By JP Garcia, Founding Partner, Ashwood Advisory Group

There’s a quiet revolution happening on drilling platforms, in refineries, and across oil and gas operations worldwide. Engineers, geologists, and field technicians are building their own software tools—without writing a single line of traditional code. Welcome to the era of Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) platforms in energy.

If you’re not familiar with LCNC tools, think of them as the digital equivalent of building with LEGO blocks instead of carving wood from scratch. These platforms allow users to create applications, automate workflows, and build data dashboards using visual interfaces, drag-and-drop components, and pre-built templates. Instead of waiting months for IT departments to develop custom solutions, domain experts can now build exactly what they need in days or weeks.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: LCNC Is Taking Off

The momentum behind LCNC in our industry is undeniable. Gartner reports that by 2025, 70% of new apps will be built using LCNC tools. In oil and gas specifically, companies are adopting low code/no code platforms as they dominate companies’ IT stack, allowing well-testing operators, offshore technicians, and oil field workers to build the solutions they need without waiting for traditional development cycles.

But this isn’t just about faster development cycles. What we’re witnessing is something I recognize from earlier in my career: the resurgence of citizen development.

The Return of Citizen Development

For those of us who’ve been in this industry for a while, the concept of citizen development isn’t entirely new. In the 1980s and 90s, we saw engineers building sophisticated Excel macros and small Access databases to solve specific operational challenges. The difference today is scale, sophistication, and integration capabilities.

The rush to digitize and undergo digital transformation has forced oil and gas companies to adopt a digital-first business strategy, with LCNC platforms becoming essential tools for this transformation. What’s driving this resurgence? Several factors:

• Skills Gap Reality: Our industry faces a critical shortage of both traditional software developers and experienced engineers. LCNC tools allow domain experts to fill the gap themselves.
• Speed of Business: When a drilling engineer needs a custom tool to optimize mud weight calculations for a specific geological formation, waiting six months for a traditional development project isn’t viable.
• Operational Intimacy: Who better to design a tool for managing wellhead pressure than the person who monitors it daily? The end user understands the nuances that external developers might miss.

The Data Foundation Challenge

Here’s where organizations need to be careful. Citizen development is powerful, but it’s only as good as the data foundation beneath it. I’ve seen too many instances where well-intentioned field engineers built impressive dashboards and automation tools, only to discover later that the underlying data was inconsistent, outdated, or incorrectly interpreted.

If we’re going to enable widespread citizen development—and we should—then the underlying data used to create these tools needs to be fully understood and properly maintained. This means:

• Data Governance: Establishing clear data quality standards, ownership responsibilities, and update protocols
• Documentation: Ensuring data dictionaries, calculation methodologies, and business rules are accessible to citizen developers
• Validation Processes: Building in data quality checks and validation rules that citizen developers can easily implement

Without this foundation, we risk creating a proliferation of tools that look sophisticated but produce unreliable results—a dangerous combination in an industry where decisions impact safety, environment, and millions of dollars in assets.

A Wake-Up Call for Digital Vendors

Here’s a message that our industry’s software vendors need to hear loud and clear: the LCNC revolution changes everything about how your customers will interact with your products.

For too long, major oil and gas software packages have operated as digital fortresses—powerful but isolated systems that require specialized knowledge to extract data or integrate with other tools. Digital vendors to oil and gas should now be on notice to create and publish ways to enable easy connection between their behemoth software packages and LCNC tools.

The most forward-thinking vendors are already adapting:

• API-First Design: Modern software architectures that prioritize easy data access and integration
• LCNC Connectors: Pre-built integrations for popular platforms like Microsoft Power Platform, Tableau, and others
• Data Export Standards: Standardized ways to extract clean, well-documented data for citizen development projects

Vendors who don’t adapt will find themselves increasingly isolated as organizations build LCNC solutions around them rather than with them.

Why This Matters Now

The timing of this LCNC surge isn’t coincidental. Our industry is facing multiple pressures simultaneously:

• Workforce Demographics: Experienced engineers are retiring, taking institutional knowledge with them
• Digital Expectations: Younger workers expect intuitive, mobile-friendly tools
• Operational Efficiency: Cost pressures demand faster, more efficient ways of working
• Regulatory Compliance: Increasing reporting requirements need flexible, auditable solutions

LCNC platforms address all these challenges by enabling knowledge transfer (senior engineers can build tools that codify their expertise), meeting modern user expectations, accelerating solution delivery, and providing audit trails for compliance.

Preparing Your Organization for the LCNC Future

Based on my experience helping energy companies navigate digital transformation, here are the key steps to prepare for increased LCNC adoption:

1. Establish Data Foundation Standards
   Before anyone builds their first citizen development project, invest in data governance. Create clear data dictionaries, establish quality standards, and implement validation rules. Your LCNC tools are only as good as the data they consume.
2. Define Governance Boundaries
   Not every business process should be built by citizen developers. Establish clear guidelines about what types of tools can be built using LCNC platforms versus what requires formal IT development. Safety-critical systems, financial reporting tools, and regulatory compliance applications typically need more rigorous development approaches.
3. Invest in Training and Support
   Identify your power users—those domain experts who show aptitude for building solutions—and provide them with proper training. This isn’t just about the technical aspects of LCNC platforms, but also about data analysis, user experience design, and testing methodologies.
4. Implement Center of Excellence Models
   Create a support structure that combines IT governance with business domain expertise. This team should provide templates, best practices, code reviews (even for LCNC solutions), and technical support for citizen developers.
5. Start with High-Impact, Low-Risk Use Cases
   Begin with applications that can deliver quick wins without critical dependencies. Examples might include:
   • Equipment maintenance tracking dashboards
   • Daily operations reporting tools
   • Training and certification management systems
   • Vendor and contractor coordination platforms
6. Plan for Scale and Integration
   As LCNC solutions proliferate, you’ll need strategies for managing, securing, and integrating them. This includes backup procedures, access controls, and integration with enterprise systems.

The Strategic Opportunity

The organizations that get LCNC implementation right won’t just see productivity improvements—they’ll fundamentally change how they innovate. When your field engineers can rapidly prototype and deploy solutions to operational challenges, you’re not just solving today’s problems faster. You’re building an organizational capability to adapt and evolve at the speed of business change.

The key is approaching this thoughtfully. LCNC tools are powerful enablers, but they require the same strategic thinking and foundational investment as any other enterprise technology initiative.

The citizen development revolution in oil and gas is already underway. The question isn’t whether it will impact your organization—it’s whether you’ll lead the transformation or react to it.

JP Garcia is Founding Partner at Ashwood Advisory Group, specializing in digital transformation strategies for energy companies. He focuses on helping organizations balance innovation with operational excellence across complex industrial environments. Connect with JP on LinkedIn or reach out to discuss your organization’s LCNC strategy.