THE INTELLIGENT REFINERY LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME
AI earns its place in a refinery one decision at a time.
20 Sessions · 25 Minutes Per Day · Four Weeks · Free · For leaders of Nigeria’s modular and mega refineries
Hello — I am Coach Ritchie. I am the AI assistant for this programme. Ritchie Wingo built me, and your work is marked against the rubric he published; anything that falls below the mark to continue, he reviews himself, because that is the point at which a person needs help rather than a score. I am here for the moments in between, when the operating review is on Monday and you want to argue a point through with someone first.
Twenty sessions, twenty-five minutes a day, four weeks. A refinery earns its result through connected decisions: which crude to buy, how to run the campaign, when to intervene on equipment, how to release product and where to commit scarce cash. Artificial intelligence is useful only when it improves one of those decisions and the improvement can be traced through the operating record. A prediction will not unload a vessel, and a dashboard will not carry out the work.
Every assignment is about your refinery — modular or integrated — and every assignment comes back with a written letter: what holds up and why, and where something is thin, exactly where to look. By Session 20 you will hold a signed ninety-day plan for one live problem, with a named owner, a baseline and a result finance can verify.
Ask me anything as you work and I will help you think it through, but I will not write your plan for you, I do not give engineering or safety advice, and I switch myself off while you sit a quiz or an exam.
There is nothing to buy and no licence key to redeem. You sign in with your Google account so that your work can be marked and returned to you, your progress page follows you between devices, and your certificate can be issued in your own name.
With your Google account. Name, email, the refinery or company you work for and your role — that is the whole enrolment.
Why AI belongs in the refinery’s decisions. Choose the one live problem you will carry through the programme.
Twenty-five minutes, then one written assignment. It is marked against a published rubric and comes back as a letter.
You assemble and sign your ninety-day plan, sit the final, and your certificate is issued.
Already started? Open my progress page → · Just looking? Read Week 1 →
This programme assumes you are not a data scientist and do not intend to become one. It ends with you able to take a live refinery problem into an operating review, identify the missing evidence, establish who can act, and decide whether an AI-supported intervention deserves a bounded trial — or whether a conventional engineering fix, a smaller pilot or a decision to stop is the better answer.
Write the choice in one sentence, with its deadline, owner, alternatives, evidence, operating and cash consequences, and the condition that would change it.
Separate nameplate from usable capacity, and modular realities from integrated ones, before any application is chosen.
Find the binding constraint, cost it on a consistent boundary, and prepare responses the refinery can actually execute.
Bridge plan to actual, keep contribution separate from profit, and put the payment dates beside the operating dates.
Keep advice apart from protective functions, quality prediction apart from release, and every change inside management of change.
A data contract around the first use case: identity, unit, time basis, quality status and owner — and when to withhold a recommendation.
An investment case with a counterfactual, a benefit ledger finance can reproduce, and no benefit claimed twice.
A bounded trial with acceptance agreed before results, then scale, revise or stop — and keep the unfavourable result on the record.
| It is written for | It is not written for |
|---|---|
| Managing directors, refinery and plant managers, executive and non-executive directors of modular and integrated refineries | Engineers looking for model architecture or process-design methods — that is a different course |
| Heads of operations, maintenance, process engineering, laboratory, supply, commercial, finance and technology who answer for refinery decisions | Anyone looking for engineering, safety, legal or investment advice on a specific facility |
| Investors, lenders, suppliers and advisers who must judge a refinery’s AI and digital claims | Anyone wanting a certificate without writing about a real refinery |
| Public officials and regulators who want to understand how AI fits refinery decision-making | Anyone expecting twenty minutes of video and a pass |
This programme does not end in a folder of notes. In Session 1 you choose one live problem from your own refinery's operating review, and every session after that writes one section of a single document — your 90-Day Intelligent Refinery Plan — around it. By Session 20 you assemble and sign it. Written properly, it is the paper you table at your next operating review or board meeting.
| Week | Sections you write |
|---|---|
| Week 1 Leadership and Refinery Economics | 1. Section 1 — Where we are today: the facility, the live refinery problem and the decision it needs. 2. Section 2 — The decision record for our live problem, and its weakest link. 3. Section 3 — The operating objective, its boundary and the four accountable roles. 4. Section 4 — Our configuration sheet: fixed design facts versus what changes in the planning period. 5. Section 5 — The binding constraint, its register entry and two executable responses. |
| Week 2 Margin, Feedstock and Production | 6. Section 6 — Our campaign bridge: contribution boundary, plan-to-actual and the cash dates. 7. Section 7 — Our crude-campaign comparison on a consistent delivered basis. 8. Section 8 — One week's feedstock schedule traced to its critical dependency. 9. Section 9 — Our planning method, reference plan and the shared resource that decides it. 10. Section 10 — The quality chain for one product and where prediction may advise but not release. |
| Week 3 Reliability, Integrity, Energy and Supply | 11. Section 11 — One asset family: the failure concern, the response chain and the integrity evidence. 12. Section 12 — Our turnaround or major-work readiness test. 13. Section 13 — The management-of-change boundary for our AI application. 14. Section 14 — Our shared-utility constraint and how its value would be verified. 15. Section 15 — The release-to-cash chain for one product, and where it loses time or quantity. |
| Week 4 Enterprise Execution, Governance and the Ninety Days | 16. Section 16 — One critical spare decision and the data contract behind our first use case. 17. Section 17 — The access boundary, recovery route and role competence for our application. 18. Section 18 — The honest investment case and benefit ledger for our first application. 19. Section 19 — The use-case register entry and pilot charter, with acceptance agreed before results. 20. Section 20 — The assembled, signed 90-Day Intelligent Refinery Plan with its executive summary. |
This programme is free, and nothing is upsold to you inside it. When you finish, you receive an ERW CommandRefinery certificate of completion in your own name — issued on a pass, not on attendance.
| To receive it | What that means |
|---|---|
| Every assignment passed | Sessions 1 to 19, each marked at 70 or above against its published rubric. Work below the mark comes back with what to fix; resubmit and the new mark replaces the old one. |
| The capstone passed | Your signed 90-Day Intelligent Refinery Plan, Session 20, marked at 70 or above. |
| The Final Exam passed | Fifteen questions, three of them rebuilt from your own earlier mistakes, at 70 or above. |
The certificate is emailed to the Google address you signed in with. It certifies completion of an ERW leadership programme; it is not an engineering qualification, a regulator’s licence or a university award.
