How E.ON E&P Managed Project Actions and Lessons Learned

E.ON E&P had previously relied on individual project teams to implement and control their own action-management processes.

Although this worked at project level, information was stored across separate spreadsheets, documents, email chains and other repositories. This made it difficult to obtain a complete view of project actions across the organisation. Actions could be duplicated or overlooked and project reporting required significant manual effort. In addition, managers lacked a current view of progress and overdue work, evidence of completion was difficult to locate and lessons learned were not consistently shared between projects.

E.ON E&P needed a secure and easy-to-use system that could organise actions by project, support approvals and provide a clear audit trail from creation to close-out.

Adam Yeats, former Project Manager with E.ON E&P, explained: “E.ON E&P is constantly involved in complex oil and gas projects in the North Sea and beyond, with each of these projects generating large numbers of actions that need proactive management.”

He added: “It is critical that every action is closed out in a timely manner, with an audit trail and status of progress available at any time.”

Adam Yeats had previously worked with Pisys and invited the company to propose a solution based on its Action Tracking Management System. Following a review of E.ON E&P’s requirements, Pisys configured and implemented ATMS to provide a central system for managing project actions across the organisation.

Action Tracking Management System

ATMS gave E.ON E&P a single location for recording, assigning and monitoring actions.
Projects could be organised into sub-projects, tasks and actions, with each item following a defined workflow through to completion.

Actions could be assigned to individual users with clear deadlines and responsibilities. Selected personnel were given approver status, allowing them to review the work and confirm that the action had been completed satisfactorily.
Role-based access ensured that users could see the information relevant to their responsibilities without being given unnecessary access to other project data.

The system also provided a complete audit trail, allowing E.ON E&P to demonstrate compliance with its internal requirements and show who raised the action, who was responsible for completing it, what progress had been made, what evidence supported completion, who approved the final close-out and when each stage of the process occurred.

Because the system was available online, users could access project information from different offices and locations. This allowed managers to monitor progress without relying on manually prepared updates from individual teams.

Lessons Learned Database

Following the successful implementation of ATMS, Pisys worked with E.ON E&P to develop a Lessons Learned Database.
The objective was to create a central repository where lessons from project reviews, retrospectives and after-action reviews could be recorded, classified, reviewed and shared.

Adam Yeats explained:
“If lessons are being captured from many projects, for example from retrospectives and after-action reviews, then these lessons need to be collected within a system that stores them, classifies them and routes them to the person who needs to act on them.”

The Lessons Learned Database allowed employees to document lessons and best practices, route them for review and approval, and distribute them to relevant audiences.

Users could also search the database when planning new work or reviewing similar projects. This helped ensure that previous experience informed future decisions rather than remaining within individual project teams. Lessons could support improvements to training, best-practice guidance, policies and procedures, project planning, technical handover and continual-improvement activities.

Implementation and training

Pisys provided a train-the-trainer programme to support the rollout of ATMS across E.ON E&P.
Selected members of the internal team were also trained to make minor system changes to meet the requirements of individual managers and projects.

Further enhancements were introduced as the organisation’s requirements developed.

ATMS was used by around 150 members of staff and provided a consistent structure for managing actions across complex projects.
The system enabled E.ON E&P to organise projects into sub-projects, tasks and actions, assign clear responsibility for each action, apply defined approval and close-out workflows, control access according to user roles, monitor project progress across different locations, maintain a full audit and compliance trail, reduce reliance on separate spreadsheets and repositories, and identify delays and project obstacles more quickly.

The Lessons Learned Database created a central source of project knowledge that could be searched and reused by future teams.
It allowed lessons to be captured in a structured format, reviewed by the appropriate people and shared with employees who could apply them to future work.

Customer feedback

Adam Yeats concluded:
“Pisys’ solutions have added significant value to our business and provide managers with a single point of access to each project, its status, progress and closure.”

“With all project management data residing in a single repository, we can easily track each project, saving time, identifying and addressing project stumbling blocks and ensuring that each is completed on schedule with a visible audit and compliance trail.”

“Our relationship with Pisys has been excellent, and we continue to work as partners to refine and expand both our ATMS and Lessons Learned Database.”

How Pisys supported E.ON E&P

The Pisys Action Tracker gave E.ON E&P a central, controlled system for managing project actions, demonstrating closure and sharing lessons learned across the organisation.

By combining action ownership, approval workflows, role-based access and a complete audit trail, the organisation gained a clearer view of project progress and a more reliable way to retain knowledge from previous work.