Many oil and gas companies share the goal to improve turnarounds (TAR) and shutdowns. These are complex undertakings with numerous moving parts that they must coordinate. With an abundance of complex repairs and mechanical adjustments that must be done precisely, safely, and across thousands of lines, these initiatives often rely upon the work of thousands of employees, including contract workers.
Whether it’s a turnaround, shutdown, or outage, these interruptions in work, planned or not, are a source of concern. Given that a facility is only profitable when operating, time is money. To curtail costs, managers aim to reduce delays and ensure everyone is working as efficiently as possible.
The plan is to return to normal operations and resume business, on budget, on time, and safely.
Anything that can bring a facility safely and quickly back into service and improve overall business performance is worthy of consideration. This is where digital tools like TrueContext enter the picture.
We empower a wide range of activities to ensure successful efforts for asset uptime, equipment maintenance, and compliance, with our easy-to-deploy, best in class field service software. Global leaders in the oil and gas industry including Shell, PG&E, and Halliburton rely heavily on TrueContext’s agile no-code apps for multiple field operations, including turnarounds, shutdowns, and more.
Let’s take a closer look at how our field team platform helps companies in the oil and gas industry improve their turnaround and shutdown processes.
How TrueContext supports turndowns & shutdowns
Meets unique training needs
Plant turnarounds traditionally involve bringing in thousands of contract workers to carry out complex tasks. These subcontractors may not be familiar with an organization’s processes, assets, or worksites. With this influx of new, inexperienced workers, companies need to find a way to train these individuals quickly and easily on precisely what needs to be done.
TrueContext’s smart, contextual mobile forms guide technicians through complex work with service intelligence. Resource images provide field workers with easy-to-follow formatted work instructions and detailed visuals such as diagrams that help them adhere to standard operating procedures.
Supports efficient inspections
During a successful turnaround, plants are inspected and revamped, renovated, or refitted as needed based on a complete internal examination. The company may extend the entire turnaround process if any issues are flagged during these activities.
TrueContext gives field workers the context and intelligence they need to execute more effective inspections. They’re better equipped to ensure nothing is missed that could lead to an outage or accident. Since inspections focus on collecting critical data, TrueContext helps workers capture videos, photos, barcodes, geo/time stamps, signatures, and more.
Ensures companies are compliant & meet government regulations
Government and industry regulations often require regular turnarounds and shutdowns. These processes are vital to ensure the proper functioning of oil and gas facilities to prevent hazardous incidents. Prevention is the key here. There’s also a risk of damage to a company’s reputation and future revenue if compliance isn’t maintained.
Using TrueContext to mandate compliance requirements at every step of the workflow is a way to bolster the effectiveness of plant turnarounds and plant shutdowns. Companies can use detailed, rich work records to build verifiable reports to prove work has been completed. Staff can send inspection records to cloud systems in real-time and easily distribute reports to all who require this information.
Supports safe operations
There are many risks involved when dealing with complex machinery or hazardous materials during day-to-day operations. This danger is significantly amplified during turnarounds and shutdowns, given the magnitude of the work performed and the influx of contractors. It is imperative to ensure everyone is safe.
With TrueContext, it’s easy to build a mobile app form that dynamically changes based on previous answers to guide users through the job while maintaining compliance. Easy-to-follow formatted work instructions and detailed resource images like diagrams to help techs adhere to standard procedures and stay safe.
Promotes collaboration
It can be a struggle to ensure cooperation across the many divisions and teams responsible for a successful outcome during a turnaround or shutdown. It’s extremely challenging to make sure work handed off is completed.
TrueContext’s Teamwork feature allows forms to be passed between field service technicians allowing for better work-sharing and efficient management of complex jobs across skillsets and long or multi-day shifts. It’s easy to solve the many complex service scheduling challenges that are part of turnarounds and shutdowns.
Grants ability to leverage insights on facilities and assets
As facilities and highly complex assets grow older, the need for more frequent and expensive maintenance, preventative maintenance, and repairs increases. There may also be a need for a strip-down, total replacement, and overhaul of a facility or asset. Mitigating risks and enhancing the performance of these aging assets and facilities prevents the need to curtail production activities.
Taking care of equipment and facilities efficiently reduces downtime or prevents unplanned shutdowns or outages is essential. Field service technicians can use TrueContext’s mobile search feature to search and quickly retrieve contextual data from previous work to accelerate work order completion.
Captures data for continuous improvement
Proper planning, scheduling, and management of a turnaround require more than using a hunch to forecast future efforts. The capture and dissemination of data collected during a turndown or shutdown need to be made a top priority to continuously improve processes and procedures.
Oil and gas companies can set up TrueContext to send data to any cloud or business platform with our integrations manager. The list of potential platforms includes their Field Service Management (FSM); Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS); Enterprise Asset Management (EAM); Asset Performance Management (APM); Fleet Management; Quality Management; and Sales Enablement software.
Stakeholders can use the information collected from the field to plan for future turnarounds or shutdowns. With our no-code field team platform, organizations are fully equipped to discover any lessons to be learned, build plans to mitigate risks, better estimate costs, and more.
Helps companies analyze results from turnarounds and shutdowns
The best time recommended for analyzing the results of a shutdown or turndown is immediately after the process has been completed. All the data has been collected. Everyone has an immediate recollection of what happened, including what went well and what needs improvement for future efforts. Planning for next time will be improved with the insights gleaned from the analysis.
Dive deeper into inspection data with TrueContext’s assortment of analytics tools to track progress against targets and overall performance. Our basic analytics offering delivers pre-packaged reporting dashboards to track team productivity in the field, improve quality control, and monitor compliance levels. With the submission analytics service add-on, gain deeper insights into a specific workflow with custom at-a-glance dashboards. The workflow analytics service add-on offers multi-dimensional, multi-faceted analytics to power executive decision-making.
TrueContext ensures safe and effective turnarounds & shutdowns
Turnarounds and shutdowns create ripples throughout an oil and gas company. The dramatic repercussions seen throughout every department in an organization make these events seem unsurmountable. Service leaders struggle to ensure peak performance, contend with disruptions across all teams, and experience concerns about the impact of these activities on their budget and KPIs. Other groups such as suppliers and shareholders are also implicated in turndowns and shutdowns.
Don’t worry. We’re here to help.
TrueContext field team platform is proven to set companies up for success. During the execution phase of a turnaround, attention to detail is a must, and safety is of greatest concern. When a closeout is performed, obtaining accurate and detailed reporting on the entire shutdown or turnaround is top of mind. While our solution figures prominently during these two stages of a turnaround, it is valuable regardless of what step one is on.
Are you ready to not only revolutionize your turnaround and shutdowns processes, but embark on a complete digital transformation? Curious about leveraging no-code mobile forms apps to solve some of your most pressing issues? Get a demo to see what TrueContext can do for you.
