Engineering in the Energy Industry part 4 with Rob Koenig

00:00:00 Speaker 1
This episode of the Energy Pipeline is sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. Since the 1930s, Caterpillar has manufactured engines for drilling production, well service, and gas compression. With more than 2,100 dealer locations worldwide, Caterpillar offers customers a dedicated support team to assist with their premier power solutions.

00:00:27 Speaker 2
Welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast with your host, KC Yost. Tune in each week to learn more about industry issues, tools, and resources to streamline, and modernize the future of the industry. Whether you work in oil and gas or bring a unique perspective, this podcast is your knowledge transfer hub. Welcome to the Energy Pipeline.

00:00:50 KC Yost
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast. Today, we continue our series of visits with very successful engineers, with someone I've known and truly admired for the past 30 years. He's very well known in the oil and gas industry, and is a huge supporter of our Pipeliners Association of Houston. He's Rob Koenig, director of project management at Plains All American pipeline. Hey, welcome to the Energy Pipeline Podcast, Rob.

00:01:20 Rob Koenig
Thanks for having me on, KC.

00:01:23 KC Yost
I've been looking forward to this conversation, so great to have you here. Before we start talking about your journey and advice you might have to engineers, take a few minutes if you would please, and share your background with our listeners. Right off the bat, you're a proud Aggie, right?

00:01:39 Rob Koenig
Yes, sir. Graduated from Texas A&M long, long time ago. Civil engineering degree, and didn't know I wanted to go into oil and gas when I was a senior, and just happened to take an interview with a little company called United Gas Pipeline, which KC has some background with too.

00:02:02 KC Yost
That's where we met. That's right.

00:02:03 Rob Koenig
That is, that is. That's where it started back in '91. Since then, I've worked for a couple of different operators. United Gas was purchased by Koch Industries. I've also worked for Kinder Morgan. Today, I've been at Plains now almost 12 years.

00:02:22 KC Yost
Now, you and I have sat in your office up at Carthage once or twice as I recall. Being out in the field and in ops, if you will, has really been the foundation for where you are today, right?

00:02:41 Rob Koenig
Yes, it has, KC. I think that's invaluable experience that you can get by being near the assets, and have the ability to go out, and see what you're looking at, what you're trying to design, build, or what problem you're trying to fix. Also, being able to have face-to-face interaction with the field people when you're out there too. It really helps gain a lot of trust, and understand their issues.

00:03:10 KC Yost
When you can get consulting engineers to travel from Houston up to Carthage to visit with your face-to-face, it works out pretty well.

00:03:17 Rob Koenig
It does, it does. I think you sent me a build-up, KC. I'm going to just be honest.

00:03:24 KC Yost
I did, I did. Mileage as well. There was an expense in there as well. That's right. Hey, before we start getting into it too deep, you got that elevator speech on Plains that you can share with us?

00:03:37 Rob Koenig
Sure. I think Plains is one of the largest midstream companies in North America that you've never heard of. It really is. We're pretty silent out there. We move a little over 8 million barrels of oil a day. To put that in common terms, that's just a little over 40% of the daily refining capacity. We touch so many people's lives just in that aspect in itself. We've got over 18,000 miles of crude oil pipelines in the US. 40 million barrels of above-ground storage, 7 rail terminals, 4 marine terminals. We move it by pipeline, rail, and truck. Then north of the US, and Canada, we also have a presence there too. We have 7 fractionation plants, 24 million barrels of NGL storage. I think we have about 16 NGL rail terminals along with 4 natural gas processing plants. We have a nice footprint in Canada, and a very nice footprint here in the US.

00:04:49 KC Yost
You are truly a North American company.

00:04:52 Rob Koenig
Yes, we are.

00:04:55 KC Yost
Excellent, excellent. Great plug, great plug. Let's talk about you. You and I have known each other for 30 plus years. You spent 30 years working for operating companies. You think having experience with the multiple energy companies has made you a better engineer, and a manager?

