Material Disposal Feature

The Situation

Sixteen oil and gas companies were each handling material disposal their own way. Excel sheets, email approvals, no audit trail. The national governing body had zero visibility into what was being disposed, at what volume, or at what value. A government directive came down to fix it. The timeline was tight, the 16 companies all had different internal processes, and inventory accuracy depended on SAP integration.

What I Did

I owned the requirements and testing cycle for the disposal feature. That included working with the product owner, running workshops with focal representatives from all 16 member companies, mapping their different disposal practices into one compliant baseline, and aligning with the national governing body on regulatory requirements before solution design moved forward.

From there, I translated the findings into structured requirements, user stories, workflow logic, and testing scope. I helped shape a minimum governance model enforced across every company, with three mandatory approval tiers, mandatory documentation, role-based access, and a full audit trail on every disposal record. I also led the testing effort across the feature, covering test strategy, defect management, regression coverage, and UAT coordination with all 16 companies and the governing body.

Over time, I became the recognised SME for disposal within the platform and supported the domain beyond the initial implementation through run and maintain.

What Came Out of It

The disposal process moved from fragmented spreadsheets and email approvals into a governed platform workflow with full visibility and accountability. RM100M+ in disposal value is now tracked and auditable. All 16 member companies were onboarded onto the disposal module, and every disposal record now carries approval history, supporting documentation, and a traceable audit trail.

The system also created a national baseline for disposal governance. Rather than replicating the most complex company-specific process, the feature enforced a minimum compliant standard that every company had to meet while still allowing internal variation outside the system.

Reflection

The hardest part was managing competing perspectives from 16 companies simultaneously, each with valid but different views on how disposal should work. The answer was never to optimise for one company's preference. It was to anchor to the regulatory baseline, understand the operational trade-offs, and present options clearly enough for business, technical, and government stakeholders to make defensible decisions.

The project reinforced something I still carry into other work: in multi-stakeholder environments, the job is not just to document requirements. It is to create enough clarity, structure, and trade-off visibility that people can move forward without pretending the complexity isn't there.