If you’re running oil and gas operations in Canada, you already know the juggling act. Multiple well sites with work happening simultaneously. Field crews that need direction. Compliance deadlines that don’t care about your staffing situation. Budgets that somehow always seem tighter than expected.
The traditional answer has been enterprise project management software. You’ve probably seen the sales pitches: one platform to rule them all, from drilling programs right through to abandonment.
Here’s the problem. For small to mid-sized operators, enterprise software often creates more headaches than it solves. The implementation drags on for months. The training feels endless. And you’re paying for features that your team will never touch. Meanwhile, the things you actually need (visibility into what’s happening, coordination between field and office, staying on top of compliance, keeping costs in check) still aren’t getting done properly.
There’s a better way. In this guide, we’ll walk through how Canadian operators are getting their project management under control without the enterprise price tag or complexity.
Enterprise project management platforms were designed for a different world. We’re talking about companies with full IT departments, implementation budgets in the hundreds of thousands, and project timelines measured in years. These systems offer everything: resource planning, portfolio management, advanced analytics, integrations with dozens of other enterprise tools.
But if you’re managing somewhere between 50 and 500 wells? That’s a mismatch waiting to happen.
Here’s what we hear from operators all the time:
- Implementation takes 12 to 18 months before you see any real value
- Training pulls your people away from actual work for weeks at a time
- Licensing costs keep climbing for features you’ll never use
- The system is so complex that people create workarounds and shadow spreadsheets just to get things done
- You end up bending your processes to fit the software instead of the other way around
- Need to change a field or tweak a workflow? That’s an IT ticket and a two-week wait
The result is frustrating but predictable. Companies invest serious money in enterprise solutions, and six months later their teams are still tracking critical project information in spreadsheets. The enterprise system is just too cumbersome for the day-to-day reality of running operations.
Before looking at solutions, let’s step back and think about what project management actually means for upstream oil and gas operations. What do you really need to run things well? (For a deeper dive into managing individual wells, see our guide on well management best practices for Canadian operators.)
You need to see what’s happening across your operations without digging for it. Which wells have active work? What stage is each project at? What’s coming up next week? What’s already overdue?
This kind of visibility shouldn’t require running reports or logging into three different systems. You should be able to glance at a screen and know where things stand.
Oil and gas projects live in two worlds. There’s the office where planning happens, and there’s the field where the actual work gets done. Information needs to flow in both directions. Work orders go out to field crews. Completion reports come back to the office. When that flow breaks down (and it often does), projects go sideways.
If you’re operating in Canada, you’re dealing with the Alberta Energy Regulator, the BC Energy Regulator, provincial ministries, and whatever else applies to your specific situation. Project management has to include compliance milestones like permits, inspections, and reporting deadlines. But it shouldn’t mean running a completely separate compliance tracking system alongside your project management.
Every project has a budget. Tracking what you’re actually spending against what you estimated, catching overruns before they get out of hand, and maintaining accountability for expenditures shouldn’t require a finance background or hours of manual number-crunching.
This is the foundation. If your project information is scattered across email threads, shared drives, individual spreadsheets, and someone’s memory, you’re already behind.
What this looks like when it’s working:
- All project details, timelines, and status updates live in one place
- Documents, permits, and correspondence are linked to the projects they belong to
- Historical project data is actually findable when you need it for planning
- Nobody has to hunt through emails or ask “do you have the latest version?”
This is the core principle behind effective oil and gas asset management getting all your data organized and accessible.
Here’s the thing though. A centralized system that only project managers can navigate doesn’t actually solve the problem. Field supervisors need access. Operations staff need access. Executives want to check in without scheduling a meeting. The system has to work for everyone who touches the projects.
A good starting point: If you’re currently juggling multiple spreadsheets, just getting them consolidated into one shared system delivers real value. You can add the bells and whistles later.
Think about your recurring project types. Well maintenance programs. Facility upgrades. Abandonment projects. Compliance initiatives. Each of these should follow a documented workflow with clear stages, required deliverables, and approval checkpoints.
Why this matters:
- Projects get executed consistently, regardless of who’s running them
- Nobody wastes time figuring out “how do we do this again?” for the tenth time
- New team members can follow established workflows from day one
- Checklists mean things don’t fall through the cracks
Build templates for the essentials:
- Project initiation (scope, budget, timeline, who’s involved)
- Work orders and field instructions
- Progress reporting
- Project closeout and documentation
One word of caution. Don’t over-engineer this. A simple pump replacement doesn’t need the same workflow as a major facility modification. Build in flexibility based on project scale and complexity.
This is where a lot of project management falls apart. Field crews complete work, but that information doesn’t make it back to the office for days. In the meantime, project managers are flying blind.
