Christopher Gordon

The opportunity of a lifetime.

      

    Just as my title suggests, before I arrived in Houston and through the application process I saw the internship as the opportunity of a lifetime. However, now my thinking has been developed as I have been exposed to such a valuable career enhancing programme that I have been able to experience personally. I feel I have turned this opportunity into an experience and I have learned such a great deal regarding what goes on in a business environment and in future, will act from these experiences in my future business career.

  Our last week could not have been more eventful! After completing my Human Resource projects and handing over all materials completed I felt I had accomplished a great deal from my investigations into staff training and performance appraisals. I will be keeping in contact with the HR staff and I hope the goals we set out go to plan! Our last weekend involved concocting several gallons of intern chilli at the Wood Group annual family picnic! At this event there is a chilli cook off where several teams go vying for the title of cook off champions! Although in for the taking part (as we certainly we not going to win!) some serious chilli tasting experts said that it wasn't all that bad! It was a cheap day for eating as it was chilli after chilli! Saying that, we really should re-think how good it was if we had plenty left! Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to a lot of people that day who have been nothing short of fantastic to the boys and myself throughout our internship.

I have gained a tremendous amount out of this experience:

1.   Learning Spanish every week from a very enthusiastic teacher called Zully. I plan to continue my learning of the language over here as I have notepads full of grammar and vocabulary lessons!

2.   My dissertation research relates a lot to certain activities of companies like the Wood Group so I managed to carry out a few interviews before I left and feel the time given to me from company employees has given my research more leverage and I hope to continue working with these contacts throughout the year.

3.   Learning about the different business functions has broadened my horizons and in future I feel that if given a challenge in any of these areas, I would be able to approach it with a positive attitude.

4.   Gaining experience in the oil and gas industry has been an exciting opportunity as it was new ground for me! I feel I have taken away a lot of knowledge from my time spent in Texas

5.   The list would go on but I must mention the driving in the US: I came, I saw....I nearly conquered!

    Lastly, I would like to thank Derek Blackwood and his fantastic team out in Houston. They made my experience what it was and I can't thank them for all their time enough. Opportunities like the one I was lucky enough to receive do not come around often and to be selected to represent Scotland on a global scale really does mean something. So thank you for the opportunity and all your time guys.

I would also like to thank the people at the beginning of this awesome journey: Innis; Melissa; Irene; Julie; Sarah and Jennifer. The SaltireFoundation staff have been fantastic and without their continuous efforts this experience would not have been available to the 27 other interns and myself. Thank you all for everything.

Finally, thanks to everyone for taking an interest in my experience and in reading my blog!

Until later,

Chris

      

In a nutshell.............

Well after recovering from some jet-lag and gathering some post-internship thoughts, I feel that its time to post the first of my final blogs…….so thank you to everyone who has shown an interest and took the time to read my postings over the past 8 weeks. It has been a pleasure to share my experiences!

Firstly let me re-cap on the main activities that I have been working on over the last eight weeks:

1.      Corporate Communications: Within this very interesting department of the Wood Group I started my internship off with a project that was designed to contribute to the re-design of the corporate website. This involved gathering and analysing the different products and services offered by the Wood Group divisions and their subsidiary companies. I also performed a location audit of all Wood Group company addresses to get the database up to date. I was also lucky enough to give my opinion, as a management student what the careers site would need to attract the future Wood Group graduate intakes!

2.      Accounting and Finance: My second placement took me straight out of my comfort zone and presented me with the biggest challenges. However I must say, with the help I received from the Finance team the ‘number-crunching’ was not as bad as my expectations had been preceding my time in Finance. I learned all about their intercompany account systems that all the Wood Group companies use and how the Finance department can monitor this. I also completed balance sheet reviews and contributed to completing accounts payable and receivable processes.

3.      Business Development: This placement certainly interested me as it was on finding and capitalising on new business opportunities. I was able to get involved in major meetings and conference calls and this contributed to my learning by finding out everyone involved in Business Developments roles. My first project was to produce a track record experience database for one of the Wood Group Companies: DeepWater Specialists Inc. This will be able to be used as a sales and marketing tool in the future. My second project was more from a data analysis perspective and increased my skills in this area. I researched company figures and input these into a spreadsheet that was structured in the way that all Wood Group companies could enter their figures for experience in offshore floating production.

