Innovative thinkers

Through his 40-year career, Ken Arnold, senior technical advisor to Worley Parsons, has witnessed the oil and gas industry conquer a plethora of feats. From ultra-deepwater drilling to advanced recovery techniques, Arnold has not just helped develop the technologies, but also the management processes that have unlocked hydrocarbons from some of the most challenging places on earth.

After receiving his BS degree from Cornell University in civil engineering, Arnold considered oil gas, with the idea that exploration would soon open up off the Atlantic coast, close to his hometown of New York. “I was not initially drawn to the field of oil and gas,” Arnold said. After interviewing with Shell, he realized that ‘big oil’ was not at all what he thought it was. “They were trying to do a very important job for the world in providing energy.” He began his career as a facilities manager with Shell and after gaining experience as a divisional mechanical engineer, Arnold was promoted to leading 150 engineers in projects involving offshore, onshore, and marsh platforms and facilities as well as engineering support for operations. While there, he developed a unique logistical blueprint, Shell’s Typical Facility approach, to the design and construction of offshore facilities. “We developed the whole system, including specifications, guidelines, design project management, the systems,” said Arnold.

In 1980, Arnold, along with partner Guy Carriere, founded Paragon Engineering Services, and focused on managing construction projects and conceptual studies for production systems. While the company grew and became one of the first engineering first in its area of specialty to adopt computer modeling, Arnold focused on creating a culture that organically spurred ingenuity. “I really concentrated on what I learned at Shell my first day—trying to make Paragon a place where people who worked got rewarded,” Arnold said.

Arnold began teaching a series of courses on the subject matter for both domestic and international oil companies and developed Paragon’s industry-sponsored design software for production facility design. The “How to” books on production engineering included a floppy disc of how to implement a successful project model. “About 10 years ago I ran into a company in Pakistan and they looked at me and said, ‘You’re the little green book guy, aren’t you?’ We keep an old computer in a closet office so we can run those programs,” Arnold said. “I thought, man isn’t that something.”

In 2005, when AMEC bought Paragon, Arnold became the chief engineer, advising on global engineering project management, and founded K. Arnold Consulting in 2007 to advise oil and gas clients on offshore surface engineering, project management and development.

While his expertise has led him to work with clients on marginal field development studies off West Africa, to concepts for offshore wind farms, Arnold has focused on his lifelong passion—safety. Throughout his initial work in developing API offshore regulations with the MMS’ predecessor, the Offshore Safety and Anti-Pollution committee (OSAPE), to today’s BSEE policies, Arnold has worked to advocate a ‘culture of safety’ and has lectured all over the world about the implications of individual and organizational commitment to offshore safety regulations. “What makes safety is 1,000 decisions made by management at every level. Every one of those decisions is critical,” he said.

 At the 2013 Offshore Technology Conference, Arnold will receive the annual OTC Distinguished Achievement Award for Individuals, for his contributions to the offshore industry’s development of safety practices and equipment sizing and facility project management. “A big thing I learned that I now tell young engineers all the time is go to work for a company that’s really going to invest in you, train you and teach you,” said Arnold. “It’s the best education you can ever have.”