PETROLEUM SCIENCE CORPORATION - Key Persons
This core belief in the benefit of crossing academic and professional boundaries was already present during David's undergraduate training. For example, as an undergraduate petroleum engineering student, David concentrated most of his electives in geology since he believed that such a related discipline might be useful to him in his work in the petroleum industry. As a young petroleum (reservoir) engineer with more geologic training than most other petroleum engineers, he was shocked to see how the academic segregation of petroleum engineering and geology caused professionals in each of those disciplines to not be able to easily see the complete picture because important informational insights from each discipline were not incorporated in the analysis of the other discipline effectively, if at all.
In the same way, Mr. Neal also saw how information technology professionals and petroleum industry professionals were similarly unable to effectively merge the promise of computer technology with an understanding of the technical and business needs and practices of hydrocarbon extraction. Many of the information technology professionals working in the industry did not see the value in putting in the extra effort to learn much about the petroleum industry problem domain that they were producing software for. Poorly designed software was often the result.
Artificial boxes within computer science also hampered computer systems development, with procedural and declarative knowledge systems separated into 'computer programming' and 'data processing.' The software development academic track for procedural programming was often provided through the science and engineering school at most universities, while the computer solutions to declarative knowledge (data) storage problems was usually taught in the business school. David immediately saw how limiting that artificial separation between process and rich data management would be.
In 1991, Mr. Neal decided to form Petroleum Science Corporation, a firm dedicated to developing the cross-disciplinary science and technology expertise to produce state-of-the-art computer-based solutions to petroleum industry problems. In short order, he built a unique team of cross disciplinary professionals each having both a petroleum industry and a software development background. After winning the business of several of the largest petroleum companies in the United States, rather than expand the company beyond its intellectual capital constraints, PSC has faithfully served its existing client base for more than 20 years.