In the November/December issue of Drilling Contractor, Martyn Parker, Vice President at Pruitt MPD Services, discusses his professional history and his management mindset. According to Parker,
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Monthly eNewsletter from the IADC
DC Perspectives: Martyn Parker, IADC UBO & MPD Committee Chair
“I was the kid who couldn’t learn in school because most of what they taught didn’t interest me, but I always had a lot of curiosity about how things worked. And if I found something that I was interested in, I’m all in.”
After high school, in the late 1980s Parker eventually began his oilfield career at Schlumberger in his hometown of Great Yarmouth, England. He put himself through offshore survival training and learned a lot from hands-on experience during his 12 years at Schlumberger. During this time in his life, he was exposed to underbalanced drilling operations (UBO). By the early 2010s, he was considering opening his own MPD company. He partnered with Pruitt, bringing his MPD expertise to a company that already manufactured high-pressure rotating heads. A meeting during an IADC conference in 2014 helped to advance the collaboration, which eventually resulted in Pruitt MPD Services. The DC article states,
Pruitt’s MPD Services department has grown from a handful of employees and one MPD package to 50+ employees and 17 MPD packages.
Parker attributes this success to the way the company is managed. “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it” is an oft-cited statement from Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle concept, which Parker utilizes in his management mindset. Parker explains,
“I make every person who joins my team watch the Golden Circle. My ‘why’ is just to be recognized as a really high-quality service company providing MPD services.”
Parker is also passionate about working in accordance with the industry’s recommended practices (RPs) for MPD and UBO, regardless of where the work is taking place. He has seen a trend of companies trying to apply MPD without first being clear on those specific industry RPs. To address this challenge, the IADC UBO & MPD Committee, which Parker is chairing this year, has created guidance tools that are freely available on the IADC website.
