Capability & Workforce Development
That Works in the Real World
Learning strategy and workforce capability advisory built on 30 years of operational experience in energy and engineering — not theory.
Align People, Systems, and Culture for Sustainable Performance.
Expert consulting in HR, learning, and organizational capability to help you build the foundations for lasting business success.
Why is this different?
Most learning strategy advice is written by people who have never built a learning organisation.
Praeordium's capability and workforce development advisory is grounded in direct operational experience — at scale, in technically demanding environments, across multiple cultures and geographies.
This is not a framework applied from the outside. It is hard-won knowledge from someone who has sat in the seats your people sit in — and built the capability infrastructure from the ground up.
4 → 50
Global learning organisation built at SLB over 7 years
$200M
Regional service line managed in energy & engineering
30+
Years of international leadership across 6 major regions
FCIPD
Chartered Fellow — highest grade of professional HR/L&D membership
Regions: North Sea · North Africa · West Africa · Middle East · Russia · Americas
WHAT WE DO
Six areas of practice
Learning strategy design
Align your learning investment to business priorities. Assess what you have, identify the gaps, and build a strategy that delivers measurable capability outcomes — not activity metrics.
Learning organization design
Structure, staff, and operate an internal learning function that scales with your business. From team architecture to governance, built on a model that works in technical and industrial environments.
Workforce capability assessment
Understand the gap between where your workforce is today and where the business needs it to be. Rigorous, sector-specific, and tied to operational outcomes.
Leadership development programmes
Design and deliver leadership development that equips your managers and executives for the real challenges of your sector — from frontline supervisors to the executive team.
Workforce nationalisation advisory
Practical advisory on in-country workforce development programmes — drawing on direct experience delivering nationalisation initiatives in Algeria and Angola. Culturally grounded and commercially structured.
Capability programme facilitation
Design and facilitation of workshops, accelerated learning programmes, and cohort-based development initiatives. Virtual delivery or in-person. Global reach.
WHO IS THIS FOR
Built for practitioners in demanding sectors
This practice serves HR, L&D, and talent leaders who need more than a generalist consultant. If your organisation operates in technically complex, safety-critical, or internationally diverse environments — this is built for you.
Roles we work with
Chief HR Officers and HR Directors
L&D Directors and Heads of Learning
Talent and Capability leaders
General Managers with workforce mandates
In-country HR and training managers
Sectors & contexts
Energy — upstream, midstream, services
Engineering and technical services
Industrial manufacturing and maintenance
In-country workforce development programmes
Enterprise platform engagements (Growthspace)
HOW WE ENGAGE
Flexible by design.
Personally delivered.
Every engagement is scoped to your specific situation. There are no off-the-shelf packages — the work starts with understanding what you actually need, not fitting you into a pre-existing model.
Engagements are project-based or retained advisory. Delivery is primarily virtual, with in-person and in-country work available globally. All work is personally delivered by Steve Uren — not subcontracted.
"The conversation starts with your situation. Where you are, what the business needs, and what success looks like. Everything follows from that."
The right starting point is a direct conversation.
No pitch deck. No discovery form. A focused conversation about your capability challenge — and whether Praeordium is the right fit to help you address it.
Reach out directly via LinkedIn or email to arrange an initial call.
Book Your Free Consultation
In 30 minutes you'll know exactly where your biggest performance gap is and what it would take to close it. No preparation needed. No obligation after.
About Your Coach
Steve Uren
With over 30 years of international leadership experience in the energy, engineering, and industrial services sectors — including P&L responsibility for a $200M+ regional service line and 15 years building global people and capability functions at SLB — Steve Uren brings a rare blend of strategic, operational, and coaching expertise to every client engagement.
He's led teams across the UK, North Sea, North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and the U.S. He also knows what it's like to be the owner — as co-founder of The Fitba Factory, a small business in Sugar Land, Texas, he navigates the same decisions, constraints, and trade-offs that every client he works with is managing daily.
Today, through Praeordium Consulting & Coaching, Steve works with owners, executives, and leadership teams of industrial services, manufacturing, and energy supply chain businesses between $1M and $50M — helping them identify where profit is leaking, build the systems and people infrastructure to stop it, and move from chaos toward the freedom they started the business for.
The experience behind every engagement:
● Trained and assessed at the Center for Executive Coaching, an ICF-accredited programme — final credentialing hours in progress.
● Chartered Fellow of the CIPD — the highest professional recognition in people and organisational development they offer
● 15 years leading people and capability functions inside energy and industrial businesses — which means understanding your sector's talent constraints, not just generic HR theory
● Built and led the global Learning Solutions team at SLB — one of the world's largest energy services companies — responsible for capability development across multiple regions and business lines
● Scaled a learning organisation from 4 to 50 people in 7 years by connecting every programme directly to measurable business performance
● Carried P&L responsibility for a $200M+ regional service line across Africa — which means every recommendation comes with commercial accountability, not just advisory distance
About Your Coach
Steve Uren
With over 30 years of international leadership experience in the energy, engineering, and industrial services sectors — including P&L responsibility for a $200M+ regional service line and 15 years building global people and capability functions at SLB — Steve Uren brings a rare blend of strategic, operational, and coaching expertise to every client engagement.
He's led teams across the UK, North Sea, North Africa, West Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and the U.S. He also knows what it's like to be the owner — as co-founder of The Fitba Factory, a small business in Sugar Land, Texas, he navigates the same decisions, constraints, and trade-offs that every client he works with is managing daily.
Today, through Praeordium Consulting & Coaching, Steve works with owners, executives, and leadership teams of industrial services, manufacturing, and energy supply chain businesses between $1M and $50M — helping them identify where profit is leaking, build the systems and people infrastructure to stop it, and move from chaos toward the freedom they started the business for.
The experience behind every engagement:
● Trained and assessed at the Center for Executive Coaching, an ICF-accredited programme — final credentialing hours in progress.
● Chartered Fellow of the CIPD — the highest professional recognition in people and organisational development they offer
● 15 years leading people and capability functions inside energy and industrial businesses — which means understanding your sector's talent constraints, not just generic HR theory
● Built and led the global Learning Solutions team at SLB — one of the world's largest energy services companies — responsible for capability development across multiple regions and business lines
● Scaled a learning organisation from 4 to 50 people in 7 years by connecting every programme directly to measurable business performance
● Carried P&L responsibility for a $200M+ regional service line across Africa — which means every recommendation comes with commercial accountability, not just advisory distance
Consulting, Coaching, and Capability Development — serving clients globally.
📍 Based in Sugar Land, TX — serving Houston & clients across Texas.
✉ [email protected]