An assistance to identification and estimation of contractual strategy alternatives in oil and gas upstream development projects

International audienceThe development of new oil and gas production facilities starts by the design of a contractual strategy (CS). A CS is a set of coordinated actions, defined as a split of project scope into contracts, with smaller scopes, specific types of remuneration and contractors selection mode. These contracts will later drive the execution of the project. When designing a CS, three main issues are faced: (i) the identification of a relevant set of alternatives; (ii) the estimation and evaluation of such alternatives; (iii) the need to substantiate the chosen one. In this work, we propose a 3-step structured approach for selecting the appropriate CS through the exploration and selection among a detailed, albeit reasonable number of alternatives. The focus in this communication is on identifying and estimating alternatives, using a combination of Domain Mapping Matrices (DMM) and Design Structure Matrices (DSM)