WorleyParsons- Track and Trace

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Submitted by WorleyParsons

Impact

Cost Efficiency for Customers
Track and Trace offers a direct cost benefit to the industry.  This is evident from a Flotel campaign in 2014 which resulted in savings of circa £750K for the customer through reduction of non prodcutive time offshore, no material losses and therefore no reorder costs.  The technology provided cost and schedule predictability thus mitigating project delivery risks.

Considering the number of projects operating in the UKCS and facing similar material management challenges, the potential for cost savings for the industry with the use of this technology will be substantial.

Potential for more
While WorleyParsons has successfully utilised this on a project basis, it is commonplace in other sectors to use it to manage inventory and logistics at a cross enterprise level.  For example a major retailer will typically manage global inventory, order requirements, enterprise stock levels, all material movements, and point of sale order fulfilment for hundreds of stores, from several geographically diverse distribution centres in a globally integrated Supply Chain.

The potential exists for similar enterprise wide control of material logistics management across multiple projects, customers and stakeholders within the Oil & Gas Sector in order to deliver even greater efficiencies

WorleyParsons and DAI can present to the ETF the significant transformative change in efficiency that has been achieved to date by using this technology and best practice from other industry sectors. In addition, and from direct experience, we can highlight further efficiency gains which the technology has enabled in those industries.

We are aware of the Efficiency Task Force activity on digital warehousing and would like to investigate any potential efficiency savings in working Track and Trace and digital warehousing together.

Description of Best Practice

WorleyParson’s Track & Trace programme controls and tracks the movement of materials across the globe.  Delivered in partnership with DAI, it is a proven technology and has the capability of being extended from its current ‘per project’ focus to a ‘cross enterprise’ focus, and potentially a ‘cross sector’ focus.

Track & Trace Programme – Summary of Current Position

Track & Trace has been deployed on ConocoPhillips Alder, Talisman Montrose Arbroath Area Redevelopment, BP Clair Ridge Hook Up and Talisman HUC projects.

DAI’s mature, cross industry proven product is used by ASDA, Tesco, DHL, Adidas, Coca Cola, among  others, to manage business critical material logistics functions across their internal and external supply chains.

Track & Trace has been developed specifically to meet the unique Oil and Gas sector challenges.  It tracks the movement and status of materials and tools across the global supply chain from supplier to point of installation offshore.

The solution ensures that the right materials get to the right place at the right time with the right certification and are correctly issued for use against the right job cards / work orders.  In doing so it provides real time visibility of progress to stakeholders.  It also integrates with existing procurement and project management systems for improved planning and management decisions based on real time inventory status.

Track & Trace mitigates project delivery risks by limiting schedule impact due to key material losses.  It reduces material re-orders, manual data errors, warehousing inefficiency, material contingency purchases, mis-identification, mis-use, material reconcialiation costs and non certification.

The factors noted here work together to ensure that Track & Trace helps in reducing cost, time, and wastage – whilst increasing safety, effciency, predicatability and integrity.

Furthermore, at the end of the project the delivered asset has a full auditable history in place for every component part.  This can then feed forward into Operations and Maintenance, and through eventually into decommissioning.

Initial results from the Talisman MAR project 5 month flotel campaign show 99.96% of project materials being receipted and  issued offshore, on schedule, along with complete certification records. (i.e. 4998 out of a total of 5000 line items)

Contact: Roy Choudhury, WorleyParsons

BG Group – launches efficiency drive by reducing ‘dead’ time and empowering workforce

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Submitted by BG Group

Impact

Expected to significantly reduce ‘dead time’ on installations.

Description of Best Practice

BG Group intends to make its offshore platforms more efficient by significantly reducing ‘dead time’ on installations and empowering the offshore workforce to carry out scheduling and planning.

By enabling employees offshore, rather than logistics coordinators based onshore, to manage materials, plan projects and schedule jobs, the right parts, people and processes should be in place when a job is due to begin. So-called ‘dead time’, common when tasks are delayed, should reduce and efficiency increase.

