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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 in 2008 because they declined to further develop the system. This left David free to develop the OR&A Solution, starting with the concept he explained in 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 has benefited from a team of seasoned and experienced colleagues which still forms a vast knowledge base, most of whom are now retired but maintain an interest in the discipline.

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 ourselves) 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 of repatriating people and ending contracts unexpectedly.

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

The final nails in the coffin of OR&A Ltd. 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 and needed no Technical Support intervention) pricing it beyond the means of OR&A Ltd. in the financial climate that prevailed at the time.

Microsoft Azure exacerbated this situation (whilst supposedly preparing the backup of the system that Sapere Software Ltd. refused to provide (in breach of contract), crashing the OR&A Ltd. servers and being unable to restore them (despite a very expensive subscription set up by the aforementioned Technical Support team). The upshot of all of this means that Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A) Ltd. has had to call it a day.

Despite these setbacks, David still believes in the OR&A concept and principles and has written a further book on the subject. In recent months, implementing the Lessons Learned from these setbacks, the OR&A Solution software and the supporting IT infrastructure have been re-engineered from first principles. David and his colleagues now have the opportunity to take up consultancy work in Operations Readiness, deploy the new software and to once again spread the word about OR&A, since the concept is still valid and both their knowledge and experience are very valuable.