00:05:16 Rob Koenig
Absolutely. Getting to work with just various people in various companies on how they do things differently, I think you take a little bit of the best parts that you learn along the way, and you try to apply it to your next role or your next position. You get to meet so many different people. You get to meet so many different leaders that way. I think it's really great for your growth.

00:05:43 KC Yost
They're able to pick, and choose different ideas.

00:05:46 Rob Koenig
Exactly.

00:05:47 KC Yost
"Hey, they're doing it this way over here. Maybe we should consider doing it over here," and that type of thing.

00:05:53 Rob Koenig
Right. Again, you get to take the best approach based on your past experience. You get to apply those lessons to your next role, and your next job.

00:06:04 KC Yost
Does that carry over to dealing with challenges that come up on projects as well? "Hey, United Gas did it this way," or, "Koch did it this way," or however.

00:06:16 Rob Koenig
One thing it's allowed me to do is see that fundamentally projects happen the same way. We recently went through a change in our project management process. We adopted a stage gate model here. I went back to some material that was dated back in the 1990's that was actually a Koch Industries material that I had. I looked at this, and I said, "Hey, it's the same thing." The words change just slightly, instead of calling it a pre-feed study, maybe you call it an assessment or something like that. A lot of the processes of projects, they stay the same. Again, it's taking some of the best elements, and best practices that you've learned on project execution, and applying them across what you're doing now. It helps make you a better engineer.

00:07:09 KC Yost
Yeah, I totally agree, totally agree. The first time I ran into stage gate process doing some work for Chevron, as I recall. They called it the chip dip process. Just nice, short, and sweet. They had a good sense of humor. It worked out great. You're talking about your processes, and all of that at Plains. How are you guys structured? Are you centralized where you do most of the engineering in-house, or do you have third parties do a lot of work for you?

00:07:46 Rob Koenig
I've seen this not just at Plains, but other operating companies. Most of the time, we rely a lot on third party engineering firms to do a lot of the task oriented functions. Like for example, drafting. Today, it's more like modeling. It's really like adult Minecraft where they're building these 3D solid models. We rely on those firms to provide services like that. We do internalize things that are specialized. Again, it's not really even Plains. It's my other past experiences. But measurement is always critical for operating companies. They really want to internalize that, and try to do the best that they can with that. But process modeling, or even me and KC have a past history where we were doing hydraulic modeling for a group, things like that, or pump selection. When he gets into the more technical aspect, we do tend to have specialties internal, but we do rely a lot on third parties.

00:08:55 KC Yost
Okay. All right. I have over the past 50 years, I've seen operating companies go from centralized to decentralized, and then come back to centralized again with massive engineering, drafting groups, and all of that kind of stuff. It sounds like you guys have found a good optimal mix between the two where you have certain things in-house where you can control them, and farm out the standard stuff.

00:09:28 Rob Koenig
We do. When you talk about maybe some of the day in, day out changes to just say a simple P&ID diagram, there are some internal resources that we have that support that. But generally, those are operational type roles. They roll up into that group, because they're supporting, "That's not a project." That's just, "Hey, we added a bypass around something." Operationally, we needed it. They'll update those drawings, and keep those records up to date.

00:10:00 KC Yost
Rob, your official title is director of project management. Do you have departments that are reporting to you?

00:10:10 Rob Koenig
I have different teams that report to me. I do have a team that's based here in Houston, Calgary and Midland. There are teams of project managers, but I don't have another... Oh, I almost forgot about my construction guys. I do have my construction management team. I have four teams, if you will, that report to me.

00:10:35 KC Yost
Oh, good. Good, good. It's more functional level in getting into CapEx type projects. You do CapEx work for Plains, is that right?

00:10:47 Rob Koenig
That's right. That's what our team really focuses on, is any kind of CapEx, investment capital, is another term we like to use, any major maintenance. If it's a major rehaul or something like that, it might be considered from the accounting standpoint as a maintenance project. But it's a large spend or it's a complex spend. My team will help support those projects.

