Identifying Early Warnings in Drilling Projects and Finding their Relationships with the Outcomes and Problems of these Projects in Some Real Cases in Iran

As projects increase in size and complexity, they become more difficult tohandle; one of these large and complex projects is oil and gas projects. Thecurrent controlling processes of projects are not able to detect the problemsin early phases of the project and are rather delayed, which leads to extratime and cost. One solution is to find the symptoms of problems in the earlyphases. Due to the importance of drilling projects in upstream sector, themain objective of this research is to identify the early warning symptomsof problems in drilling projects and to find the relationships between theselected early warnings and the outcomes and problems of these projects. Tothis end, the early warnings have been recognized through literature reviewand interviews with experts. Then, a case study analysis is performed tofind the relationships between early warnings and project outcomes. Allthe cases have been selected from previously completed drilling projectsin one of the oil fields of Iran. The findings show that there is a relationshipbetween early warnings, project outcomes, and project problems.