Connecting the Dots

As the world continues its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the oil & gas industry is cautiously optimistic of a return to stability. North Sea wise certainly, the compounding effects on energy supply; demand and alternative energy focus, along with a predominant industry portfolio of aged North Sea assets, has led to an increased industry focus, where possible, on reducing personnel numbers offshore by adopting and applying technologies in lieu of people. These challenges and mitigations balanced to maintain the fundamental position that asset integrity & reliability remains as, if not more, important than ever and with such a backdrop, the industry must ensure that any non-people solutions adopted and applied are smart, efficient and cost effective - without compromising quality, safety or integrity.

Given the many decades the industry spans and in recent years, the levels of M&A, many organisations are challenged by legacy issues of lost, missing or at best, disparate asset information which is spread across a number of processes and systems rather than in one asset repository; little wonder the industry tends to revert to adopting the clean slate, albeit time-consuming approach, inefficient and in turn, problematic for predicting issues that are ‘hidden under the bonnet’. A key theme with ageing assets is a history of poorly managed fabric maintenance programs and incomplete asset registration; understandable where assets were only ever intended to operate for 25 years and were managed as such. However, those assets have now far exceeded their original design life and the ongoing challenge is to identify all potential threats based on history and ongoing inspection data assessment, prioritise accordingly, and manage remedial works in the most efficient way whilst ensuring safe and uninterrupted production. 

 

So where do CAN fit in?

‘Connecting the dots’ in the Cambridge dictionary is defined as ‘bringing together information from different places’ and this is the premise of ENGAGE - a revolutionary data intelligence solution, brought to market by CAN Group, to overcome the technological challenges of assuring and maintaining safety critical asset information.

Developed by its team of integrity professionals, ENGAGE overcomes limitations in legacy packages and offers a revolutionary view of data management. It supports integrity needs across the full asset life cycle, connecting the dots between asset data and integrity to streamline engineering and inspection processes and drive efficiencies.

The fully cloud-based application provides enhanced visibility of integrity risks, enables real-time communication between on and offshore and remote sites, as well as affording a single point of access for all aspects of the asset integrity process, from Risk Based Inspections; Planning of Work; Work-scope Creation and Electronic Workpack Preparation; Enactment and Reporting of Inspections through to Anomaly Management and Data Analysis.

ENGAGE is at the core of CAN Group’s suite of applications to manage the end-to-end planning and management of work, ensuring users can see the ‘whole picture’ when it comes to their assets.

The importance of discriminating between data and information is the backbone of any asset integrity system or process so it’s vital that information is captured and not lost in the sea of data sitting on a server or desktop, or paper-based reports physically sitting offshore.

By understanding the historical data and controlling the present in near real-time, ENGAGE ensures that asset integrity can be accurately predicted and managed for the future.

For 35 years, CAN Group has provided inspection, engineering and integrity management services to clients and operators both in the North Sea and Globally. Throughout this tenure, the company has strived for continual improvement and has adapted and developed its services in line with the ever-changing landscape of the industry. This includes ongoing capital investment in new equipment and emerging technologies to bring greater efficiency and cost optimisation to its operations.

 

Harnessing Mobility 

Advancements in communication technology have enabled the proliferation of mobile devices and the internet of things to be used in offshore locations, and CAN Group sees that the future of Inspection is in harnessing this type of technology.

Inspection reports are a major component of a workscope and when using manual processes, the development of a traditional paper-based report can often account for 33% of all time associated with the inspection task. With limited personnel, it is critical that efficiency is maximised in order to gain productivity improvements.

CAN Group’s data capture and reporting application, CANtab, is an invaluable tool in providing efficiencies to optimise inspection plans and scopes. It provides an end-to-end solution that can significantly reduce reporting times and increase tool-time; the use of zone-rated tablets allows the reporting to be completed at the point of inspection, negating the need for the inherent duplication involved in first recording inspection results by hand while on site, only to later transfer that same information into a report format while sat at a computer. 

By performing data and image capture directly into the application, reports are automatically generated during the inspection process and securely uploaded to ENGAGE, providing near real-time reporting. This ensures that any major defects, anomalies or other issues identified during an inspection can be immediately highlighted and mitigated against by the relevant onshore teams, ensuring that safe and efficient operations are maintained, despite limited resource. 

CANtab works seamlessly with ENGAGE; by reducing the burden of reporting on field-based teams it has proven to increase tool-time upwards of 25%, whilst ensuring accuracy of inspection data and detail for full risk-based assessment and authoritative review. 

Providing a fluent and standardised reporting culture based on an entirely paperless system, CANtab integrates with ENGAGE to offer greater data visualisation, improving knowledge of asset condition through enhanced trending and analysis across multiple data types.

As more businesses continue to transition to cloud-based technology, alongside the many benefits also comes challenges when working in harsh environments. The world has come a long way with digital transformations, however recent storms across the UK led to significant power shortages for many, which in most cases would put a halt to web-based applications. CANtab has been designed to work offline, so that technicians can continue to use the tablet during the scope and upload the information thereafter when there is connectivity – ensuring that efficiencies can still be achieved (at least until the battery runs out!).

Now more than ever, technology continues to evolve at an accelerated speed and integrity management systems are no exception to this. Although ENGAGE is a risk-based module with roots in the oil and gas industry, the architecture is industry agnostic and the same principles can be applied across a range of environments. 

CAN Group’s expertise in rapidly identifying inefficiency and enhancing productivity by recognising potential issues before they become major problems helps organisations ensure that their assets can continue to operate safely, efficiently and successfully for many years to come. By working smarter, there’s so much more potential for improvements and increased efficiencies across the industry.

This article was published in the Integrity Matters Magazine, to view this publication please click here.