00:11:14 KC Yost
Got it. Are your projects separated out or assigned to you guys based off of the investment size? It could be CapEx, it could be maintenance based off of the dollar amount. Or is it just complexity, and number of other factors?

00:11:32 Rob Koenig
It's really about complexity, which is really, I like to think of it... Because a lot of times our ops guys, not just ours, but my experience is a lot of people at ops feel like they can do a lot of things. I like to think of it almost like rebuilding a kitchen or remodel in the kitchen. Sure, you can go in there, and you can do all that. But it's the time, the expertise, the skill, and not having the exact type of tool that you might need. That's when you call us in. Because we're that contractor. We're that person who can come in, and do those types of projects. But if it's just, "Hey, changing out the faucet in the sink," yeah, the ops guys, a lot of times, handle those types of projects.

00:12:24 KC Yost
Got it, got it, got it. What are some of the projects that you're dealing with right now in investment size, duration, that type? Define them a little bit.

00:12:35 Rob Koenig
That's the thing here. I know that's one of the things that's really great about our job. My job is that we have a wide range of investments. Some of these, like my Midland group for example, their focus is mostly on our gathering business. They are doing tremendous amount of number of connections every year, where they're setting LACT units, and they're maybe building a 500 feet or 5,000-foot lateral to connect, things like that. My Calgary team, a lot of them are working on some plant upgrades, and some plant development. It's a lot of plant work. Houston has a lot of focus. Maybe we're building a tank, or we're doing some brownfield work at a pump station to upgrade pumps or things like that. We've done some big pipeline projects right now. We just don't see a lot of that going on. But when the need's there, we do those. The range and the dollar value on projects can range from, I'd say anywhere from maybe $500,000 to over a billion dollars. It's a wide range. The durations are the same way. You could have projects that last for a couple of months, and you can have multi-year projects.

00:14:01 KC Yost
Yeah, that range of $500,000 to a billion dollars, that's literally going from working on, I don't know, 30 feet of pipe somewhere to a thousand miles to cover the range.

00:14:19 Rob Koenig
It is. It could be. It's as simple as setting a 4-inch LACT station to building a 500-mile cross country pipeline.

00:14:31 KC Yost
When doing these projects, you mentioned earlier that you've got a stage gate process that you go through. How flexible is that process? Do you literally go through every step for every project? Or do you ease it back a little for the $500,000 project versus the billion dollar project?

00:14:59 Rob Koenig
That's a good question. I think your listeners, when they think about this, it'll make sense. Even that $500,000 project compared to the billion dollar project, you have all the steps. They all happen. It's just whether or not you actually stop at a gate, and make a decision about what you're doing. You still have to do all the same steps. You got to identify it. You have to assess it, define it, detail design. That may happen on the back of a napkin in a 30-minute meeting. But it happens in construction, and then you have to start it up, and turn it over. The steps are basically all the same. It's just whether or not you have a formal process to document or stop, and review what you've done. To your point, no, I think the model that we have is a flexible model. We stop when we need to stop. We assess the projects, and we move forward. The simpler ones, they don't require as much oversight or control to have a formal designated gate process or stop for each gate.

00:16:17 KC Yost
Sure, sure. One of the guys I really liked working for and with, back in my United Gas days was a guy named Holloway Sinclair. Do you know Holloway? His sons and all are in the industry, and all that kind of stuff. But he used to talk about fit for purpose. He would talk about, "Let's not use a sledge hammer to drive in a finishing nail. You still need a hammer, but get it right sized, and make sure that it's fit for operations." I learned a lot of things from Holloway. That's one of them.

00:17:02 Rob Koenig
That's exactly right. We're talking about fit for service here or fit for purpose. I credit my dad. He was an engineer for Dow Chemical Company for 42 and a half years. I always credit him with saying this. I honestly don't remember him saying this anymore, because he's been gone for so long. But he gets credit anyway. A lot of times as engineers, we tend to measure things with a micrometer. We mark it with a piece of chalk, and then we cut it with an ax. At the end of the day, if the ax is the tool we're going to use, don't get hung up in measuring it with the micrometer. Just keep it fit for purpose, fit for service, and move on.

