Making sense of data is key to managing sector’s aging infrastructure

Martin Richards, of OpenText, argues that enterprise asset management is the key to profitability in an energy industry that has to handle an exponentially expanding stream of operational data.

Change is affecting the energy sector at almost every level – from new legislation and deregulation to new market entrants and evolving consumption patterns.

In this environment, enterprise asset management is key to the profitability and long-term sustainability of oil, gas and utility companies. As change accelerates and infrastructure ages, the ability of energy companies to harness and use data to effectively manage assets has become pivotal to success. Yet many companies are struggling to do this effectively.

In the utility industry, a worrying proportion of infrastructure is more than 50 years old. This aging infrastructure is less efficient and liable to fail, resulting in power outages. In fact, according to a UPS Systems study, 62 per cent of senior professionals in the UK have experienced a power failure at work – with 12 per cent experiencing power cuts lasting longer than a day. These power outages can have major business consequences, from lost revenue to reputational damage.

Britain has more than 17,000km of electricity cables. These vast energy and utility networks make infrastructure modernisation a long process. Effective enterprise asset management is an essential, immediate step for businesses that are trying to optimise productivity. Insights helpful for enhancing asset management can be found in documentation and data available to energy companies – if this information is well managed, integrated and more easily accessible.

Driven by content

Energy companies are not short of data. In fact, an exponentially expanding stream of data from energy operations today makes it difficult for many oil, gas and utility companies to make sense of – and derive value from – their information.

For many enterprises, digital content related to asset management has become siloed, hard to access and difficult to use over time. Much of energy organisations’ engineering documentation is out of date. These factors increase time and money spent on repairs and maintenance, while making the process of collaborating with internal teams and external contractors more complex.

To achieve effective enterprise asset management, businesses must find a way to better integrate relevant content and ensure up-to-date and accurate information is available when and where it is required. An enterprise content management (ECM) solution can help organisations achieve this, enabling them to drive multiple benefits.

Capital projects

Asset management starts with initial greenfield and brownfield projects. The more efficiently project and asset documentation is created and developed, the more effective the handover of deliverables to the operations and maintenance teams. With an ECM solution, this process kicks off with template-driven project creation and extends through document development and review, transmittal management and the creation of an asset content vault.

Asset operations and maintenance

In this step, an ECM solution ensures that any changes to information and documentation in an asset content vault are properly reflected and auditable to maintain document integrity throughout a project. This is particularly important when enterprises are faced with concurrent engineering projects for which phases are simultaneously handled by both internal and external parties.

Maintenance management integration

Asset information can automatically trigger and populate maintenance work orders. With an ECM solution, an engineer can easily access the order from a dashboard-driven workspace created for that order and have all relevant information on a single screen. After work is executed, a content platform can automatically archive content produced by the maintenance system.

Drone and video management

Drones play an increasingly important role in asset maintenance, particularly for assets in hazardous or difficult to reach locations. Energy companies, for example, are now using drones to monitor miles of pipelines or refinery stacks in a more cost-effective way than sending teams of field engineers.

ECM solutions can help energy companies store, edit and manage video content and environmental information captured by drones and make it available to all relevant parties. ECM solutions also integrate drone content into maintenance and operations processes, which is key if organisations are to get the full picture from all of their data.

Supplier integration

A content management repository is the basis of efficient collaboration with external parties, including the exchange of large volumes of content. By integrating the repository with a cloud-based transmittal portal, companies can control, track and secure content exchanged with external suppliers.

Content services

Without asset information management, executing large engineering projects can result in significant risk to scope, schedule and cost – as well as increasing the risk of failing to comply with regulatory and other standards.

A single, authoritative repository for storing and controlling engineering documents and work processes can help energy companies ensure content is always correct and available across ecosystems of internal teams and contractors. This makes it easier for users to find information, get work done and control risk.

ECM solutions offer oil, gas and utility companies an opportunity to make the most of data and documentation to effectively manage assets so they can navigate – and succeed in – a rapidly changing industry.

Even if complete infrastructure modernisation is not possible now, optimising information through an ECM solution lets energy organisations leverage enterprise assets to improve customer service and boost profit margins in the near term.