over the next 18 months, we will be introducing multiple new initiatives and realizing the completion and implementation of others. When complete, initiatives such as the Well Control Institute (WCI) and the Workforce Attraction and Development Initiative (WADI) will help us achieve our goal of catalyzing improved performance for the industry by enhancing operational integrity and championing better regulation.

By now you have likely heard of IADC’s Red Thread, our philosophy of purpose that describes who we are and where we are headed as an organization. As we move forward, our purpose has become more refined and reflects the effort to deliver on our promise to address the critical issues faced by all in the drilling community.

Crucial to our members is maintaining the license to operate. It’s a simple enough concept: improve performance and reduce risks while increasing trust. And yet, it’s an intricate and delicate balance and one that must be respected if we are to gain the ultimate reward: access to drill more resources and to drill more challenging resources.

A commitment to eliminating injuries, reducing nonproductive time, improving equipment reliability, increasing efficiency and enhancing process safety are the elements that we believe are necessary to achieve improved performance. IADC’s members are, at this very moment, working together to drive the solutions that address each of these.

By creating the space for the drilling community to come together to connect and collaborate and create the standards, guidelines, resources, tools and credentialing, accreditation and verification systems, IADC is leading the way toward the future. The assembled members of the drilling community are committed to ensuring that the industry has the simple, tried-and-tested, secure solutions available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. With a focus on improving industry performance, together we aim to develop and initiate programs that reduce both costs and incidents, a goal valued by all.

In a post-Macondo world, there is every expectation and need for our industry to raise its performance standards. Our initiatives, which address critical issues in the industry, aim to drive up a new, higher, minimum accepted level of safety. At the same time, we are cognizant of respecting the boundary separating IADC’s territory in the non-competitive space, where the drilling community comes together to connect, collaborate and create joint solutions to common problems, and the competitive space where the drilling industry fights for corporate differentiation and commercial advantage.

It is not at all an overstatement to say that we are connecting the world’s drilling community to make things better for all. The industry is growing and technology is evolving at lightning speed. IADC continues to keep pace. Over the course of the next year, we will continue to bring all members of the drilling community together – contractors, operators, regulators, OEMs and service providers – to collaborate on the innovative solutions needed to propel the industry forward.

We are demonstrating that by providing the place where the drilling community can come together, by offering the tools to facilitate efficiency, we offer a proven pathway to improved performance. We are proud of the accomplishments of the last year. Each of them uniquely contributes to our goals for the future.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of the drilling industry. It is a great time to be a part of the drilling community, and your input and expertise is crucial to helping shape a better future for everyone.

I invite you to get actively involved.

You are IADC.