The company has embarked on the second phase of a £300 million investment in its London and Everest platforms, 140 miles east of Aberdeen.

The North Everest platform has produced since the early 1990s and investment is required to enable it to safely produce to 2025 and beyond. Operating costs must also come down to ensure that it remains economic for as long as possible.

Read the full BBC story here.

ConocoPhillips – sharing in the supply chain

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Submitted by ConocoPhillips

Impact

Third party operator faced a very costly delay in imminent drilling operations (three months) in the absence of the equipment that was shared.

Description of Best Practice

Who hasn’t had a neighbour knock on your door to ask if they can borrow something?  A lawnmower, rake or a power tool perhaps.  But borrowing a riser equipment system costing £1.5MM?

That was the request that ConocoPhillips received on Wednesday 2 September.  The request came through the supply chain and was ultimately for a third party operator.   The supplier to the third party operator had suffered a manufacturing delay and needed the equipment imminently for ongoing operations over the next six months.

ConocoPhillips reviewed its needs and assessed that it did not need the equipment in the requested time frame.  With the right attitude and cooperation between all parties the necessary arrangements were put in place within the week.  The riser equipment was mobilised with no delays incurred in the third party operations.

Lawyers are very often the last party in the chain when it comes to negotiating agreements and occasionally are seen as a bottleneck in the process.  In this case, in the absence of a standard agreement, they moved quickly to draw up something fit for purpose.

External Affairs Manager Barry King comments: “I was only briefly involved when the request came in but I was curious to find out how it had concluded.  I asked a few questions and was so pleased with the behaviours and outcome that I felt the need to share the story with others.”

Contact: Barry King, ConocoPhillips (U.K.) Limited

The role of the QC

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Submitted by TechnipFMC

Impact

The main focus of the project so far has been to gain an understanding of the here and now, what works well or not so well, what are the challenges that we face and what are the potential opportunities.

This has been carried out in a structured manner that will allow the project to move to the next stage; this being to analyse this VOC and data, and there is huge amount to work through, and define and assess the improvement opportunities across the six specific areas.

Only then will we start to define and agree the changes and improvements that we should make. The results of the analysis and recommendations for change will form the next article on this project.

Description of Best Practice

“Quality cannot be inspected into a product or service; it must be built into it.”

W Edwards Deming

The use of QC inspection is an accepted process that has not been challenged in terms of where it adds or can add real value to a clientThe comparatively low cost of QC resources vs the cost of an error in fabrication or manufacturing process is seen as worth paying even though the assurance provided by this resource can be difficult to quantify.

Evidence from other industries suggest that end of line inspection by itself adds little value if not combined with  feedback to the production or fabrication areas to identify and fix the root cause of issues.

Project Overview

Through the Sea Change programme at Technip, Natalia Peyre is leading a Business Excellence project that will ensure the UKBU QC function adds more value both to the client and to Technip.

This is a broad, strategic project that along with defining and delivering consistent QC processes will challenge the existing, accepted thinking around the QC role and where it can add greater value

Project Goals

The aims of this project as defined at project start-up are as follows:

  • For Technip UKBU to have a QC function that is adding greater value to client projects and associated processes
  • To have a consistent approach to the use of QC resources across UKBU projects
  • To deliver processes that consistently make best use of Technip’ QC resources
  • To identify and remove areas of duplication, for example where supplier, client or regulatory bodies QC resources are all present at an inspection
  • To define Quality Engineer and QC Inspector responsibilities

It is worth noting that as the project progresses, additional goals may be added or existing goals amended.

Adopting a greater emphasis on cross industry collaboration, there will be opportunities to share findings and opportunities for improvement with suppliers, clients and regulatory bodies.  The duplication of QC effort being an obvious example.

To kick the project off, and in keeping with our UKBU Business Excellence approach, Natalia has interviewed a number of key stakeholders across the QC process; from current Quality Engineers through to Project Managers and senior UKBU Managers.

This Voice of the Customer (VOC) approach has delivered a wide range of data, information and opinion that has allowed Natalia to understand the key challenges and opportunities that exist.

