Highlights An optimistic perspective on the concept of resilience in the oil & gas industry. Resilience presented as an analytical concept rather than guiding existing practices. Integrated operations has raised questions about system resilience. Research on resilience in oil and industry rarely describes adaptive processes. There is a need for research on resilience beyond safety concerns.

Changes in workplace demographics in the oil and gas industry have raised a concern about the risks of a knowledge-loss crisis due to mass retirement. The industry response has often consisted of strategies aimed at mapping knowledge across organizational units, codifying knowledge in databases, and mentoring new staff. However, such common managerial responses show important limitations in terms of grasping tacit and network-based dimensions of knowledge in complex oil production operations. Therefore, there is an industrial need for innovative knowledge management practices. In this conceptual article, we look at the knowledge-loss crisis from the perspective of network resilience in complex systems. A central assumption here is that it is important to look at retiring staff not only in terms of their explicit knowledge, but also in relation to their roles in evolving networks of interactions. Why do some social systems adapt to the departure of some individuals, recover from eventual knowledge-loss crises, and keep performing its functions? From an anticipatory logic, network analysis may show the initial conditions of a system and identify possible loss scenarios. From an adaptive logic, network analysis may inform interventions aimed at facilitating processes of interactions from which new knowledge may emerge and spread. Integrated operations may be a step in this direction.

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This paper presents a work situations mapping of the production and maintenance teams of a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) with transformation potential in future projects. The mapping presented herein was based on the operation and maintenance teams’ experience of an FPSO operating in the Campos Basin. This platform was visited ten times during two years of work period. The methodology used consisted in following-up the work activity, followed by interviews and verbalizations with the operators. The objective was to understand the transformation demands from the user's perspective, by following up on the main maneuvers carried out on different equipment and productive subsystems. The analysis of the work evidenced characteristics that should be kept and others that can be changed in future projects, with the objective of increasing the operation reliability and reduce work demands and effort to execute some operations. Particularly, ultra deep waters projects, located far away from the shore, with inherent logistics difficulties and high operation cost, will demand considerable innovation efforts to withstand the characteristics of new production regions such as the Pre-Salt. This innovation should happen on solid basis and effectively considering the needs of future operation and maintenance teams. So, this research tried to rescue experiences in the recent past to improve work conditions in the new platforms. In order to support designers of pipelines area, among others, the change demands were identified from the following work characteristics: ■Physical load (efforts, postures, access difficulties);■Potentiality of reducing physical effort and even the number of operators involved in the task (operation facility);■Importance of the activity for the operation reliability and the platform functioning. It is important to mention that the physical load (particularly related to low-back pain and tendonitis) is identified as the main cause of workers’ absenteeism on oil platforms. The manual operations performed under temporal pressure and conditions that increase physical effort remain high even in automated plants.