Prodrill Set Global Expansion Project For RGU MBA Students

As part of its overall international growth strategy, post MBO in 2009, Prodrills’ Directors wanted to consider the right location for an international office to support their ever expanding range of global clients. Prodrill believed this was an ideal consultancy project and was delighted when the Robert Gordon University MBA programme students accepted the assignment.

“Prodrill has been delighted to work with a project team from the MBA programme”, says Louise Wood, Managing Director. “The team who selected our project come from varied sectoral backgrounds including finance, marketing and commercial and we felt this would be very beneficial to help achieve the project objectives and deadlines. The oil and gas industry is very diverse and the drilling sector is extremely challenging and unpredictable at times, so we knew from the offset that the project would have key challenges for the students. They needed to gain a very quick understanding of our market and understand the complexities of placing people, as well as looking at the legal, financial, commercial, and operational challenges that would occur, following the expansion of our business overseas.”

Louise continues, “At the commencement of the project the team appointed a Project Leader who communicated with us on a regular basis providing project updates and directing key questions as the project developed. The students were also very visual in their approach; working from our offices in Aberdeen they held regular progress meetings with the Management and Directors.”

“Over a 12 week period they got to know us and our business, as well as the global drilling arena. They narrowed down their initial starting point of approx 50 countries across numerous regions, to 4 countries in 4 regions, which they recommended in their final presentation to our Board of Directors in September 2010. They focused on the project brief and did not lose site of our objective which is to enable us to open an office/offices in an international location offering key commercial and operational benefits, as well as the financial advantages being a key consideration. The board is currently reviewing the project teams' recommendations for implementation of an international office structure during 2011.”

Louise concludes, “The Directors of Prodrill would like to thank the MBA programme team for their interest and dedication to the project. We wish Ameze Iyere, Namsi Mchombu, Adam Abdul-Karim and Musah Mohammed all the success in their future careers.”