4.      My last fortnight was spent in Human Resources where I helped to initiate some HR policies in a Wood Group Company that had never until recently had an HR manager due to the nature of the work. I presented my research on training programmes that could be adopted and also illustrated how useful performance appraisals could be and therefore left them with a template they could implement into their HR practices. I also got the opportunity to interview a recent university graduate and what he saw as his future training and development needs.

Quite clearly (and in more than a nutshell!) I have managed to work through a lot of interesting projects with the help of very talented people in their respective fields so thank you for all your time and help! I will post my last blog (I promise!) very shortly on my last week and what I think I have gained from this opportunity.

Week 7: International Human Resource Management

Hello everyone,

Well I cant believe thats me in my last week now so I thought I would update you all on last weeks agenda! The week started with my first day in my last placement involving helping initiate some HR initiatives in one of the Wood Group companies. I had a rather lengthy meeting with the new HR manager of the company to explain what I would like to help implement. Unfortunately due to being in HR for only a fortnight does not give me the timescale to develop initiatives to launch but I am sure my input will be of great help and I am learning just how much there is to consider when co-ordinating human resource projects.

Thinking about how an employee would react to one of my policy suggestions has been a great learning curve instead of simply inputing information into a computer. One of my suggestions of what the offshore design company could implement is an appraisal procedure. All companies must be aware of the training and development needs of their employees and by including yearly appraisals then project leaders would be able to get to know their staff better; understand their career aspirations; gain knowledge of what training they need or need and also what is not going so well that can be amended to enhance motivation.

I have also been researching training programmes for technical writers and document control staff. Due to the technical nature of these roles I have delve deep in the oil and gas industry training programmes and have been successful in gaining some information that will be of use to the company for future employee development purposes.

In addition, I spent a day working with an International HR Specialist of the Wood Group called Ana Holland. Ana explained the project that she was currently working on in Peru. The Wood Group are involved in providing the manpower for a major pipeline project so it was interesting to hear her experiences with employees of different cultures and nationalities. Cultural differences are important issues to address when working in a multi-cultural environment as I am currently doing, and this has strengthened my ability to work with people from all over the globe througn understanding that different beliefs are not wrong.......they are just different.

Week 6: Cultural Differences and Project number 2!

Hello guys,

As promised I thought I would update you on my last week in Business Development as it certainly was packed full of projects; department meetings; summits and presentations! Chris certainly was busy and a big thank you to everyone who kept me on my toes!

Firstly, I started my second project which was geared towards gathering statistical information for an article in the Wood Group's news magazine due to be published in the future. ‘WoodNews’ newsletters can be found at www.woodgroup.com This enabled me to draw numerical data from several sources and insert this into a spreadsheet that required data broken down into yearly figures so the help of the staff here has been greatly appreciated! I also had to apply my knowledge of many offshore projects that I have learned about through my experience of my first project in week 5. I also described in the spreadsheet the services offered by the Wood Group to their clients and already I feel confident that I have strengthened my knowledge of the oil and gas industry however I am learning something new everyday which is the purpose of this experience!

I have also been learning about the many cultural aspects that exist within the oil and gas industry and especially when a company has different corporate cultures who work with clients who operate on different beliefs and assumptions. Bill Cochrane, who is also a member of the GlobalScot Network, gave me a series of presentations revolving around the issue of managing cultural differences. We discussed Leadership styles of different parts of the world; international communication practices; cultural diversity impact on organizations and ultimately that we should see other business cultures as not being wrong, but different. This will be useful to my research when I get back home in September as it is on the legal issues of multinational growth, however as a business dissertation I will be able to include some international business issues that multinational companies experience.

As the week came to a close, I participated in the monthly business development meeting which included several business development executives from several Wood Group divisions. I enjoyed hearing about what business opportunities were being investigated and what projects where currently being worked on. However I also gave an overview to the team on what I had worked on in the past fortnight in business development and offered some further suggestions for future movements.

So I think all ‘yall’ can see that I really enjoyed working here and would have loved to have spent more time to learn more about this area of business. Well I have just finished my first week in Human Resource Management and it has been a pretty eventful week! Will be writing another blog about the forthcoming weekend and about my first week in HR which is also my penultimate week in Texas!! Boy has it flown in! Can't believe it will be my last week next week either! Speak soon!

