IHRDC has progressed through a series of historical growth periods driven, on one hand, by the needs of the industry for its products and services and, on the other, by its corporate mission to provide innovative and value creating forms of learning for its clients. Each phase of its development has prepared IHRDC for the innovative activities it is undertaking today.

In reading the following development chronology notice how each transition has led to the expansion of IHRDC core competencies, growth of its intellectual property and innovation in the delivery of value-creating products and services to its clients. You should read them in sequence but the opportunity to browse is also available – simply click on the titles of interest.

1969-1986: Technical Short Course Period
Starting with modest equity capital in 1969, IHRDC’s founder, Dr. David A. T. Donohue, with a very carefully selected group of Instructional Associates, planned, developed, marketed and taught short courses in all areas of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology (E&P) for clients throughout the world. Strong emphasis was placed on quality of content and excellence in presentation. Demand grew. All marketing, administration, and development were performed in-house. As employment expanded throughout the industry, especially in the late 1970’s, the demand for "technology training" was high. During this period IHRDC had as many as 100 Associates and taught up to 250 courses per year. When margins fell on "public" offerings in the mid-1980s, programs were reduced in number and limited to "private" offerings. Although there is a modest but growing call for technical courses today, new developments in instructional delivery methods, discussed below, are offering more effective solutions to personnel development.

1976-1986: The Press
The Instructional Associates mentioned earlier, soon had course materials that were developed into timely books that the technologists wanted to read. In 1976 IHRDC began a Press, which published 76 influential books on E&P technology over the next eight years. The IHRDC Press developed a strong reputation for excellence and many of its books were adopted as textbooks for undergraduate and graduate studies. All editorial, publishing and marketing work was done in-house except printing and warehousing. When the number of specialists employed in this sector of the industry was curtailed in the mid-1980s, IHRDC sold the Press to Prentice-Hall.

1976-1994: The Video Production Period
The Video Production Period began with two major objectives: to provide innovative forms of training to individuals wherever the need existed and to develop products that sold for higher margins than books. In the mid-70s the answer was the evolving world of video production. IHRDC was an early leader. It began producing "video courses" in cooperation with Phillips Petroleum, and learned to market them worldwide. In 1979 it developed the idea of building a Video Library for Exploration & Production Specialists ("Video Library") to consist of over 100 modules. Each module consisted of a book, written by a recognized specialist, and a carefully scripted and produced video program of about one hour’s duration. To fund the production IHRDC invited the majors and many national oil companies to become Sponsors. A Sponsor committed to pay $5,000 - 10,000 per module and provide technical content review. Fourteen companies eventually became Sponsors.

In the development of this major new product, IHRDC became a substantial text, graphics and video publisher. All production was performed in-house except video field shooting and final studio editing. A total of 113 productions were completed over a 12 year period at a cost of about $12 million. The product received 10 major awards for excellence (Telly Awards) and high praise from clients worldwide. IHRDC retained copyright on all of this unique intellectual property and, as will be stated later, it has now been transformed into a new product.

1976-Present: Petroleum Operations and Maintenance Training Services
IHRDC has been asked frequently to plan, develop and deliver training for the operating and maintenance sectors of the international oil and gas industry. Most of this work has been performed in the Middle East and the Gulf Region. It has ranged from a four-year assignment for Dubai Petroleum Company in 1976-80, to a major three-year, $2.3 million contract with Al Furat Petroleum Company (Shell Syria) in 1998-2000, and a very similar contract with Abu Dhabi Marina Area Operating Company executed in late 1999.

This innovative work is performed out of our Cairo office, which was opened in 1986. These recent training contracts have become a substantial growth area for IHRDC as companies seek to reduce costs by replacing expatriates with local nationals and live instructors with virtual learning systems.

These training services are complimented by a 48-module, video-based training product for operations personnel that IHRDC licensed from ARCO in 1988 (Video Library for Operators). It has marketed this product very successfully throughout the world since that time.