Analysis and consolidation of this VOC has enabled the project to be split into six focus areas, as detailed below:

  1. The end to end QC process, from the creation of an inspection and test plan through to final reports
  2. The roles and responsibilities of QC resource
  3. Training and competency requirements
  4. The duplication of QC deliverables at suppliers, whether that be duplication of Technip resources or supplier, client or regulatory bodies.
  5. The relationship, gaps and overlaps across our QC and QA roles
  6. A risk or criticality based approach to QC, whether that be product, process or supplier based

Alongside the qualitative data gleaned through the VOC process, Natalia has also started to capture quantitative data from our systems.

This will help us understand specific details such as numbers of inspections carried out by projects over a specific time period, which suppliers we work with and what types of QC work is actually being delivered. This can only help to inform any future changes or improvements to the QC role.

Contact: Ceri Harris, Technip UK Limited

TOTAL – Clarity and visibility improve efficiency

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Submitted by Total

Impact

To date this initiative has resulted in:

  • a 12% improvement in plan achievement and 26% improvement in executed hours on Alwyn North platform
  • a 40% reduction in category A backlog hours
  • a significant improvement in the efficiency of scaffolding erection and dismantling

Description of Best Practice

TOTAL E&P UK Limited (TEPUK) has implemented a simple visual management tool on site that has enabled significant efficiency gains to be made on maintenance activities.  A visual planning board is used by disciplines and supervisors as the focus for scheduling, discussing and preparing activities on a current-day and day-ahead basis.

Individuals are able to manage their time more effectively, with fall-back and next-job or next-day preparation work available if the active task is interrupted.  Teams are split between scheduled activity and breakdown support which allows more efficient utilisation of resources and improves response time to unplanned events.

By locking in ‘field tour’ time on site, supervisors are measured daily on their attendance with the technicians out on the plant.  This valuable interface had disappeared from the supervisor’s schedule due to the increasing demands of email and PC activities.

Finally, a team performance and measurement indicator helps to uncover the root cause of any blockage to planned and scheduled tasks.  Technicians are encouraged to highlight this root cause and collectively these are reviewed to seek continuous improvement initiatives going forward.

Contact: John Catlow, TOTAL E&P UK ltd

Reliability improvement plans to improve BP’s plant efficiency

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BP expects plant efficiency on its UK assets to increase by over twelve percentage points this year as a result of reliability improvement plans put in place over the last three years.

While there must be periodic breaks in production for planned maintenance, the company’s production has suffered from unplanned shutdowns due to equipment failure on ageing topsides and subsea infrastructure as well as insufficient equipment redundancy. In 2013, BP took specific action to address these unplanned shut-downs through the development and implementation of reliability improvement plans. As a result of these plans, BP expects its plant efficiency to improve from 70 per cent in 2014 to over 82 per cent for 2015.

The plans are founded on an ‘n+1’ philosophy, meaning each asset has spare capacity and critical equipment in case of failure, allowing for fewer and shorter unplanned shut downs. A central reliability team has been established and is accountable for owning and updating the plans, which are reviewed by senior leadership on a monthly basis.

Brian Pridmore, BP reliability and maintenance manager, said: “The reliability improvement plans have enabled us to identify vulnerabilities and prioritise maintenance of topside and plant equipment to increase both reliability and plant availability. We are now seeing the benefits of these plans through real increases in plant reliability across our UK assets. Less frequent unplanned shutdowns and production deferrals are good news for our business and the sector as a whole.”

BP reduces costs by improving inventory management

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BP has worked hard over the last three years to improve its management of inventory to reduce lead times in getting critical spare parts offshore and reduce waste from the purchase and storage of excess materials.

Over the last five decades of operations in the North Sea, the company has built up a large amount of inventory, stored in many locations. This complexity and excess often resulted in long lead times to transport materials offshore and besides being costly, could have a negative impact on production when these materials were critical to the operation of the platform.