Week 6: Energy Capital Solutions Summit in Downtown Houston

Well hello everyone!

Now that I am in my penultimate week out here in good old Texas, I thought I better give an update of last week which saw me learn so much about the business development of the Wood Group. We have been very lucky to get so much time from the people out here as us interns know they are incredibly busy! I finished my last week in Business Development and so far this has been my most enjoyable placement to date. From my experience, it is very beneficial to be involved in contributing to the growth of a company due to the vast amount of knowledge to be gained from the experts involved and the meetings that take place that all contribute to the growth progression.

On Monday the 18th I was invited along with two members of Business Development to an 'Energy Capital Solutions Summit' that took place at the Texas A&M Health Science Centre in Downtown Houston. This gave a great insight into the current situation on energy efficiency and how critical this is in current times. The panel featured a Texas Congressman, ex-president of Shell Oil, former US Deputy Secretary of Energy and a Vice President of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. Clearly there was plently knowledge to share and from the audiences perspective: plenty brains to pick! I was interested in how the panel discussed the potential for further exploration into untouched oil fields and also the need for greater energy infrastructure into more efficient technical exploration for the many players in the market. The panel also talked about alternative forms of energy that could be implemented. An example was used for the city of Houston that has a public transport system that is under development. The vast majority of citizens use their vehicles and as a result, consume a magnificent quantity of gas ( I hope you see I am adopting the US jargon pretty well!). There was a debate of whether alternative forms of energy could be implemented to decrease the reliance on such types of finite fuels.

As you can see there was a lot to digest on Monday and the rest of the week was a bit more up my street with discussions about corporate culture and the monthly Business Development meeting where I expressed to the team what work I had been doing and about my experiences so far. So more on this in a day or two so check back soon!

 

   

Week 5: Business Development

Hey everyone,

Well last week saw me enter my fifth week and as a result my third placement. It was time for me to grace the corridors of the Business Development section of the Wood Group Production Facilities sector. I had very much been looking forward to this area of the business as it is all about spotting new business opportunities that can be pursued by the company in order to stimulate further growth within the oil and gas industry. My dissertation in my up and coming fourth year (which begins in less than a month I released today!!) is all about multinational growth and the legal issues involved when a company grows out with their host country so I was listening very attentively to what every business development executive had to say about their role and what was currently on the agenda within their work.

Last Monday saw me thrusted straight into my first conference call with different Wood Group units all over the USA where I was able to listen to the various opportunities going on in different areas and also the problems that had to be dealt with that may hinder any growth. I was introduced to all the different people involved in Business Development and introduced myself firstly by name then telling everyone that I was eager to learn a lot from my placement here so I think everyone was impressed that I was so enthusiastic about it, especially for a Monday morning at 8am!  Later in that day I was invited along by Valerie Mathieu, a Business Development Executive and who I will be reporting to over my placement to a business opportunity meeting. This meeting expressed the Wood Group's wish to establish relationships with another oil and gas company in an African country that would contribute to stronger growth in the industry. It was very interesting to hear all the different views of each person involved as to how the Wood Group should position themselves in this potential opportunity.  I also got time to speak with Valerie about her role and about the aims of business development in the long term.

On Tuesday, I got started on my project for my placement. This was to create a 'Capabilities track record database' for one of the Wood Group subsidiaries: DeepWater Specialists Inc. This involved researching all of DSI's past project experience and then compile a database of each project; what they were contracted to do; what they developed for their clients who range from Shell to BP and also what specialised services they provided for their client. I liaised with Paul Dutton the Business Development Director for the company and he was able to point me in the right direction for finding relevant information for this database. My aim in producing this document is to aid Business Development personnel when they are representing DSI by supporting their sales and marketing pitch by allowing clients to view this information in chronological order by date of the project commenced. This would in turn allow potential clients to see the vast experience of DSI and their competences which have won them very high profile offshore and onshore work over the years and in many different geographical locations over the globe.