00:17:46 KC Yost
There you go. Right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you were talking to your 1991 graduate of Texas A&M self, and you were saying these are the characteristics that 30 years from now, my hiring manager's going to be looking at, and for. What characteristics are you looking for with an engineer coming right out of school? Or do you hire engineers right out of school? Do you have different programs to bring engineers on?

00:18:33 Rob Koenig
We do. Plains does hire. We recruit, and we do interns too. I think the question is the same or the answer is the same, if you're hiring a 20-year plus or a 0-plus experienced person. I'm looking for people who are humble, hungry, and smart. When I say smart, I'm talking about people smart. You want somebody who's humble enough to understand they need help. They're out there. Again, humble. Everybody knows what humble is. Hungry, I'm looking for somebody who has passion for what they do. They're engaged. They like their job. They want more. They're looking for advancement. They're looking to grow professionally. Then again, on the smart side, the people side, even as engineers, we have to deal or we get to deal, I should say, with so many different kinds of people. Whether it's an operations person or it's a commercial development person, and being able to have good interaction with those people is key to success and growth. We definitely have the guys and ladies that you call the pocket pencil protector type that they want the pure science of engineering, and they have roles. But really, with my team, with project management and building projects, I really need people who have that personal smart side who can deal with people, talk, convey thoughts, receive thoughts, understand, and communicate. That's so critical.

00:20:19 KC Yost
Yeah. The foundation of any successful project is communication. Communication.

00:20:24 Rob Koenig
It is.

00:20:26 KC Yost
I totally get it. I totally get it. You're saying whether it be a recent graduate or an engineer with five years' experience or even a senior project engineer or project manager, those qualities are something that you need to have in all of them. The difference in each of them is basically their field experience or their project experience?

00:20:55 Rob Koenig
When you look at that, again, based on the level, the 20-plus year or the 0 year, you do want to see what their experience level is. You want it to be commensurary with their years in the industry. Seeing people try different things, the first 10 years of my career, I had the opportunity to live in five different locations. Do the math. It's every two years. I really think that helped. Today, I see people who stay in a job or think that they're going to do a linear progression. It's not their fault. It's what they've been conditioned to do. We start them off in kindergarten. Every year they get promoted until they graduate college. They expect that they're going to see this linear growth. Sometimes it's not linear. Sometimes you have to go left and right. You should want to get some experience at the same level that you're at in another role, or another field, whether it's an operations job, it's a tech services job, or it's a project management job.

00:22:17 KC Yost
Yep. Great point. I'm a big believer. I've said this on other podcasts. My grandfather told my father, "You've got to start at the small end of the horn to come out the big end of the horn." You've got to pay your dues. You've got to build your foundation. You've got to have good smarts, understand these, and foundation before you start adding the building blocks to your career. God, he was so right. Compared to some of these people that just want to do the linear fast track growth, I totally get what you're saying. Now, going off on a tangent here, Plains does offer engineering graduates, and people with five years a number of opportunities to try different things, operations, versus detail engineering, versus project management, facilities versus linear projects. You've got lots of flexibility there for young engineers as they want to grow, right?

00:23:28 Rob Koenig
Yeah. Yeah. KC, whether it's Plains or anyone else, I think it's really up to the individual to take responsibility for their own career development, and make sure that they let their manager or their supervisor or someone known in their organization, what their desires are, what they want to go and try. Find a mentor too. Find a mentor in your organization. That doesn't have to be a supervisor. It can be an engineer who's got maybe some of this gray hair like me, and KC have now. They might be able to help you out, and guide you a little bit. But learning a little bit or seeing the variety of different things, especially when you're starting out in your career, that's the time when it's the easiest for you to be mobile. Like I said, I moved every other year for the first 10 years of my career. I got to see different things in the same company, how things were done differently, because of geography. It's a lot different in building a pipeline in South Louisiana than it is up in East Texas or South Texas. There's a variety in that. Try some different interests. Find your niche. Don't be afraid to take those chances to go out, and be a district manager in Victoria, Texas or Lafayette, Louisiana, even though you've never been to Louisiana.

