Under construction

BP / British Petroleum

Risk Toolkit — Well Delivery Workbench

Service Design · Research · Systems Mapping


BP's Well Delivery Workbench is a suite of digital tools built to standardize and support the end-to-end lifecycle of offshore well operations — from risk assessment through active rig-site verification and ongoing safety oversight. The tools are used by BP safety teams working across the Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Azerbaijan, Angola, and beyond, coordinating between BP's onshore engineers and the contracted rig operators who own and run the platforms.

My role was embedded within the Risk Toolkit — one of four modules inside the broader WDW — specifically on Rig Verification, the process by which BP safety teams physically inspect offshore platforms before and during active drilling contracts.

Outcomes

  • Mapped the end-to-end Rig Verification lifecycle through primary research: Conducted stakeholder interviews with the Product Owner and the Salesforce developer responsible for the RV application to document a complex, multi-phase process spanning onshore preparation, offshore execution, and post-verification reporting. The resulting service blueprint established shared understanding across siloed teams who had never seen their collective workflow visualized in one place.
  • Documented a two-organization service ecosystem: The Rig Verification process involves BP employees working alongside contracted rig operators — a dynamic that shapes every handoff, approval, and accountability moment in the workflow. The blueprint captures both organizations' roles, making visible where BP's compliance requirements intersect with the operator's day-to-day platform management.
  • Established a reusable blueprint structure for the broader Risk Toolkit: Rig Verification was the first of four planned blueprints — alongside Risk Assessment, Self Verification & Oversight, and Risk Register — each covering a distinct phase of the well safety lifecycle. The swimlane structure, persona framework, and documentation approach from the RV blueprint were designed to scale across all four tools, supporting a broader service design engagement as additional team members joined.
  • Grounded personas in operational reality: Rather than archetype-driven personas, the project produced role-based profiles reflecting the actual constraints of expert industrial users — 20+ years of rig experience, onshore/offshore split schedules, global deployment across multiple regions. These role profiles informed how the tool needed to behave differently for a BP Rig Verifier preparing a Terms of Reference onshore versus a Well Site Leader running a shift handover on a live platform.

The Stakes

Rig verification isn't bureaucratic paperwork. A missed inspection, an unresolved gap, a failed barrier — in offshore drilling, the consequences extend far beyond the platform. The Deepwater Horizon spill discharged for 87 days and affected 1,300 miles of Gulf Coast. Designing the systems that support the conversations that prevent that outcome is what this work is actually about.


Live Links

BP Risk Toolkit (Landing)
Rig Verification Service Blueprint

Methodologies

  • Stakeholder Interviews
  • Service Blueprint (Current State)
  • Role-Based Personas
  • Systems Mapping
  • Journey Mapping
  • Secondary Research (BP brand, WDW product documentation, offshore safety domain)

The Situation

BP's Risk Toolkit sat inside a larger digital transformation initiative — the Well Delivery Workbench — an ambitious program to standardize well operations across BP's global regions. The Risk Toolkit alone contained four distinct tools serving different safety functions, each with its own user base, workflow, and technical architecture.

Rig Verification was the most field-intensive of the four. Where Risk Assessment lives in data and Risk Register accumulates over time, Rig Verification puts BP safety personnel physically on offshore platforms — often in remote locations, working offline, coordinating with rig crews they've never met, under contractual and regulatory pressure to close gaps before drilling begins.

The team had deep domain expertise but no unified picture of their own service. The blueprint didn't create the process — it made an existing complex process legible for the first time.


Next Steps

Ideally the engagement would have continued with:

  • User interviews with active Rig Verifiers and Well Delivery Team members to validate the blueprint and surface pain points
  • Blueprints for the remaining three Risk Toolkit tools — Risk Assessment, Self Verification & Oversight, and Risk Register — following the same structural template
  • A stakeholder map showing the full relationship network across BP, contracted operators, regional teams, and regulatory bodies
  • Opportunity mapping identifying the highest-friction handoffs in the verification lifecycle
  • UX research cadence to support iterative improvements to the RV application itself