During the week I also got the opportunity to meet with Bill Cochrane who is the Director of Field Operations Development within Production Facilities. He answered all of my many questions with regard to the strategy of the Wood Group in terms of how they acquire new business and also how they perform acquisitions. I got an insight into how the different Wood Group companies communicate in order to strengthen their overall business capabilities. This venture is called 'Joined Up Thinking' and involves corporate events for employees of the various Wood Group companies to come together to network closer for the future development and to maintain a strong and focused corporate culture.

I also got the chance to widen my knowledge by having a meeting with Joaquin Obregon, an Operations Manager for Production Facilities. He has vast experience with entering new countries with the company and since my dissertation research is based on the growth of multinational companies, I considered it wise to ask as many questions about his experience as I could. Our meeting reflected on the many cultural aspects of international growth and how there may be problems presented. However it was explained that there are always ways around these issues and that any company in general when growing must research local traditions or beliefs in order to gain the best possible start in the new territory.  We also discussed recent growth movements of the Wood Group: Peru and Equatorial Guinea for instance. Joaquin also discussed the operational and human resource issues that he has experienced including language barriers and lack of local knowledge. He then explained the importance of having a strong team that could embrace the challenge and maintain it as an opportunity rather than as a threat.

So as you all can see, last week was very eventful and I am currently in week 6 working away on my project. However I am hoping to move onto another project soon so keep your eyes peeled for what I get up to!

Will make a posting and hopefully these much talked about photographs of our escapades! Last weekend saw us all head off to see some Baseball so more about that later! 

The weekend of last.....

Hello everyone!

Thought I better give an update of last weekend as we spent it in the capital city of Texas: Austin. Firstly, we are working with another student here called Hugh Brown and he is spending his third year of university here at Wood Group for his year long industrial placement. It was his birthday on Friday the 8th August so the rest of us decided to take him out for a birthday dinner! Unfortunately for Hugh he only turned 20 so was unable to have a beer to celebrate! We decided to take him to a Brazilian restaurant famous for their traditionally dressed waitors who walk around with over 15 varities of meat on skewers for you to try. What added to the visit was we received a card each: one side saying MORE PLEASE and the other side saying NO THANKS I'M FULL. We had a lot of fun turning each others cards over however mine practically remained on the MORE PLEASE for the duration of the meal! The restaurant was called:Fogo de Chao Churrascaria and can be found at www.fogodechao.com. I took some photographs of the night so hopefully I will get them up some time soon for everyone to have a look and get jealous!

Well Saturday morning saw Austin beckoning our arrival. Two people we have met out here called Simon and Claire wanted to come with us so our thinking was: the more the merrier! I had visited Austin about 10 years ago so there hadn't been much I remembered apart from getting a row from my mum for writing a comment in the visitors book of the Capitol Building amounting to: GOOD. So this time I wouldn't make the same mistake. We visited this grand building that seats the House of Representatives of Texas and actually features paintings of all past Texas State Governors. I did write a rather lengthy statement in the visitor book, just incase my mum was standing behind me! Again, I have some pictures so hope to post these very soon!

At night we headed off to the famous 6th street that has an array of bars. My favourite was 'Pete's Duelling Piano Bar'. I walked in to them duelling with Billy Joel's 'Piano Man' which is one of my all time favourite songs so that was one of my favourite moments of the night. There was a lot of audience interaction and you could make requests (along with slipping them $10) for them to duel on.

After such a good day on Saturday, it was time to hit the road on Sunday afternoon after some lunch! Back to getting organised for a new week........and this time I am working in Business Development so an update in a couple of days about how my first week has gone!

Week 4: The Master of Finance........................

Well I thought I got a good understanding of what goes on in the Finance department of the Wood Group!!  My second week in this challenging area proved to test my accounting knowledge as I studied accounting and finance back in first year at university. (this makes me feel a lot older than the tender age of 21).

Last week saw me having to take tuesday off due to Tropical Storm Eduaord. Luckily enough it wasn't that bad at all although the heavens did open on more than one occasion however I wasn't phased as I've seen it all before in bonny Scotland! A bit of dissertation research took place along with a long lie.

Last week in finance seen me, firstly, learn about the invoicing process from a lady called Andrea Hollinger who taught me all about her role in finance department.  She made me aware of the importance of accurate invoicing and that there is a process for coding individual invoices that are processed at the end of the month for external companies outwith Production Facilities and at the end of every week for Production Facilities itself. It was also explained that these must have back-ups incase any data goes missing or if errors occur. I also processed some of these invoices myself and feel I learned a lot about this financial process!

