Natalie Thompson

Four years into her journey at bp, Natalie was handed a blank sheet of paper and a task, ‘design a central reliability and maintenance team that truly supports both upstream and downstream operations’. What emerged was a radically leaner, more focused organization—one that prioritizes execution over theory, and outcomes over process. In this session, Natalie shares how bp is rethinking asset management by focusing on a few critical capabilities, empowering frontline teams, and finding the balance between standardization and agility in a high-stakes, high-compliance industry. 

What you will learn from bp's journey:

• Why doing a few things with excellence every day outperforms broad but shallow compliance with asset management frameworks 
• How to build a leaner, more effective reliability organization, 50% smaller but laser-focused on impact 
• How over-reliance on rigid processes has stifled technician autonomy and problem-solving, and what bp is doing to bring back critical thinking 
• How bp is strategically using centers in India and elsewhere to scale capability without scaling cost 
• Tactics to navigate the tension between perfection, standardization, and speed