The future potential of this form of training services is substantial because petroleum operating companies, indeed all worldwide energy companies, need to find more effective and less expensive ways to maintain a competent workforce. Capital intensive equipment must continue to operate without unscheduled downtime. This includes the full energy spectrum: oil production facilities, gas processing plants, LNG facilities, pipelines, and combined-cycle gas turbine power plants.

1979-Present: Consulting in Manpower Planning and Development
Since preparing a comprehensive set of "Career Development Plans" for Mobil Oil specialists in 1979, many companies worldwide have asked IHRDC to assist them in preparing similar "roadmaps" for the development of their personnel from entry level to senior management positions. The most recent assignments have been in Kazakhstan, where IHRDC prepared a manpower plan for the integrated oil industry (1998) and the Offshore Caspian Petroleum Sector (1999) and Kuwait (2000), where it developed a comprehensive plan for KUFPEC. In the process IHRDC has accumulated an extensive inventory of training needs and performance competencies required by petroleum specialists throughout the oil and gas industry.

1988-Present: Energy Business Management Programs
By 1987 the energy industry began to recognize the need for a stronger focus on the customer and a better understanding of the "business" of energy. Corporations were being transformed from functional "silos" to flat, horizontal organizations. Authority was transferred to asset management teams who required an integrated understanding of business fundamentals.

To meet this need IHRDC created its "classic" energy management "Certificate" programs: 2-4 week programs, dedicated to the integrated value chains of the energy business (oil, gas and power). These unique programs consists of lectures by recognized specialists, visits to regional energy sites, and a specially designed, business simulation workshop. The workshop and simulator built by IHRDC, allows participants, working in teams and competing with other teams, to develop and manage a "realistic" energy business over a simulated 20-year period. A selection of these programs is offered annually in Boston at the John Hancock Conference Center.

IHRDC began teaching its first such offering, the International Petroleum Management Certificate Program in 1988, a program dedicated to the integrated value chain of the petroleum business. It continues as a very strong offering today. Over the years it has developed and now offers other programs, each focusing on a sector of the energy business (International Gas Business, International Power Business, Exploration and Development Business). The "classic" design results in very high praise by participants: "The best management program I have ever attended". Over 1,400 managers have attended these programs in Boston from more than 40 countries to date. They have also allowed IHRDC to develop exceptional goodwill among this network of energy business leaders throughout the world.

1992-Present: Energy Business Workshops
Over the years a number of companies have asked IHRDC if it could "package" an abbreviated form of its management programs into one-week sessions and offer them on an in-house basis. It did this by limiting the number of instructors and placing more emphasis on the business simulation workshop. The first one-week Business Workshops was offered in 1992 and others were then developed to cover all three energy sectors. have been offered. Today they are offered frequently to clients worldwide with some clients scheduling offerings on a continuing annual basis. For example:

• ExxonMobil schedules the International Gas Business Workshop twice annually for its international gas managers;
• Shell International Gas schedules the International Power Business Workshop
  2-3 times annually for its international managers; and
• Petroleos de Venezuela schedules the International Petroleum Business Workshop twice annually for its managers.

These programs consistently receive the highest ratings that these companies have achieved for management programs.

1994-1998: IPIMS –The E&P Multimedia Knowledge System
IHRDC recognized early that the Information Age, where digital information could be communicated instantly from a server to the desktop at the request of a user, would lead to major transformations in the transfer of knowledge and the acquisition of learning. It also recognized that one of the weaknesses of its highly regarded Video Library for Exploration and Production Specialists was the lack of easy access to content. The books and videotapes were usually stored in a library and it was not easy for a user to find a specific item of knowledge once he found them in the library. The digital world offered a solution.

In late 1994 IHRDC, under the direction of Tim Donohue, began the process of digitizing more than 100 hours of video, 17,000 graphics and 10,000 pages of text in the Video Library. It reviewed all of the content to be sure its was current, build "knowledge maps" that would allow users to quickly find what they are looking for, and began to build multimedia database management systems that stored and retrieved text, graphics and video sequences.

