With headquarters in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Ensign Energy services is an industry leader in the delivery of oilfield services. Since its inception in 1987, Ensign has employed an extensive fleet of flexible, mobile oilfield equipment to meet the challenging demands of the oil and natural gas industry. Ensign is a leader in drilling and well servicing through the innovative use of technology, with an established reputation for the highest safety standards and environmental stewardship. The company has a division of 40+ experts specializing in Information Technology which services up to 7,500+ company personnel in over 17 countries.

Challenge

Ensign set the goal to establish their Project Management Office’s presence and to create a results driven “best practices” project management environment. The organization identified three key constraints the were inhibiting productivity that the PMO needed to address:

1. Establish clearly defined project management practices

2. They also required a “central point” for project-related work that was clearly defined

3. Over-allocation of resources was a major concern

Solution

Ensign deployed BrightWork on SharePoint to set up a PMO and establish one standard project management methodology in the organization. Using SharePoint, the PMO set up a “home page” for all project related work and built it out for the areas that they needed. The most important section was the Projects Area, which shows a project hierarchy broken down into three project main categories and a project summary showing high-level indicators.

An individual project site based on the template provides a central location for all team members working on the project to get an update on the status of the project. It is a central point that shows project summaries, open risks, open issues, the project statement, etc. The PMO worked with all the project managers in the organization to define a standard for what constitutes “red/yellow/green” health of project, so anyone looking at the project would know exactly where the project stood. The PMO also set up a standard template for every project site, so no matter what project someone was investigating, there would be the same functionality. For example, project sites contain a Project Documents section for which the PMO has established a standard for project documentation relating to each phase of the project. Using a project management template, Ensign was able to standardize their project management approach on SharePoint.

To address over-allocation of resources, they used BrightWork to set up a resource management report, which lists all resources available and what projects they are assigned to and the hours they are requested. This report shows which resources are being over-booked and which resources are available for a given project. Project managers can then submit a request for resources, which is sent to the PMO manager for approval. The benefit of this report is that it created a single line of communication for addressing resourcing issues.

To check out more case studies like this one, including links to videos demonstrating the ideas and approached described, download our eBook Project and Portfolio Management using SharePoint today!