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The founder of Operations Readiness Assurance (or ORA™) Ltd. David Powell has worked in Oil, Gas, Energy and other mega-projects all over the world for something like 50 years, but specifically in ORA for the last 20+ years.

Initially time served in Electrical Engineering then switching disciplines into Process Controls and Instrumentation whilst with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) on Teesside, UK before taking up a position with Elf Norway where he worked on a number of offshore assets for almost 10 years. During his time with Elf and subsequently Shell International, David continued to study and added to his Full Technicians Certification with an Higher National Certificate, NEBOSH qualification and an MSc.

After developing the original OR&A systems (ORSAT and ORAKLE) for Shell International Exploration & Production (SIEP), based at the headquarters in the Hague, David left Shell to develop the OR&A Solution, based on the text book he wrote and published in 2011.

Developing the ORA™ Solution whilst working as OR&A Manager / Advisor on a number of projects, David engaged a software company to create the ORA Solution.

Throughout the development of the ORA™ Solution and the deployment of the process on a number of projects internationally, David have benefited from a team of seasoned and experienced colleagues which still forms a vast knowledge base.

The ORA Solution has been successfully deployed on a number of projects around the world, proving the robustness and longevity of the system and the process.

Covid dealt a massive financial blow to many companies that trade internationally, meaning project people (including ours) could not travel to project locations, forcing many to declare Force Majeure' and end those projects. The unfortunate effect of this was to kill off many smaller suppliers and leave them with the financial burdens or repatriating people and ending contracts unexpectedly.

OR&A Ltd. was able to weather this storm and actually agreed a contract with a large Russian company. Sadly, this also came to an abrupt end with the 'Special Operation' in Ukraine.

Sadly for OR&A Ltd., the final nails in the coffin were delivered by our Technical Support provider, (Sapere Software Ltd.) who after 10 years and £250,000, decided that they should quadruple the technical support costs for the OR&A Solution, (even though it had hardly been used for 3 years) pricing it beyond the means of OR&A Ltd. in the prevailing financial climate.

Microsoft has exacerbated this situation by crashing the OR&A Ltd. server (whilst supposedly preparing the backup of the system that Sapere Software Ltd. refused to provide (in breach of both contracts).

The upshot of all of this means that Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A) Ltd. has had to call it a day.

On the brighter side, this does leave David and his colleagues with the opportunity to take up consultancy work in Operations Readiness, since the concept is still valid and both knowledge and experience are very valuable.