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 to handle; one of these large and complex projects is oil and gas projects. The current controlling processes of projects are not able to detect the problems in early phases of the project and are rather delayed, which leads to extra time and cost. One solution is to find the symptoms of problems in the early phases. Due to the importance of drilling projects in upstream sector, the main objective of this research is to identify the early warning symptoms of problems in drilling projects and to find the relationships between the selected early warnings and the outcomes and problems of these projects. To this end, the early warnings have been recognized through literature review and interviews with experts. Then, a case study analysis is performed to find the relationships between early warnings and project outcomes. All the cases have been selected from previously completed drilling projects in one of the oil fields of Iran. The findings show that there is a relationship between early warnings, project outcomes, and project problems.