OC01The challenge
The operator wanted to understand what it would take to run an offshore gas facility remotely from shore, across both steady-state and process upset conditions, without losing reliability, availability or production efficiency.
That question sounds technical. It is mostly organisational. Every task currently done by a person on the platform either has to be automated, eliminated, or accepted as a reason someone must still be there.
02My role
I led the business process workstream, and later day-to-day client relationship management and the design and delivery of the discovery workshop.
The method was the same one I use everywhere: establish what is documented, then find out what actually happens, then quantify the difference.
03What I found
Around 80% of maintenance hours were going on corrective work. Fixing things after they had broken rather than before.
That is a cost line and a safety line at the same time, and it rarely appears in an investment model. Every corrective intervention on an offshore platform means a person, a permit, a boat or a helicopter.
A significant proportion of manual interventions existed because of instrumentation gaps rather than genuine operational necessity. Local resets, local set-point changes, visual checks that a camera or a sensor could do.
04What changed
We built an opportunity list itemising every operations and maintenance activity on the platform, organised by system, with the modification required to eliminate or automate it, the estimated cost, the estimated benefit and the installation scope.
The maintenance strategy shifted towards predictive and preventive, using condition monitoring and analytics to identify what needed attention before it failed.
The output was specific enough to support a scope and budget for the electrical and instrumentation work, plus a roadmap towards normally unattended operation.