Outcomes
- 250% increase in inspections per technician per day
- $4 million in annual time savings in inspections alone
- 24/7 operation data availability
- Adaptable platform ready for future integrations
Working under extreme conditions and environments, Shell’s Prelude floating liquid natural gas (FLNG) front liners struggled to perform critical inspections efficiently with the company’s existing paper-digital hybrid system, prompting a paradigm shift across the organization for a truly mobile solution. The Connected Worker program, part of Shell’s broader digital transformation, leverages technology like TrueContext to improve field efficiency, safety, and collaboration for its workforce. Emerging as the most used app within the program, TrueContext has helped Shell unlock new levels of field service productivity by increasing inspections to 250% per technician per day.
Challenges
As an FLNG platform, Shell Prelude requires its frontline workers to perform routine tank and pipe inspections across the facility. These critical workflows ensure that corrosion, wear, and leaks are prevented, identified, and remediated to achieve regulatory compliance, safeguard technicians, and avoid unnecessary production shutdowns. With a paper process supplemented by digital photos, the frontliners used multiple methods of data collection, which needed to be reconciled eventually. This meant that they would manually take notes, use tablets to take photos, and later type their paper notes into spreadsheets and link them to specific photos. The physical paper was also scanned and uploaded into the work order. The administrative burden of this disjointed workflow, often done while the technician was suspended inside the tank, ate into hands-on-tool time, holding back productivity.
Seeing the inherent inefficiencies of this process, Utilization Deployment Advisor Alfredo Figueroa knew they were leaving a lot of potential on the table for their field teams. He began to consider several candidates that would help streamline documentation while reducing administrative burden to what was absolutely necessary. As he whittled down his options of digital tools, he prioritized a few key features. UX design was critical as he wanted to make sure that the platform would be rapidly and widely adopted by the frontline. Another key consideration was offline capability, given the environment within which Prelude’s teams performed their tasks. Additionally, he needed to generate reports that could be quickly iterated and extensively customized without needing to loop in a developer to make necessary changes.
Solution
Weighing these requirements against other options, Shell [MS1] decided on TrueContext as its primary field inspection app. With its no-code flexibility, the platform was easily deployed across a variety of use cases at lightning speed. Starting with tank and pipe inspections and liquid penetration testing, Alfredo rapidly branched out to more applications that would create scalable efficiencies for their 300 frontline workers, such as the end-to-end lifecycle of relief valves, HSE, production support, maintenance, and planning.
The benefits of using a digital tool in documenting vital work on the FLNG platform were immediately visible, especially when compared to the previous manual process. Notes and photos were being taken in line with the tasks as they were happening, eliminating the need to go back after the fact and reconcile different formats and sources of data. All of the data yielded by inspections was inputted directly into the app – as the inspection was being conducted – including pictures and markups that contextualized the information. Doing away with paper completely also made working while hanging on harnesses significantly more manageable for technicians.
In terms of designing workflows, Alfredo capitalized on frontline workers’ deep field experience by involving them in the development. They provided invaluable feedback, which was immediately actioned and deployed to the TrueContext platform. Additionally, the company leveraged its advanced data capabilities, including custom PDF outputs and SharePoint integration, to enable a truly digital field operation at the facility.
“It’s not just about engagement. You help them realize it’s an easier way to perform their jobs and make better use of their time. I’m not seeing any other product at this point in my IT career that is more impactful than TrueContext.”
ALFREDO FIGUEROA
UTILIZATION DEPLOYMENT ADVISOR
Outcomes
The switch to TrueContext netted Shell outstanding operational and business outcomes. Productivity more than doubled, with inspections jumping from four to 10 per technician per day within the pipe inspection use case alone. This productivity boost is driving $3 to $4 million annually in time savings value in just pipe inspections alone.
The availability of data has not only helped frontline workers complete their tasks faster, but it has also increased operational visibility for engineers, allowing them to know exactly what’s happening with critical assets.
“It’s not just about engagement. You help them realize it’s an easier way to perform their jobs and make better use of their time,” Alfredo noted. Seeing frontline teams use TrueContext, he said, “I saw faces of happiness, faces that expressed, ‘Oh my goodness, this is so good.’ That, for me, you can’t just put a numerical value on.”
Working to make its TrueContext deployment adapt to the field’s evolving needs, Shell Prelude is looking at deeper integration into SAP work orders by using the app as the front-end interface connected directly with the backend system.
“I’m not seeing any other product at this point in my IT career that is more impactful than TrueContext,” Alfredo concluded.