Only people who have finished the programme can write one — the Session 20 capstone passed and the marked Final passed, both recorded by the server rather than by anyone’s say-so. They are shown exactly as written, never solicited and never edited.
One session a day, twenty-five minutes. Each one teaches part of the doctrine and makes you use it on your own refinery.
Every session ends in a written assignment — a decision record, a register entry, a bridge, a plan section. Four hundred to nine hundred words.
Against the rubric printed under the assignment. A written letter comes back, usually within minutes.
Session 20 assembles nineteen sections into one document, then the final exam — three of whose questions are rebuilt from your own mistakes.
No mystery, and no waiting days for a mark. Here is the whole loop.
One document per session — Word or Google Docs — with the first line reading Session: N. Your own refinery, your own live problem.
Against that session’s published rubric, criterion by criterion. The same rubric every time, for everybody.
Not a score — a letter naming what holds up, what is asserted without evidence, and exactly where to look to fix it.
Your mark joins your progress page and the corrected section goes into your plan, so Session 20 is assembly rather than writing.
An illustration of the letter format, using Session 5’s real rubric.
| Criterion | Awarded |
|---|---|
| Identifies one binding constraint with evidence and explains why other constraints are not binding now | 22 / 25 |
| The register entry includes evidence, consequence, owner by role, validity period and hard-limit or preference classification | 20 / 25 |
| Costs the constraint on a consistent boundary with assumed figures labelled and separate benefits kept separate | 19 / 25 |
| Presents two executable responses and a do-nothing baseline with prerequisites, dates and a follow-up measure | 21 / 25 |
Four weeks. Five sessions a week, twenty-five minutes each, at whatever pace your diary allows. Every session ends in one written assignment about your own refinery, and every assignment becomes a section of your ninety-day plan.
Nine papers, marked the moment you submit, every question returned with the reasoning behind it. Four pop quizzes of five questions, four practice exams of fifteen, and a fifteen-question final. You are never left to guess when to sit one: the session that opens a paper says so, prints the paper beside its assignment, and flags itself on the session tab — and your progress page always names the paper due now. Closed book, no notes, and Coach Ritchie switches himself off while you sit one. Pass mark 70 — and you may resit the practice papers as often as you like.
5 questions · after Session 3
15 questions · after Session 5, closing Week 1
5 questions · after Session 8
15 questions · after Session 10, closing Week 2
5 questions · after Session 13
15 questions · after Session 15, closing Week 3
5 questions · after Session 18
15 questions · after Session 19, before the final
15 questions · in Session 20
Nineteen sections written one per session, assembled and signed in Session 20: the first use case named as a decision, its baseline, the sponsor, process owner, evidence owner and technical custodian, the phase gates, the pause and recovery route, and the benefit finance will verify.
The Intelligent Refinery — An Operating Doctrine for AI in Nigerian Refinery Operations. Twenty-four chapters across six parts: leadership and refinery economics, feedstock and production, reliability and process integrity, energy and supply, enterprise execution, and governance and scale — across modular and integrated refinery operations.
These 20 sessions teach the doctrine and make you use it. The book carries what twenty-five minutes cannot: the full chapters, the sources beside every documented claim, and the six appendices — the decision register, the use case screening sheet, the benefit ledger, the data quality checklist, the pilot charter and the executive review pack.
Nothing in this programme depends on buying it. Every session, paper and certificate is free whether you own the book or not.
The whole programme on one printable page — the six frameworks, the decision record, the four roles, the method question, the ninety days and the executive review pack. Keep it beside you from Week 2.
The document every assignment is written in — opens in Word or Google Docs, with the first line already correct.
Read the first session before you sign in, and decide for yourself whether the rest is worth four weeks.
Your marks, your letters, your plan sections and your paper results, in one place.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Is it really free? | Yes. No card, no key, no paid tier. The certificate is free too. The book is available separately for anyone who wants the full chapters and appendices, and nothing in the programme depends on it. |
| How much time, honestly? | Twenty-five minutes of reading and thirty to sixty minutes of writing per session. Call it eight to ten hours over four weeks, and rather more if you do the capstone properly. |
| Modular or mega — which is it for? | Both. Every session sets a modular refinery case beside an integrated (mega) refinery case, because a smaller installation cannot simply copy a larger one’s programme — and a larger one cannot ignore its interfaces. |
| Do I need a technical or data background? | No. You need a real refinery, one live problem in it, and the willingness to look at both honestly. |
| I supply, finance or regulate refineries. Does it apply? | Yes. Choose the refinery decision your work touches most directly, and the sessions show you what to ask of the people who own it. |
| Can my leadership team do it together? | Yes, and it works better that way — but each person signs in and submits their own work, because the plan is only useful if it is argued over. |
| What if I miss a week? | Nothing happens. There are no cohort dates and no deadlines. Your progress waits for you. |
| Who marks it? | It is marked against R. Wingo’s published rubric, criterion by criterion, the same way every time. Anything that comes out below the mark to continue, he reviews himself before it reaches you. Coach Ritchie helps you think; he does not mark and he does not write your plan. |