Asset integrity, safety performance and production efficiency are inextricably linked in hazardous industries. While it may seem simple in theory to ensure that the work needed to maintain safe, efficient and sustainable production gets executed safely and efficiently, the reality is often very different.

Competing work conflicts, stretched resources, differing priorities across business functions and changing workforce demographics are just a few of today’s realities across the global oil and gas industry. Add to this the challenges that go with increased global demand, aging assets, maintenance backlogs and compliance requirements against the ever-present production requirements, and companies have the complex reality that faces frontline managers and operations staff each day as they make the difficult calls regarding safety and productivity.

People dimension

With a less experienced and more culturally diverse workforce recruited from across the globe coupled with the increasing complexity of operating environments, many companies find themselves in a race just to stay even, let alone improve. Employees jump from company to company in search of improved conditions, contractors have become the principal suppliers of frontline staff in some regions, and subject matter experts have become hot commodities.

Process and systems dimension

One of the key systems used across all hazardous industries is a work management system that typically encompasses at a broad level engineering, planning, maintenance, operations and HSE. Across these functions is the day-to-day management of the safety-productivity dynamic and the identification, prioritization, planning, scheduling and safe execution of the work activity required to ensure long-term safe and efficient production.

In each of these business functions (that are often managed separately) there has been a lot of focus at improving or optimizing processes. So, for example, in planning some organizations have spent significant time, effort and money to improve planning processes. They have been improved, in some cases quite markedly. However, often there is little improvement in terms of maintenance effectiveness, safety performance or improved production efficiency. The key may be in looking at how the end-to-end system can be optimized.

Technology dimension

Technology can play a vital role in underpinning and optimizing the end-to-end work management process in two critical ways. It can intelligently systematize best practices and policy into operational practice, and it optimizes the process to improve operational decision-making with improved collaboration and coordination across functions based on a common currency of operational risk.

By capitalizing on new technology such as operational performance and predictive risk software platforms, companies can embed policies, rules and regulations into operational workflows and automatically generate consistent and reliable operational and risk-related data. They can ensure that all of the risk assessments take into account process hazards relevant to the location and equipment being worked on and that they are communicated to work crews. Frontline workers can be prompted by the system to be aware of process and hazard safety considerations and control mechanisms relevant to the area of work.

Through their scalable and enterprise nature, these systems can be deployed across a single plant, multiple assets or even the enterprise. The standardized and harmonized implementation cultivates a realistic and pragmatic approach to working across the plant and yet retains the flexibility to support regional, local and cultural contexts. The frontline workforce can flourish under the guidance of a tool that provides operational decision support and raises risk management capability and competencies.

Over time, this can manage out variances and different ways of working. It can nullify practices that can foster subconscious bias toward inappropriate behaviors leading to unpredictable work execution, compliance failure notices and inaccurate planning. It can reduce high levels of shutdown and incidents while generating and sustaining improved culture, discipline and behavior for operational excellence and enhanced safety.

From frontline to boardroom

Managers tend to identify and prioritize work. They plan the work and then refine their plans and schedule. They need to account for resources, contractors, equipment and other supply chain constraints.

They then typically hand the project over to operations to execute, but they don’t always see the levels of plan attainment, reduction in the maintenance backlog and increases in time or in production efficiency. Often planners note that their plans seem to break down at the seven-day time frame.

What happens at that time frame? Typically operations starts to look at the plan in detail and how they are going to execute it. Executing the plan importantly entails understanding all of the tasks, sub-tasks and safety dependencies required to do the job as well as how the job can be executed safely against the backdrop of the current status of the plant. Operations have to execute this safe work plan by properly preparing the worksite for maintenance, contractors or for itself to execute the work. In this calculus of managing the dynamic realities of the frontline environment, operations has to make the daily calls on workload and risk.

With operational performance and predictive risk software platforms in place, risk and execution can be built into the plan. The impact of planned and live work can be visualized alongside the current barrier impairments related to process safety and asset integrity risk.

With this common currency of a practical view of risk across the organization, operators can improve decision-making and make dynamic adjustments to the schedule to optimize workload against risk.

Better information drives better decisions, which drive better outcomes. The ability to automatically visualize the often complex picture of workload and risk can be invaluable for frontline managers and staff, especially in light of the impact of the big crew change. With policies embedded to guide people to the right decisions around workload and risk, the ways in which things are done across organizations can be systematized.

The larger implications of a common currency of risk across the functions involved in the work management process are significant. Given that these systems are collecting both real-time and actual data on work activity and risk, this data-driven information can be fed back to other work management systems to improve future plan accuracy and prioritization. More importantly, real improvements in operational excellence can be driven by further optimizing the business processes across functions:

  • Operations and HSE can ensure company baseline best practices are followed consistently across the organization with risk built into the plan up front, leading to better decisions and better outcomes to ensure long-term safe production;
  • Maintenance and operations can improve coordination and collaboration to drive increased maintenance effectiveness since maintenance can better prioritize to operations’ capacity to prepare the work site and manage controls; and
  • Planning and engineering with better visibility of barrier impairments help to prioritize safety-critical maintenance earlier in the planning process.

Changing the safety-productivity dynamic requires a new approach to people, processes and technology. Better connecting key elements of the work management process such as integrated activity planning, workload prioritization, operational risk management, and work control and execution with operational performance and predictive risk software can provide a common and practical view of operational risk across the organization. Frontline workers and senior leaders are empowered to make better decisions around workload and operational risk, and operators can move in a direction of risk-based operational excellence to improve the asset integrity of their facilities, keep their people safe and ensure long-term production.

Learn more about Petrotechnics at http://www.petrotechnics.com/products/proscient.

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