British Petroleum Exploration (Alaska)

Background

British Petroleum is faced with a huge global challenge of integrating its AMOCO and ARCO acquisitions. British Petroleum Exploration (Alaska) (BPXA) is among BP's largest operational areas worldwide.

Challenge

Part of the worldwide integration included consolidation of the human resource functions. This was to be accomplished by outsourcing HR processes to an IT company. The concern on the part of BPXA was that the IT company would impose methods and procedures in Alaska that simply did not fit the situation.

In order to have a backup system, in the event that the outsourcing transition did not go as smoothly as planned, BPXA engaged StrateGen for a high intensity, short timeline project to identify, standardize and document its human resources and payroll processes.

Action

During a four and one-half month period StrateGen personnel, working closely with BPXA's subject matter experts, successfully developed and deployed a web-based electronic document for the primary human resource and payroll processes.

Results

• The electronic documentation includes a training module that dramatically reduces the time necessary for new BPXA HR personnel to become effective. • Training time was reduced from months of OJT to a 1-½ training period. • The electronic documentation program identifies the activities and decisions necessary to execute each process. • An HR manager or administrator can immediately view any portion of a process, the activities required, the decisions necessary to move forward and the specific tasks to be completed • Each task also has both documents and pictures of computer screens that are associated with each task through a relational database. • Clicking on an icon immediately brings up either a document or a screen shot • In all, there are some fifteen hundred documents and screen shots included in BPXA's human resources electronic documentation program.

o The strategic action plan provided the focus and action items for the sub-grantees to leverage their combined capabilities with which to sustain and improve services more independent of grant funding.

• The non-profit participants discovered how they could organize currently fragmented pools of resources into powerful sets of integrated enterprises, capable of accessing statewide markets.

• Over 47,900 students • 60 elementary schools and 25 secondary schools • Special education and career education facilities • 255 bus routes and 1,600 bus stops • Community services facility support • Schools facilities maintenance • Student Nutrition • Employee and contractor payroll • General Ledger and accounting

• An approach for long-term technology systems planning that aligns with the district's overall strategic objectives and priorities for the future.

• Concurrent management of business systems and data processing issues, and long-term strategy development

• Implementation of a standardized cost and new systems selection methodology for assessing technology system needs.

Providence Alaska Medical Center

StrateGen was retained by Providence Alaska Medical Center, Alaska's largest medical facility, to develop a simulation model to provide insight into Day Surgery and Endoscopy patient flows. (Providence Hospital has seen significant increases in patient traffic, and is facing facility space constraints.) The purpose of the model was to identify tradeoffs between staffing, scheduling of patients, and space utilization. The resulting model provided Providence managers capability for improving and increasing patient throughput using dynamic "what if" simulations.

Anchorage Economic Development Corporations (AEDC)

StrateGen built a dynamic computer simulation model to replicate and refine the AEDC's existing spreadsheet model used to analyze the comparison between Anchorage and other air transport hubs. This descriptive tool incorporates unit cost, weights, and volume to determine and compare transportation and storage costs. User interfaces allow immediate access to both input requirements and output data. The model incorporates the option of comparing five different products into a multi-modal transportation and logistics system.

Municipality of Anchorage

StrateGen was retained to build a dynamic simulation model for the Anchorage Department of Community Planning and Development. The model provides department managers with the ability to assess changing workloads over time resulting from various management decisions and the number of land use change requests submitted to the department.

The model also provides an effective means of understanding the impact of various management decisions on personnel hours requirements. Using the model also provides a means of graphically presenting departmental manpower limitations to senior municipality leadership. The impact of senior management decisions on personnel requirements is also displayed.

GCI - Local Telephone Service

StrateGen was retained by GCI to help GCI enter the local telephone business in the Anchorage market. With substantial financial commitments already made to infrastructure, equipment, and marketing for local service, it was critical to GCI that the introduction of this new service be accomplished on schedule and that the processes worked properly.

Working with GCI's functional experts from all of the departments in the company, StrateGen personnel designed and documented all of the major processes necessary for GCI to train its newly hired personnel and successfully enter the local telephone business. An important part of this project was the identification of points in the workflows that were not yet properly integrated into the company's management information system technology.

The identification of gaps where the system needed attention to provide compatible and smooth information flow allowed the information systems specialists to make the necessary changes prior to turning up the entire system. Entry into the local phone market was very close to the projected execution date. The Local Services Department needed a plan to identify the critical issues related to the delivery of services, develop procedures for newly hired personnel and finalize interdepartmental coordination processes for their delivery processes. The development of methods to assimilate large groupings of information and organize this information into actionable plans enabled Local Service managers to think through their implementation process and roll out services on time.

Department of Veteran Affairs (Anchorage Regional Office) - Outpatient Treatment and Payment Process

StrateGen was engaged to assist VA medical personnel, managers and technical staff to find a way to provide uniform care for veterans throughout the year and complete each year within its fixed medical services budget. StrateGen personnel, in conjunction with VA functional experts, conducted an analysis of the process by which outpatient service is approved and provided to veterans, followed by payment for services to private-sector physicians.

StrateGen consultants built a complex computer simulation that accurately described both the patient treatment aspects and the financial components of the process. They then conducted sensitivity analysis on the variables identified in the computer simulation.

United States Air Force: 11th Air Force - Alaska

From 1992 - 1996, two of StrateGen's principals, Dr. Ken Jones and Kenn Kline, were employed by the United States Air Force to develop and implement strategic and operational plans and facilitate the identification, analysis and improvement of key systems-level processes.

Significant improvements were made in areas as diverse as civil engineering, air operations, hazardous waste disposal, high speed data communications design and the reorganization of 11th Air Force, (the command organization for the Air Forces in Alaska).

These improvements contributed to the transformation of the Air Force in Alaska from a stationary cold war force of dedicated assets to counter the Soviet threat to a smaller, more flexible expeditionary force able to conduct lethal and non-lethal missions any time, any where in the world.

Among the specific project management related activities were:

• Reengineering of the Alaska remote sites Hazardous Materials Air Shipping Process

• Deactivation of the Alaska Forces alternate command and control rail-car system.

• Realignment of the major organizations of approximately 10,000 personnel including the active air wings and their subordinate squadrons and agencies

• Integration of information technology systems to enhance information warfare capability, and implement secure intranet connectivity

Ken Jones, PhD

President