00:25:03 KC Yost
Yeah. It's all about getting the experiences in your 20's and early 30's so you can build on it in your 30's, 40's, and 50's, right?

00:25:13 Rob Koenig
Yep, it is. It's much harder to go out and do that today or I say today, for me at least. It is harder for me to go take that move because I've become valuable in the role I'm at. But the time to really try those things out is early in your career when you're still in that bulk of that learning, and development of your career.

00:25:39 KC Yost
Good. Yeah, totally understand. At Plains, in your departments, do you participate in the hiring process or do you let others take care of that?

00:25:54 Rob Koenig
It's a little bit of a mix. It really depends on the specific role, but it's a mix.

00:26:05 KC Yost
I used to sit back in the back of the room and look at the soft skills of the person. You were talking about communications earlier, all of that kind of stuff, and interaction. Frankly, I too see that as an extremely important characteristic of people in our profession. Some people are numbers, numbers, numbers. I think that's wonderful. I think that's great. The world needs people like that. But when you're looking for project people, managers, directors, coordinators, and that type of thing, that communication skill is extremely important. I let other guys ask them the technical questions. "What's the typical angle for an HDD entry, exit, and that type of thing?" No. I didn't pay much attention to those things. It was all in how they interacted, and how they did that. I assume that's pretty much the same for you.

00:27:05 Rob Koenig
Yeah. Really the joke about project managers, if you will, is that we're the jack of all trades, but the master of none. You need to know a little bit about everything that's going on on a project just so you can manage it, and be effective with. You're right. I don't need to know the exact entry angle on every project that I'm out there, but I need to know that it's within that band of what it should be in order to be a successful crossing.

00:27:37 KC Yost
Right. I've never had much success hiring project managers who've not done the work themselves as well.

00:27:46 Rob Koenig
That's true.

00:27:47 KC Yost
It's tough to tell someone to go do the work when they've never done it themselves. They don't have, in my mind, proper expectations of what it's supposed to look like, how long it's going to take, that type of thing. Anyway, I got off on a tangent there. Tell us about the process with Plains. Internships, you've got training programs, mentorships, what do you have for the young engineers?

00:28:17 Rob Koenig
We do have an internship. It's mostly summer interns. I know recently we have a summer intern from last summer who we did hire. We did offer. He was supposed to graduate this December. He'll be an engineer one in January. Congratulations to him.

00:28:45 KC Yost
Another Aggie?

00:28:46 Rob Koenig
No, he's not, he's not. We will hire non-Aggies. He's not an Aggie. But I won't say what school he went to. But it was not one of those maroon schools. But as far as the internship, personally, I like to see our in interns go out to our Midland office. It's not a holiday destination place for most people.

00:29:16 KC Yost
Not a glamorous place.

00:29:17 Rob Koenig
But it is an emergence of things that are going on in oil and gas. It's a great place to go out there, learn, and see stuff. That's usually where we try to run our interns. We don't just have them come in and do the tasks that the engineers don't want to do. We do bring them, come in, and have them try to do some valuable tasks to help us with our process. It should be a learning experience for both. I remember I interned. Back then, they called it co-op. I did that when I was in school. It was very, very informative. It helped guide me in my career.

00:29:55 KC Yost
Absolutely. Once a person gets on board, do you have a formal or an informal mentoring program at Plains?

00:30:06 Rob Koenig
I remember when I graduated back in'90, and went to work in'91, there was supposed to be this formal rotational program that I had hired into. Honestly, the business needs ended up changing. I didn't get to go through that program. But in our case here, we like to see people rotate around, but it's not a formal plan. It's not two years here, two years there. Again, it gets back to gauging what employees' interests are, and where they think they want to go. As far as mentorship, again, I encourage all young engineers out there to find a mentor. Formal programs sometimes don't work as well as informal programs. But find somebody that you can rely on, bounce ideas off of, and say, "Hey, what's good? Is this a good idea or is this not?"

