Commercial Managers Forum

After Action Review Process

February 2018
 CCOP Commitment to After Action Reviews
(AARs)
CCOP
Identify
Complete
Opportunity,
Commercial
including
Behaviours
broader MER
Survey
UK context

Negotiation Best Practice

After Action Review

 Why?
– Understand how CCOP was complied with by the parties to a negotiation
– Highlight good practice: what did parties do (individually or together) that helped the negotiation?
– Flush out what parties did that was unhelpful (again, individually or together)
– Share lessons:
– Internally (always)
– With the OGA (often)
– With industry via CMF (occasionally)
 AARs are a CCOP commitment, but format is not defined
 The Commercial Managers Forum has provided the attached for industry use; other approaches may be
equally valid and the CMF welcomes input to improve the tools

2
 AARs - no “One-Size-Fits-All”
Simple agreement,  Fill in the Commercial Behaviours Survey Commercial
or “plain sailing”

Increasing Complexity and/or misalignment during negotiation

Behaviours
 Parties sit down together, have a brief discussion, Survey is
jointly complete Commercial Behaviours Survey sufficient
Majority of
negotiations in
 Parties sit down together, work through a structured
this range questionnaire together
Supported by
 Parties use a structured questionnaire to gather attached
questionnaire
input from their teams and then sit down to discuss
the results

 Others?

Complex
agreement, and/or
 3rd Party facilitated debrief Bespoke
“I never want to
solution
work with them
again!”

3
CMF After Action Review Process (1)
Objective
 Facilitate an open conversation between the Parties to a recently concluded
negotiation that highlights good practices and behaviours and identifies
actionable areas for improvement in future negotiations.
 This process is not intended to be prescriptive and should be adapted as
required to suit the particular situation.

Ground Rules
 Scoring and comments represent an individual or Party’s view. Others may
have a different perspective to you, this doesn’t mean it’s wrong!
 Comments should be constructive and reasonable
 The negotiation has finished – need to have an open discussion in a safe
space and not re-start the negotiation

4
CMF After Action Review Process (2)
Process
 The Commercial Manager of each Party distributes the After Action Review Questionnaire to the
individuals in their organisation that had a major role in the negotiation (e.g. negotiator(s), lawyer,
commercial manager).
 Each team member completes the questionnaire. Scoring and comments are then aggregated view
for each Party.
 Alternatively this can be done via a team discussion that results in an aggregated view for that Party.
 The Commercial Managers meet to discuss scoring and examples. In preparation for this:
– [1week] beforehand, each party circulates its aggregated questionnaire to the other Parties.
– One Party consolidates the input onto a single sheet for discussion (see After Action Review
Consolidation Template).

Output
 A consolidated file that facilitates a discussion between Commercial Managers by showing each
Party’s scoring and comments next to the other Parties’ scoring and comments.
 A discussion around each question to understand areas of alignment and differences, and the
underlying reasons.
 A summary of the scoring and discussion that can be shared within each company.
 A high level summary of good practice and lessons learned that can be shared with OGA/other
external parties.
5
Further Information
Commercial Managers Forum
 Visible & sustainable leadership on company commercial behaviours
 Forum to share good practice, build relationships, shape agenda
 Custodians of CCOP & ICOP, champions of described behaviours
 Owner of Commercial workgroups
 Full Forum meets twice per year

Oil & Gas UK Steering Group OGA OLC Chair

Negotiating Transaction Training & Standard

Operators
CCOP / ICOP
Behaviours Best Practice Tools Agreements Legal
Committee
(OLC)
Commercial Managers Forum
Senior Commercial Managers from every licence
holder and infrastructure provider on UKCS

Desired result: efficient delivery of sustainable commercial outcomes

6
 Commercial Managers Forum
Current Focus Areas
 Embed CCOP & Negotiation Best Practice behaviours
 Standard Agreements: develop CTIA, focussed DSA update
 Transaction Best Practice
 Measurement of progress:
– After Action Reviews
– Commercial Behaviours Survey
 Communication:
– Oil & Gas UK Commercial Behaviours Website
– Email communication
– CMF meetings
 Training (practitioner & management): MER UK, CCOP, Negotiation Best
Practice, ICOP
 Links to MER UK Steering Group & Oil & Gas UK Councils
7
 Industry AAR Commitment
CCOP
Review and Improve
 Conduct a post activity review with counterparties to understand how the code was complied with by all parties
during the activity.
Following completion of the opportunity, the parties should conduct a review of their joint compliance with the CCOP.
This review should be built around a discussion of each of the CCOP bulleted items and agreement on the level to
which the joint activity complied with the CCOP. Where there was non-compliance, parties should include their
learnings in their end year review (see below). Where the parties identify improvements to CCOP they should make
the OGA and Oil & Gas UK aware of these.

Negotiation Best Practice Guidelines

 End of Process Review and Self-Assessment
A simple post completion review should occur within 1 month, covering the self-assessment of each other’s
performance against this guidance or other agreed process. This assessment will be shared and used for a formal
feedback or a lessons learnt review and will be shared with the OGA if requested. In addition, a survey tool has been
developed to capture and track factual elements of the negotiation which will facilitate measurement of industry
performance. Oil & Gas UK will host, administer and collate the survey results – the live survey link to use is:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CMF-CCOP
Using this output, the OGA will be able to maintain an anonymised watching brief on industry practice and
behaviour without the need to become involved in all processes. The results will form part of the CCOP annual
commercial activities review.

8
www.oilandgasuk.co.uk
info@oilandgasuk.co.uk
#oilandgasuk
© 2016 The UK Oil and Gas Industry Association Limited, trading as Oil & Gas UK
9