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Vol. 232 No. 1 |
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| NELL LUKOSAVICH, SENIOR EDITOR |
The creative art of designing a rig floor
There is nothing “by the book” about David Reid, vice president of E&P, business and technology at National Oilwell Varco. Though he has led the design of some of the world’s most innovative rig floors, developing pipe handling and driving BOP technologies, his creative inventions always begin the same way—with a pen, a notebook and occasionally a tablecloth at a restaurant.
While designing buildings in Aberdeen in 1992, Reid met an employee from drilling manufacturer Varco, who introduced him to the oil and gas industry. Reid joined Varco as a top drive repair technician and, while working on orders in the repair shop, he began to discover improvements in the process. He sketched out new processes and implemented several safety and assembly exchange programs. The new initiatives reduced the duration of repair jobs significantly.
After two years working on the shop floor, Reid began to ask for a transfer to sales. After initially being turned down, he began learning everything he could about top drive machinery during his late nights in the workshop. The next time Reid approached his boss about a sales position, he was questioned about all of specifications and applications of top drives. “He couldn’t find anything I couldn’t answer,” Reid said.
Reid got a new job doing quotations and would often visit customers to work through the configuration of projects with them. He began to gain a deeper understanding of drilling equipment, as well as the challenges customers faced in finding solutions that fit their particular rig.
When Reid went to measure up a rig in Norway, he discovered that the system being proposed would not work as intended. The Varco team started from scratch to design a new system, and Reid began sketching up ideas.
Maurice Jacques, retired vice president of Varco International, remembers Reid as “a very bright young man who was very unassuming, yet not bashful.” Jacques was in Norway at the same time when he got a phone call at his hotel from the young quotation worker. “[Reid] said, ‘I’ve got some ideas’ and I thought, ‘Who is this kid?’ ”Jacques said. “But we got together and he did have lots of great ideas. He was a quotes guy trying to find the right configuration and application of machinery, and he wasn’t concerned in the least about asking dumb questions.”
Soon after the exchange in Norway, Reid accepted a position as a marketing engineer at Varco’s California office, and he began designing pipe-handling systems. At the time, Varco’s pipe-handling business was struggling: The pipe-racking system (PRS) was nothing more than a concept and had not yet been successfully applied on a rig. Reid began talking to customers, sketching out concepts and working with the sales and engineering teams.
The team developed a new PRS that increased functionality and led Reid to travel around the world explaining its advantages to contractors and operators. His work paid off; Varco went from selling four pipe-racking systems a year to 30.
In 1997, Reid joined Varco’s Shaffer division in Houston to help introduce boltless BOPs. While the BOP had a higher price tag than others on the market, it reduced costs over the long run and increased operational safety. He continued to work on his BOP design and, several years later, his boltless design was the top-selling BOP at Shaffer.
Reid’s interest remained with the bigger picture: In 2000 he returned to designing complete rig packages. He soon came across a new project—designing the Maersk Innovator. “It was my favorite rig design. I remember using crayons to draw all over [the paper tablecloth] at Macaroni Grill, loading up the table with new rig ideas,” Reid said.
He worked closely with several groups within Varco to design the right rig package. It was the first time that a jackup rig was outfitted with a long pipe deck, casing and pipe handling, integrated control systems and the new boltless BOP. Maersk chose Varco’s design, making the sale Varco’s largest at the time.
Reid also began to focus on improving the design and delivery model for newbuild jackup rigs. Whereas previously, Reid worked to create custom rig design solutions, the greatest challenge with jackup rigs was for a shipyard to outfit them in a standard way. While there was a lot of hesitation about Reid’s unconventional design approach among his co-workers, he continued to talk to his customers and pushed the new concept forward. “I’m not an ‘ask for permission’ guy,” Reid said.
After Varco merged with National Oilwell in 2005, Reid’s next big project brought him halfway around the world to the Sea of Okhotsk, offshore Siberia. The Yastreb rig, the most powerful land rig at the time, was being prepared to drill an extended-reach well seven miles out into the ocean as part of the Sakhalin 1 project. Reid and his team configured a new top drive that employed more torque and higher speeds. The system also offered both modular and redundant components to provide a new standard of uptime for top drives. The project at Sakhalin set a world record in 2007, when the Yastreb rig reached a measured depth of 37,000 ft.
Reid believes that to do your job right, you should constantly be looking for the next great idea. “Take risks, ask questions, speak up and do things that aren’t your job,” Reid said. “I’ve never tried to climb ladders; I’ve just worked hard and had fun.” He credits his professional drive and personal demeanor to his mentor, Jacques: “He taught me that the worst-case scenario in speaking up is being wrong. Then he taught me how to be better by understanding your weaknesses and leaning into your strengths.” 
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