00:31:06 KC Yost
Yeah. Here I am, a young engineer, I've got two goals out there. Do I want to become a PE or do I want to be a PMP if I want to get into your department?

00:31:23 Rob Koenig
Yeah. I'm biased. I have the PE. I think the PE has a certain level of credibility in society, if you will. Okay. I've been in several depositions before. I've never been asked, "Do you have your PMP? Are you a certified project manager?" They do ask me, "Do you have your PE?"

00:31:50 KC Yost
Sure.

00:31:50 Rob Koenig
Now, with that being said, I've taken a full 40-hour class to Pembroke class to get my PMP. I've just never gone through it. I think you need a little bit of both. I think the PE paper is something that's going to help you, because it's a credential that society looks at as valuable.

00:32:17 KC Yost
Instant credibility.

00:32:19 Rob Koenig
It is credibility.

00:32:19 KC Yost
Sure.

00:32:20 Rob Koenig
The PMP is going to help you maybe get a role that you want at some point in the future. Whether you have the credentials as far as the paper, or you've taken the classes, you know what a work breakdown structure is, you know how to crash a project schedule, you know what earned value is, and things like that, those are skills you can learn. I don't think you necessarily need the paper, at least in our industry.

00:32:49 KC Yost
Okay. All right. Great. Great, great thoughts. I appreciate that very much. All right. Look, we're running out of time. Anything else you'd like to add?

00:33:00 Rob Koenig
Again, you asked me at one point, while we were talking, what would I go back, and tell myself 30 years ago just coming out of school? The one thing I want to reinforce is that we've been conditioned to be promoted every year. When you come out, you graduate, and you're the engineer one, I really want and expect those people to be able to move to the next level within a year or two. If they don't, there's a problem. But after that, you have in front of you a 30-year career. Don't expect to go through all the levels in the first three years. Pace yourself. Set your expectations with what they should be. Because again, we condition our kids from kindergarten until they graduate in college to be promoted each year. Again, just be patient. You don't have to do it all at once. Have a plan. That's the most important thing. When I graduated, one of my goals... And, have goals, plans. One of my goals was to get my PE license. After that, it was like, "I'm not sure what I want to do." That's okay.

00:34:18 KC Yost
Yeah, I totally get it. But take that first 10 years, and get the experience, get the knowledge, get the dirt, get your feet wet. Learn and build that foundation that you can grow from in your 30's, 40's and 50's.

00:34:36 Rob Koenig
Maybe 60's too.

00:34:41 KC Yost
You're talking to a 70-year-old, so yeah, let's throw out the 70's too.

00:34:45 Rob Koenig
Sure, in that decade too.

00:34:48 KC Yost
Yeah. There you go. Hey, Rob, thanks so much for taking the time to visit with us today. It was a great conversation. Really enjoyed catching up with you, buddy. Really did.

00:34:57 Rob Koenig
All right.

00:34:57 KC Yost
Really did. If anyone likes to learn more about Plains All American pipeline, you can find them on the web at plains.com. It's pretty straightforward, plains.com. Thanks to all of you for tuning into this episode of the Energy Pipeline Podcast, sponsored by Caterpillar Oil and Gas. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas for other podcast topics, feel free to email me at kc.y-o-s-t@oggn.com. I also want to thank my producer, Anastasia Wilson-Duff, and everyone at the Oil and Gas Global Network for making this podcast possible. Find out more about other OGGN podcasts at oggn.com. This is KC Yost saying goodbye for now. Have a great week. Keep that energy flowing through the pipeline.

00:35:44 Speaker 5
Thanks for listening to OGGN, the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us a review, and then go to oggn.com to learn about all our other shows. Don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production of the Oil and Gas Global Network.