BP launched a project to improve its inventory management – identifying a number of improvements, including better materials cataloguing, disposal of surplus spare parts and a reduction in the number of storage locations being used. As a result, the company has created a more effective materials management process and reduced the costs of inventory management. The number of storage locations has more than halved from 120 to 48, greatly reducing storage costs. The number of inventory items has also halved from 158,000 to 75,000 and around $32 million has been generated by disposing of scrap and materials identified as surplus to the company’s needs.

BP is also participating in Oil & Gas UK’s workgroup focusing on the use of inventory. Through collaboration with other operators, materials are being shared, inventories are being slimmed down and required materials are being made available more quickly.

Arnie Mouat, BP Materials Management Delivery Manager, commented: “The need to address high costs and production efficiency issues in the UK Continental Shelf is clear. Our work to eliminate waste and excess is a good example not only of our relentless focus on making our processes more efficient and reducing operating costs but also of the benefits of collaboration across the industry.”

Please view BP logistics video here.

Chevron – achieving smarter well operations

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Submitted by Chevron Upstream Europe (CUE)

Impact

As a result of launching the efficiency initiative last year, Chevron has been able to streamline work processes.

The company has also been able to reduce the cost per ton of cargo transported by platform support vessels and increased utilisation of deck space to 75-80 per cent of each vessel’s capacity and accrued over £9 million of savings and service provider non-productive time has more than halved.

Wells are being brought online sooner and additional wells can be added to the rig schedule, which ultimately helps increase production.

Description of Best Practice

Chevron Upstream Europe (CUE) has improved the efficiency of its well operations and saved over £9 million in six months by defining distinct operations and performance teams and making more effective use of data.

Over the last few years, inefficient practices and a significant amount of non-productive time on the part of service providers have caused delays of several days to weeks in drilling and completions operations.

For all future wells, the performance team carries out extensive historical benchmarking to identify where ‘performance gaps’ leading to non-productive time have occurred in the past. Each service provider must also carry out root cause analysis on past issues and then work with CUE planning engineers to develop a well performance plan to resolve them. Progress through the plan is monitored in collaborative meetings and service providers are held accountable with the help of key performance indicators.

Improving how data is used has also been key. Simpler methods of analysing data and real time benchmarking of mudlogging data allows areas of lost time to be understood and captured more quickly in order to improve operational efficiency.

The efficiency drive is focused not only on CUE’s existing producing fields but also applies to new projects such as Alder, Rosebank and Captain as well as non-rig operations.

Andy Mayeux of CUE said: “To combat the drilling delays we were experiencing we have employed a consistent well planning process and made better use of data. The first three wells of 2015 have been completed early, we have accrued over £9 million of savings and service provider non-productive time has more than halved. Most importantly, by reducing well days, wells are being brought online sooner and additional wells can be added to the rig schedule, which ultimately helps increase production.”

To maintain the workforce’s engagement in the initiative both on and offshore, cross-functional well performance reviews are conducted within 30 days of drilling ending. Measures of success against the performance plan and overall well performance data is communicated daily on monitors as well as via posters reminding rig crews of the impact of their support to the delivery of the business plan.

Contact: Sam Howard, Chevron Upstream

Chevron – Marine logistics

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Submitted by Chevron

Impact

As a result of launching the efficiency initiative last year, Chevron has been able to streamline work processes. The company has also been able to reduce the cost per ton of cargo transported by platform support vessels and increased utilisation of deck space to 75-80 per cent of each vessel’s capacity.

Description of Best Practice

Chevron Upstream Europe (Chevron), is making optimum use of the platform supply vessels which support its installations in the North Sea by taking a new approach to organising its marine logistics which involves greater input from its employees and more effective integration across different departments.

Marine logistics, involving the delivery of plant, equipment and materials from suppliers to our offshore installations, are a sizeable proportion of lifting costs which are some of the costs associated with producing oil and gas from wells on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). In 2014 Chevron launched an initiative to look at how the business could manage the costs of marine logistics more effectively.