Mobile-enabled project management changes this:
- Status updates come in from the wellsite as work actually progresses
- Photos document completed work, issues, and site conditions in real time
- Time and materials get captured at the point of work, not reconstructed from memory later
- When field crews hit unexpected problems, they can escalate immediately
This is especially important in Canada. A lot of wellsites don’t have cellular coverage. Your mobile solution needs to work offline and sync automatically when crews get back into coverage. If it doesn’t, you’re back to the old delays.
Compliance shouldn’t be a separate tracking exercise that runs alongside your project management. When permits, inspections, and reporting deadlines are built directly into project workflows, compliance just becomes part of getting the work done.
What this looks like in practice:
- Starting a project triggers automatic checks for permit requirements
- Completing a milestone schedules the inspections that need to follow
- Project closeout includes regulatory reporting as a required step, not an afterthought
- Compliance documents are linked to projects so they’re findable during audits
This approach cuts down on missed deadlines and builds an audit trail that shows regulators you’re doing things properly. For operators managing restoration and environmental field services, this integration is especially critical.
Here’s something that sounds obvious but makes a real difference. When project status, costs, and timelines are visible to everyone involved, accountability happens on its own. People work differently when their work is visible.
Ways to build this in:
- Dashboards that show project status across the organization
- Automatic alerts when projects fall behind schedule or run over budget
- Clear ownership for every project and every task within projects
- Progress tracking that shows what’s actually been done, not just what was planned
This isn’t about micromanagement. It’s about making sure that when projects start drifting, the drift is visible early enough to do something about it.
Enterprise software isn’t your only choice. There’s a growing category of solutions built specifically for small to mid-sized operators. They deliver what you need without the enterprise overhead. (Curious how the options compare? Check out our Fieldshare vs SiteView comparison.)
Here’s what to look for.
You want a system you can configure to match your workflows without hiring developers. Adding fields, modifying workflows, creating templates. You should be able to do this yourself, without submitting IT tickets or paying for vendor professional services.
Mobile capabilities shouldn’t be a watered-down version of the desktop experience. Field teams need full functionality on the devices they actually carry, including the ability to work offline when they’re out of coverage.
Solutions built for the Canadian market already understand AER requirements, provincial variations, and the specific compliance challenges you’re dealing with. Generic solutions made for the US market need extensive configuration to work with Canadian regulatory realities. That’s time and money you shouldn’t have to spend. (See how Fieldshare’s features are built with Canadian operators in mind.)
A good solution grows with your operations without forcing you to adopt complexity you don’t need yet. Adding more wells, more users, or new project types shouldn’t mean implementing new modules or upgrading to an enterprise tier with features you’ll never use.
When you’re trying to improve project management, there’s a temptation to go all-in. Elaborate workflows. Extensive approval chains. Detailed categorization schemes. Comprehensive documentation requirements for everything.
This usually backfires. People find workarounds. Adoption drops. You end up with a beautiful process that nobody actually follows.
The best project management processes are the simplest ones that get the job done. Start minimal. Add complexity only when you’ve hit a specific problem that requires it.
Project management systems fail all the time because they’re designed by office staff who never asked the field crews what they actually need. Field workers know what information matters at the wellsite. They know what’s realistic to capture when you’re standing next to a pump jack in minus-20. They know exactly where the current processes break down.
Get field personnel involved in selecting and configuring your approach. Without their buy-in, adoption will always be a struggle.
A routine well inspection and a major facility construction project don’t need the same management overhead. Applying a heavyweight process to simple work wastes everyone’s time. But using a light-touch approach for complex projects means things get missed.
Build in flexibility. Simple work gets simple processes. Significant projects get the rigor they need.
You don’t need a big-bang implementation to improve project management. In fact, trying to change everything at once is usually a recipe for frustration. A phased approach lets you learn as you go and reduces the risk of things going wrong.
Pick a project category that’s frequent enough to give you real learning opportunities, but not so critical that problems would be catastrophic. Well maintenance programs or routine inspections usually work well as starting points.
Implement your new approach for just this one project type. Work out the kinks. Refine your processes. Let your team get comfortable with the new way of working.
As you figure out what’s effective, write it down. The workflows, templates, and practices that prove themselves become your foundation for expanding to other project types.
Once your initial project type is running smoothly, extend the approach to other categories. Each expansion gets easier because you’re building on lessons learned.
This incremental approach almost always delivers value faster than trying to transform everything at once. See how other operators have made the transition.
Good project management in oil and gas doesn’t require enterprise software with enterprise costs. What it does require is pretty straightforward: visibility into what’s happening across your projects, coordination between field and office, compliance built into how you work, and accountability through transparency.
For Canadian operators running upstream operations, right-sized solutions with configurability, solid mobile capabilities, and an understanding of Canadian regulations offer a realistic path forward. The goal isn’t to implement the most comprehensive system on the market. It’s to implement a system your teams will actually use to manage projects better.
The operators who get this right are the ones who focus on solving their real problems instead of chasing theoretical best practices. Start with what you actually need. Build on what works. Let your project management capabilities grow alongside your operations.
