I am told there are folks who like to read their magazines back-to-front. If you fall into this category, this editorial is for you. For those who follow more conventional reading styles, this editorial is for you too - only for a different reason.
This month marks one of the highlights of our year. It's the month we reveal the winners of our 2000 Meritorious Engineering Awards. Now in their 30th year, the awards honor the highest achievements in innovation, problem-solving, profitability improvement and efficiency. Like the annual Oscars of the film industry, our Meritorious Engineering Awards are highly coveted and eagerly awaited.
Each year, we receive several hundred entries from all over the world. To level the playing field, we have established a dozen categories. Assigning entries to a category ensures that they compete against entries in similar sectors of the business - drill bits don't compete against software programs, for example. Awards usually are given in each category. Sometimes there are ties, in which case dual awards are given.
Over the years, we have assembled a distinguished panel of judges whose resident expertise covers one or more categories. Collectively, we ensure there are at least three judges for each category. Judges recuse themselves from judging entries in which they have a business interest, or where they feel they lack the knowledge or experience to judge the entry on its merits. Because all judging is done independently, it is easy to reassign entries where there is a conflict to other judges so each entry gets a fair adjudication.
It's worth noting that although we get hundreds of great ideas, there are no losers. I'm sure you will agree that any of the five nominees for Best Picture is a winner, even though only one will take home the Oscar. This year the voting was unusually close. We had ties in four categories, and several of the judges grumbled it was very tough to pick the winner. Some entries described great innovations that had never been implemented. As a result they got high marks for the pure genius of the idea or elegance of the solution, but profitability and efficiency improvement were indeterminate. We hope these are resubmitted next year after they have developed a track record, as they are certain to score high.
Any number of times, we have heard from our readers that they found the solution to a problem that had been challenging them by reading the Meritorious Awards citations. Whether the idea was a perfect match to their problem or just helped illuminate the way, our readers worldwide have lauded the awards for their ability to bring industry attention to the latest technology and its applications. And technology is surely the engine that's driving today's successes, whether on land or offshore.
This brings me back to my original point. If you are a back-to-front reader, now you've really got something to look forward to. But if you are a traditional front-to-backer, I can only encourage you to flip back to page 93 and read the citations again. Like the Oscars, there's gold there!

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