Challenging times are often the catalyst for innovation and advances in digital technologies offer an alternative approach to traditional operational methods.
Oil production is a cyclical industry – there are good times and tough times.
Be it due to an unstable oil price, travel disruptions, or even civil unrest, modern businesses require easily accessible information which is available 24/7.
It is ultimately the project’s safe and timely delivery that matters to the customer, so how you gather and store this information can be the difference between project efficiency and project delay.
One of the main challenges for modern industries, including but not limited to the energy sector, is the sharing of information. This is especially true when mobilising personnel offshore or overseas.
The requirements are normally driven by the project planning department, yet the various elements of personnel records are often kept by numerous departments.
These include multiple layers – payroll information is the responsibility of the accounting department, validity of training certificates, visas and medical requirements belong to HR and flight logistics are often only known to the Travel team. Information held on multiple spreadsheets or hard-copy personnel records often results in these departments working in isolation.
The position gets even more confused when operating with multiple and diverse external contractors. This can ultimately damage reputations in an already very competitive marketplace which is focused on increasing efficiency and reducing costs. Consequently, the business invests valuable time in micro-managing projects and meeting to discuss progress which would be obvious if captured in one location and visible to the whole team.
This is reflective of many businesses (operators, service contractors or specialists) and Jane Harvey, managing director of Akrugo Ltd, appreciates first-hand how delays in mobilising personnel can seriously impact the delivery of an oil and gas project.
A haphazard approach to mobilisation can lead to confusion, dissatisfaction and cost. For example, suddenly learning that your ‘specialist’ requires new training or survival/medical certification can result in seemingly ‘flight ready’ people waiting on standby.
This adds costs for the contractor, client or the project deadline, or more often, all three. Clarity of such information means that delays can be avoided so that the project manager and planner can quickly and efficiently react to optimise the prevailing situation.
It is clear that mobilisation of personnel isn’t solely a concern for HR or logistics teams, its wider impact directly affects project delivery and ultimately the bottom line.
Having staff information stored in a variety of formats poses challenges when it comes to extracting accurate information when needed; in day-to-day logistics, and even more so in an emergency.
Jane has worked in the oil and gas industry for over a decade and understands its inherent challenges. Having been responsible for mobilising staff to projects in both the North Sea and internationally, she saw an opportunity to offer a joined-up approach to meet these challenges, thus developing Akrugo – a comprehensive approach to address the challenges of staff mobilisation.
Jane’s background includes engineering, consultancy and project management for large service contractors. A challenging part of this journey was mobilising teams to start-up projects in remote locations such as southern Oman, Iraq and Kurdistan.
Business director Nichola Collinson has spent the last 18 months mobilising in and out of Iraq for a major international operator. The pair brought together their skills and experiences to address these challenges from different angles and have spent the past 12 months developing the software required to offer Akrugo as the solution.
With the North Sea looking for cost savings and increased efficiencies, the practicalities of how, when and where staff are deployed is an important consideration.
Pooling resources into one centralised location makes it clearer which staff are available and properly ‘flight ready’. Sharing of information can be done while respecting the required levels of privacy and confidentiality and utilising existing information sources.
As the price per barrel of oil dips, operators and contractors are being forced to cut costs wherever possible. Headcount reductions, supplier rate cuts and the re-evaluation of projects are all necessary, but what happens next? Akrugo’s™ experience suggests that the next 10-20% of savings are the hardest to achieve – its bespoke approach aims to improve the efficiency of project delivery by simplifying the way we work, managing costs and improving competitive performance.