Secondly, I undertook a project involving "Commercial Checking". This involved me analysing the balances of transactions on the computer system and then comparing it to the paper bank statement. The aim of the process was to ensure that each separate transaction was on the computer and paper statement. Thankfully all my balances matched!

I also learned about the process that Wood Group subsidiary companies must go through when submitting their accounts for forecasts, actuals and budgets. I also learned that they must give an illustration of any deviations in profits and explain the reason for this to the Chief Financial Officer.

One of my last projects that I worked on was learning how to initiate internal wire transfers. Employees that have incurred expenses that the company must pay for are entitled to be re-imbursed for their costs and this may be fuel or other business expenses such as hotel accomodation or air travel. These cheques must recieve 2 signatures from designated senior staff to be authorised for use.

Lastly, I learned from an Ingrid Hollinger, an accountant within the company about Intercompany balances. These are seen internally on-line and it allows finance personnel in Production Facilities to see what subsidiary companies have submitted their account details to FRANGO. This is the financial record system used by the Wood Group. She explained that the controllers of these companies must submit their accounts for verification and analysis of the finance team in Production Facilities.

Finally, as you can see I was quite productive last week and learned a lot about finance! In a way it has reduced my fear of this area and feel more relaxed in learning more about the role of finance within an organisation. I feel I could work more closely with financial data in my future career.

I now currently in week 5 of my internship and time is flying by! I will now be working within the business development department who aim to discover business opportunities that the Wood Group would be able to pursue.

Will blog soon with details of the weekend that was spent in the Texan capital of Austin and details of week 5!

Newsflash........

Just to let everyone know that Heriot-Watt have put the news of our internship up on their website in the news section ( http://www.news.hw.ac.uk/news/ ) Half of us are in the photograph as there are 6 students in total from Heriot Watt on the internship in different places across the globe.

Back to work without any impact from Tropical Storm Eduaord. To be honest it was just some heavy rain and hardly any wind! However I would not like to be caught driving when the heavens open!!

On-line Marketing Summit....to Tropical Storm Eduoard!

Hey everyone. Just thought I would give all y'all an update of what sort of things I  have been doin the past week and certain natural events that have prevented me from leaving my apartment!

Firstly,  last week I was asked by the corporate communications department if I would be interested in attending the annual On-line Marketing Summit. This organisation was founded by a marketer called Aaron Kahlow and the website can be found at www.onlinemarketingsummit.com. Although this event which tours 13 major cities across the USA is for marketing professionals, I thought it would be a great way to build on the things I have recently learned through studying Strategic Marketing at university. There were many experienced speakers giving seminars on on-line marketing issues such as: Search Engine Optimisation; E-mail marketing; Social Media Strategies and Behavioural Targeting & Technology. I feel I learned a lot from the experience and the mass of notes taken shall stand me on good stead if I need to refer to them in the future! 

After the seminar session there was a networking event where I got the chance to talk to some very knowledgeable and experienced business executives as my pile of business cards I received suggests! We even had the opportunity to stay for dinner and a lot of people were interested in the fact that an intern was in attendance at the summit therefore I took a considerable amount of time to explain my internship experience so far!

Since the event was at the Sheraton Suites which was near the Galleria in Downtown Houston, it was going to cost as 50 dollars for a taxi! Therefore we were kindly offered a lift home by Marketing Consultant Richard Laurence Baron which I greatly appreciated for keeping those moths in my wallet!

Week 4 in finance is going well so far and I have been learning all about the invoicing process of the Wood Group and been getting involved in registering these invoices in the computer system. I have also been involved in learning about how the payroll for people must be inputed into the system to ensure payment is received on the due pay dates.

However Tuesday 5th August was not ever a day I was going to spend in the Wood Group Production Facilities Office due to Tropical Storm Eduoard! We were advised not to drive due to the inclement weather conditions. As a result I have just completed some dissertation research from home. I am trying to make an early start before I go back to university in mid September so here is hoping I get a good bit of research done over here!

However it looks like its back to work tomorrow so will let you all know how I get on later in the week!