As part of Chevron Upstream Europe’s operations department, our marine logistics team is responsible for supporting the installations and key projects we manage on the UKCS, including the Alba, Captain and Erskine fields. Working together with the TEAM Marine Consortium, Chevron looked at ways to make better use of Platform Support Vessels (PSVs), share resources with neighbouring offshore installations and maximise every inch of each vessel’s deck space capacity.

Chevron, as a member of the TEAM Consortium for the past 20 years, is well aware of the benefits of pooling resources such as platform support vessels. The company therefore took this co-operative working approach a step further to pinpoint opportunities where it could improve marine logistics efficiency.

Along with being integrated into Chevron’s operations department, the marine logistics team has been working with cross functional input from our operations planning, offshore workforce, drilling & completions and facilities engineering groups plus various service providers to raise awareness of the need for further efficiency across our assets. Chevron looked at areas where we could help reduce offshore standby times and unscheduled sailings as well as prevent cargoes from being ‘round-tripped’, when materials remain on board taking up valuable deck space.

Chevron has been using tools such as Lean Sigma to help our onshore and offshore teams assess potential opportunities for contributing to smarter ways to tackle both day-to -day and long-term strategic planning across the business. This approach is helping the company to generate in our teams a sense of empowerment where they are encouraged to think creatively and constantly challenge themselves to find potential opportunities for efficiency improvement.

Together with raising awareness of the efficiency initiative across these teams, Chevron also reviewed existing processes for tracking costs across the business and identified systems which have enabling the business to avoid the rise in costs that can arise from sub-optimal planning or reactive work onshore, offshore and through supporting third parties and suppliers.

Contact: Sam Howard, Chevron

Chevron takes a new approach to organising its marine logistics

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Major operator, Chevron Upstream Europe (Chevron), is making optimum use of the platform supply vessels which support its installations in the North Sea by taking a new approach to organising its marine logistics which involves greater input from its employees and more effective integration across different departments.

A spokesperson explains: “Marine logistics, involving the delivery of plant, equipment and materials from suppliers to our offshore installations, are a sizeable proportion of lifting costs which are some of the costs associated with producing oil and gas from wells on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS)).  In 2014 Chevron launched an initiative to look at how the business could manage the costs of marine logistics more effectively.

“As part of Chevron Upstream Europe’s operations department, our marine logistics team is responsible for supporting the installations and key projects we manage on the UKCS, including the Alba, Captain and Erskine fields. Working together with the TEAM Marine Consortium, which we looked at ways to make better use of Platform Support Vessels (PSVs), share resources with neighbouring offshore installations and maximise every inch of each vessel’s deck space capacity.

“Chevron, as a member of the TEAM Consortium for the past 20 years, is well aware of the benefits of pooling resources such as platform support vessels. We therefore took this co-operative  working approach a step further to pinpoint opportunities  where we could improve  marine logistics efficiency.

Along with being integrated into Chevron’s operations department, the marine logistics team has been working with cross functional input from our operations planning, offshore workforce, , drilling & completions and facilities engineering groups plus various service providers  to raise awareness of the need for further efficiency across our assets.  We looked at areas where we could help reduce offshore standby times and unscheduled sailings as well as prevent cargoes from being ‘round-tripped’ which is when materials remain onboard taking up valuable deck space.

We have been using tools such as Lean Sigma to help our onshore and offshore teams assess potential opportunities for contributing to smarter ways to tackle both day-to -day and long-term strategic planning across the business. This approach is helping us to generate in our teams a sense of empowerment where they are encouraged to think creatively and constantly challenge themselves to find potential opportunities for efficiency improvement.

Together with raising awareness of the efficiency initiative across these teams, we also reviewed existing processes for tracking costs across the business and identified systems which have enabled us to avoid the rise in costs that can arise from sub-optimal planning or reactive work onshore, offshore and through supporting third parties and suppliers.

As a result of launching our efficiency initiative last year, we have been able to streamline work processes. We have also been able to reduce the cost per ton of cargo transported by platform support vessels and increased utilisation of deck space to 75-80 per cent of each vessel’s capacity