Contact Gavin
"In the oil and gas industry, production management is a skill that companies often don’t recognise. It’s more important now than ever. After all, without it companies won’t be good at managing emissions either."
At a glance:
With Baringa since
2019
Works across
Oil and gas industry
Favourite place
French Alps, skiing and hiking; or: on his motorbike, listening to AC/DC
In detail:
Growing up in the Middle East and West Indies, Gavin always knew he wanted a career that let him travel. With a degree in mechanical engineering and manufacturing under his belt, he joined Schlumberger and was posted to Algeria. Despite enduring 50°C heat and little time off, he was hooked. Hungry for hands-on experience, Gavin took on operations challenges all over the world, from Alaska to Aberdeen to Abu Dhabi. He focused exclusively on operations improvement projects with an eye on production, then left consulting for a while to run an oil and gas, mining, infrastructure, and renewables engineering business, then returned to oil and gas consulting in 2018.
An engineer through and through, Gavin is fascinated by what makes production systems tick and where their true limits lie. He brings different teams and people together across production: wells, operations, engineering, to understand where systems can be pushed. It means walking through processes on-site, testing assumptions, re-writing targets and giving clients confidence that they can be achieved. By drilling down to the most granular aspects of production, Gavin helps his clients set, and achieve, ambitious targets.
Gavin looks to create a long-term change in mindset in the teams he works with. Rather than a one-time fix while the project is ongoing, he equips teams with the processes to allow them to see their production systems as a whole. He asks tough questions and spells out improvements in a straightforward way that makes sense to all involved. For Gavin it’s crucial not to let ego get in the way. It’s not about him as the storyteller, it’s about the people involved and the potential for improvement.
Summertime finds Gavin hiking in the French Alps or setting off for trips with friends on his motorbike. In winter, he’ll strap on skis to tackle the slopes with his wife and two children whenever he can. In another life, his passion for travel and food might have led him to pursue the path of a roaming travel writer.