The introduction of GPS handhelds nearly 20 years ago was a huge leap forward for the oil and gas industry, especially pipeline maintenance and operations. Before GPS, field technicians relied entirely on paper maps and alignment sheets to locate and inspect pipelines. The maps and information needed to locate pipeline assets were often grossly inaccurate or missing. The lack of quality mapping led directly to accidents, cross-bores and utility excavation damage, to say nothing of inefficient field operations.

With the adoption of GPS, data quality improved dramatically, which improved the entire life cycle from surveying new construction to inspection, maintenance and operations. GPS technology was a game changer for oil and gas. Like all technologies, GPS itself has seen its share of changes in the last two decades. But nobody could have predicted the impact that would come from a new phone.

In 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G with its GPS chip, and the ripples are still being felt. It proved disastrous for GPS device makers like Garmin and TomTom. But that was consumer-grade GPS. The oil and gas industry relied on survey-grade GPS. Certainly that was beyond the reach of a phone. Or was it?

BYOD
The smartphone wasn’t adopted by enterprise information technology departments in the oil and gas industry. Like other sectors, it found its way into the workplace in briefcases and purses. The smartphone, coupled with the introduction of the Apple iPad in 2010 and its subsequent tablet competitors, have quietly developed a massive workforce trained in using both the devices and their applications. With the addition of email and corporate apps in recent years, capabilities of both devices and mobile users have fostered a phenomenon in business called bring your own device (BYOD). BYOD has made employees vastly more productive. Almost half of surveyed companies are increasing the BYOD presence in their field forces this year, according to the Aberdeen Group.

Meanwhile, traditional GPS handhelds seem like an anachronism to the modern mobile workforce. Unable to connect to the cloud, they present users with an outdated PDA interface and a stylus. The operating system is Windows Mobile, an operating system that traces its roots to 1996 and that Microsoft stopped supporting in 2008. Clearly, these handhelds don’t compare to the performance of an iPhone or Android device, so what’s keeping them at work?

Traditional GPS defenders, especially in oil and gas companies, say the lack of survey-grade accuracy prevents adoption. An iPhone out of the box might get 3-m (10-ft) accuracy in wide-open-sky conditions. But sub-meter and sub-decimeter precision often are required in oil and gas fieldwork. At the surface this appears to be a reasonable argument. In reality, it misses the bigger picture in regard to enterprise mobility, and it completely ignores the rise of high-accuracy GPS sensors that can turn any phone into a centimeter-level GPS device.

Accuracy
Not all users need the same level of GPS accuracy. The arrival of smartphone and tablet GPS at the job site has led to managers questioning the price of accuracy. For some jobs, like mapping an underground gas line, workers need centimeter-level accuracy, so they cling to their handhelds, ostensibly for good reason. But for other workers, locating an aboveground valve for maintenance could be done with the accuracy from the phones in their pockets. For the finance department, the price of accuracy started being measured against the bottom line. Accuracy that used to cost $20,000 now cost less than $2,000. For companies focused on the bottom line, the GPS handhelds have found themselves squeezed into a niche for survey-grade
work, but even that niche hasn’t been safe from the rise of mobile technology.

While proprietary GPS has hung on to its survey customers, the accuracy of smartphones and tablets has continued to improve, while prices have dropped. With continuous hardware and software innovations resulting from the technology battles of Apple, Google, Samsung and others, onboard GPS accuracy has improved. Meanwhile, the out-of-the-box accuracy also was improved from far outside the box with the addition of more satellites from Europe, Russia and China. A 2013 test by ESRI testers put smartphone accuracy at 3 m. Attached to a consumer-grade GPS receiver, the accuracy rose to 1 m (3 ft) 99% of the time. In addition, commercial-grade receivers from emerging GPS manufacturers like SXBlue, Eos and CHC offer centimeter-level accuracy for smartphones and tablets. This has finally grabbed the attention of serious surveying professional and geo-experts.

Data collection
One of those firms is Enmapp, a Calgary-based pipeline services company that had always relied on GPS handhelds but saw an opportunity to innovate using mobile GPS.

Enmapp provides pipeline data collection services, construction progress reports and analytics to some of the world’s largest energy companies. Like others in the oil and gas industry, the tools of the trade have been the same as far back as anyone can remember. In addition to binders full of paper maps and forms, each crew carried the GPS gear. Like the gear, the workflow had always been the same. Each day the crew would collect the data and then return to the hotel, where they would
upload and post-process the data. Then office staff would examine the data for anomalies and corrections, dispatching crew to recapture data where needed and eventually delivering static reports to the customers. While it often seemed cumbersome, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was the prevailing attitude.

Over time though, Enmapp employees became convinced there was a better way. The performance of the GPS devices paled in comparison to phones carried by the same workers. Then there was the high cost of data loss and rework when standalone GPS units failed, not to mention the cost of all of the post-fieldwork processing and manual review needed before anything could be delivered to the customer. And the costs were increasingly out of line with Apple and Android applications.

After researching GPS solutions in the marketplace, they believed they had found a way to jettison the old guard GPS with proven, modern commercial products. They needed a field trial to ensure it would work as they hoped.

Enmapp loaded a GPS surveying app, TerraGo Edge, on the crew’s iPads with a Bluetooth-connected, sub-meter GPS receiver, the Eos Arrow 100. The results were astounding. Not only did the Eos GPS receiver meet the historical accuracy requirements, but in some cases it was much better. The efficiency of the crews was far superior with the native iPad features vs. the old-style stylus and PDA screens of the legacy equipment. The labor costs also were reduced because they were able to use real-time GPS from the Eos Arrow 100 and eliminate post-processing.

“The hardware savings are enormous with the new GPS kit at less than $10,000 compared to the old kit, which was more than $70,000. But the ongoing reduction of project labor costs is even more valuable over time,” said Lance Fugate, program manager at EnMapp. “The cost reductions and efficiency improvements are a game changer for us. As our industry continues to look for innovation from its service providers, BYOD GPS enables us to deliver more efficiently. We can pass these savings directly to our customers with each project.”

For Enmapp and other progressive oil and gas companies, BYOD GPS is changing the game once again, lowering costs and improving service. With low oil prices and the push for leaner operations, it couldn’t come at a better time.

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