While in a casual conversation, a friend of mine made above statement. No, she was not mad at me or we were in an heated argument. She just pointed out one of the reasons that many of us do not reach agreement. And on this, I agree with her.

I am not color blind, but my left eye is near sighted and my right eye far sighted. I guess I could not see very well in the middle range. We used to have a PhD colleague in our company, who was red/green color blinded. He occasionally asked other developers which color was the line in our CEMPRO software. His question amazed me: "How come one can not see something so obvious?" At the same time, his question led to a feature in our software: an option to use symbol, in addition to color, to differentiate lines.

All of us grow up with different culture, education and experience, which either enhance or limit our ability of seeing the world.

While an experienced drilling engineer can sense the looming problem of well control when he/she sees the increasing pit gain or changing pressure, a green-hand will not be able to associate what he sees with what is coming.

It is hard enough not to be able to "see" things sometime, leave alone that we occasionally, consciously or unconsciously, choose not to "see", for pride, ego or wishful thinking.

For drilling operation, ideally, operator and service companies should be on the same page or see the same thing in spite of their respective motivations. Within an engineering team, if all the members understand and agree with each other, decisions become easy.

Drilling software is such an enabling technology, which can elevate the entry level engineers and magnify or amplify the experience of seasoned ones. It makes the drilling design and analysis more transparent and visible to everyone. It reduces the risk by letting us see better and deeper.