1. An oil company in Canada
Chemicals and Petroleum | Asset Management | Canada
An oil company in Canada
What if a system could help prevent dangerous situations from occurring?
A Canadian oil company quickly identifies specific safety risks and interdependencies for all asset-related changes, predicting how each change affects the operations of its production plants to increase safety and reliability.
The Opportunity
What Makes It Smarter
Because of rapid business growth, a Canadian oil company specializing in heavy crude oil production faced challenges in meeting safety and environmental regulations. With a growing number of assets across several production sites, coupled with a manual Management of Change (MOC) process, it couldn’t ensure that any asset-related changes would result in safe operations throughout its plants. The company needed an immediate solution to prevent risking the safety of its workforce and failure to meet regulations.
Operating highly combustible and complex production environments, oil companies face tremendous risks to the occupational health and safety of their workforce, especially when repairing or replacing parts or equipment. To prevent serious accidents throughout its production sites, this Canadian oil company automates the MOC process using a multifaceted asset management solution. The solution manages the change process for more than 4,000 plant assets—from wells to access pipelines—and helps ensure that the complete scope of a change is identified and addressed in a timely manner. And by rating risks associated with the work and identifying interdependencies, the solution predicts the effect each change may have on plant operations, prioritizing work orders to prevent equipment failure. The company can now help ensure the safety of its workforce, meet regulatory compliance and prevent production disruptions.
Real Business Results
Expects to boost regulatory compliance by 100 percent through increased accuracy in risk assessment
Improves by 100 percent the automation of the change management process across the enterprise
Reduces administrative time spent on regulatory compliance and eliminates errors through automated evaluations and processes
Link to Reference Profile:
Client
An oil company in Canada
Business need
This Canadian oil company produces 30,000 barrels of bitumen, a heavy crude oil, per day. With plans to produce 260,000 barrels per day by 2020, it has been growing exponentially. With rapid business growth, it became exceedingly difficult to maintain high safety and environmental standards and meet industry regulations.
The company used numerous manual in-house tools and processes for its operations. It had a well-defined risk matrix and a Management of Change (MOC) process, which is a set of policies and procedures developed to ensure that changes do not result in operations outside of established safety parameters. However, the tools to support the MOC process were challenging to use and prevented the company from ensuring that the complete scope of a change was identified and addressed. Its manual processes caused delays in documenting MOC requests, routing approvals and assigning risk ratings accurately.
An ineffective MOC process is one of the leading causes of serious incidents and put the company at risk. Inconsistently applying the risk matrix also created further delays and affected oil production efficiency. To address these issues, the company sought a scalable solution that would improve its MOC process.
Solution implementation
The oil company turned to IBM Premier Business Partner Ontracks Consulting Ltd. to implement a technology solution to support its MOC process for its assets based on IBM® Maximo® for Oil and Gas software. The companies rolled out the software across the enterprise to approximately 400 users in less than six months. The client uses the Maximo for Oil and Gas software solution to create, view and modify MOC records automatically, selecting and assigning record ownership. The solution identifies assets, locations and services that are affected by an MOC record as well as checks for duplicate records.
The Maximo software solution assesses every change request for asset repair or replacement, identifying interdependencies and associated risk level. Ontracks Consulting configured the client’s risk matrix into the Maximo software solution to automatically generate an accurate risk rating based on the user’s answers. This eliminates the dependency on the user’s interpretation or perception of the associated risk level and reduces errors. The solution then creates an automated workflow based on the risk score, identifies the specific details of what needs to be reviewed and approved and identifies the approval chain. It manages the approval process and escalates it to the next level if the approval is not received on time. The solution documents all details, creating a central depository of approval and comments made regarding the change request. As a result, the client increased its readiness for regulatory audits and inspections and improved plant equipment availability.
Benefits
With Maximo for Oil and Gas software, this Canadian oil company streamlined its risk management process and improved the safety and reliability of its production sites. The solution simplified regulatory compliance, thereby accelerating the MOC process, reducing errors and improving productivity. As a result, the client improved its regulatory compliance by 100 percent, increased workplace safety and boosted its oil production.
Instrumented - The solution gathers information on all MOC records, identifying assets, locations and services that are affected or interdependent.
Interconnected - The software solution acts as a centralized hub for consolidating and documenting all MOC requests and records.
Intelligent - By correlating and analyzing data sets including risk definitions and industry regulations, the solution enables the company to automatically assign an accurate risk rating for each asset-related change request across the organization and create a workflow and documentation to support its MOC process.
Solution Components
The company is confident that even with business growth, it can now meet regulatory compliance and prevent potential problems to help ensure optimal production levels while protecting its employees and the environment.
IBM® Maximo® for Oil and Gas
IBM Premier Business Partner Ontracks Consulting Ltd. 1