This multimedia "knowledge system", covering all of E&P technology, was referred to as the International Petroleum Industry Multimedia System (IPIMS). It was issued in the CD-ROM format during the period 1995-97.

Updates on both content and design of IPIMS have been made on an ongoing basis to meet client recommendations. One major 1996 recommendation was to make the system available on servers and so, after considerable effort, the Local Area Network (LAN) was issued in 1997. Then, with the advent of "streaming video", a revolution in electronic video transfer, the Internet/Intranet version of IPIMS was developed, beta tested and issued to the market in November 1998.

IPIMS is not sold to clients; it is leased on an annual or longer-term lease basis. The current and prospective licensees and license fees for the different delivery formats and license types are shown on the IHRDC website

It should be made clear that no other company has a competing product. To become a competitor would take a major investment, much more than the original $12 million invested in the Video Library and the $2 million invested recently in developing the system.

1998-Present: Competency Development Learning
IHRDC began building Competency Development Learning in mid-1998 in the important E&P Technology area of Integrated Reservoir Management. This work is being produced in alliance with Petroleos de Venezuela. Four of nine Learning Plans have been completed to date. A pilot testing program began in three regions of Venezuela in mid-1999, with approximately 50 learners and 20 mentors involved. Excellent progress has been made and the learners are very happy with this form of learning. It is estimated that this learning system will reduce the cost of this form of training to PDVSA by a factor of 10.

1998-Present: IPIMS: The Knowledge and Learning System for Oil, Gas and Power
In early 2000 IHRDC formalized it vision of IPIMS as an integrated Web-based Knowledge, Learning and Communication system dedicated to the oil, gas and power sectors. The IPIMS Web page was redesigned to show this vision.

The first major product is dedicated to the Upstream Petroleum sector. It is currently being marketed as IPIMS.ep. The design of this knowledge and learning system for each energy sector is divided into three major subdivisions.

• Knowledge
  • Background Knowledge
  • Practical Knowledge
• Learning
  • Background Learning
  • Competency Development Learning
• Communication

Click here for additional information on IPIMS.

1998-Present: Knowledge and Learning Alliances
Over the years IHRDC has formed alliances with industry sponsors to build intellectual property. It has extended this approach in the building of knowledge and learning products:

Competency Development in Integrated Reservoir Management
IHRDC began developing a virtual learning system in 1998, in alliance with Petroleos de Venezuela, that will allow specialists to develop 45 performance competencies in the important areas of Integrated Reservoir Management. This work is progressing very well and more than one half of the work has been completed to date.

The International Gas Industry Learning Alliance
IHRDC is inviting a select group of companies to become Members of this Learning Alliance which will develop a comprehensive knowledge and learning system devoted to the international gas business. This energy sector is expected to grow substantially in the future and it is one of IHRDC’s major strategic expansion objectives for IPIMS. Alliance details can be found at IPIMS.com.

Alliance invitations are also being prepared for Petroleum Operating and Maintenance Technology and the Electric Power.

2000-Present: Oil&GasTraining.com
In the September, 2000 IHRDC published its e-commerce learning system OilandGasTraining.com. It consists of a reformatted form of IPIMS.ep, essentially two major databases:

2001-Present: Certificate, Diploma and Joint Graduate Degree Programs
In early 2001 IHRDC announced the offering of four Certificate Programs in Petroleum Technology Management and a post-graduate Diploma program in Upstream Oil and Gas Asset Management. These programs are designed around three formats: Distance Learning, Action Assignments and Shared Learning Workshops.

IHRDC is currently working carefully with a major US academic institution to offer joint graduate degree programs designed around the same learning formats. The program is now in the design stages; however, when announced later in 2001 it should provide a strong motivation for the use of IPIMS and enhance its value to licensees and users.