Advanced Collaboration Environments in Practice in BP's Gulf of Mexico Operations

Abstract

While central control rooms have been in use for industrial plants, pipelines, and drilling operations for many years, the BP Gulf of Mexico Production Advanced Collaborative Environment (GoMP ACE) is the first live environment to support production and startup operations across multiple assets. The ACE tackles the traditional onshore/offshore team culture and transforms it into a new virtual team that is not restricted by miles and bodies of water. The ACE implementations will increase BP operations efficiency and integrity management through enhanced onshore/offshore collaboration, cross-asset collaboration, faster response to critical situations, and proactive interventions. It is part of BP's FIELD OF THE FUTURE program in Gulf of Mexico (GoM), hosting and enabling most of the program's applications (1,4,) A number of ACE installations are taking place across BP globally, presenting valuable opportunities for shared learning in implementation and usage (5). To achieve these benefits, a 50,000 square foot facility was designed to host collaboration areas within the permanent workspaces of more than 200 production operations support staff across various disciplines. The extensive technology inventory available to support the ACE includes a secure digital network that links the offshore platforms with eight onshore control rooms, 40 video-conference cameras, and an innovative matrixed display capability that routes real-time visualization of offshore data on any of the 200 plasma, LCD, or projection screens. In order to facilitate the two way conversations between the onshore and offshore teams, upgrades were also made to the collaboration facilities offshore. The BP GoM ACE is not just about technology and workspaces - these are key enablers that drive processes and behaviors that enable a new organizational culture. A focused training and enrollment program was executed to accelerate learnings from other projects, build organizational alignment, and drive new multi asset behaviors. Communities of Interest and a recurring Pulse Check process with the resident teams have also been implemented to ensure that the model continues to evolve and adapt based on learnings over time or changing needs of the organization. BP GoMP ACE Benefits include:Reduced offshore people-on-board (POB) and fewer or eliminated trips offshore for a subset of activitiesCulture evolution of field and office towards one virtual onshore/offshore asset team, with access to extended network of other assets and central engineering authoritiesReduced cycle times and better decisions faster from improved real-time data context and access to key resourcesStandardized platform across assets to drive business unit consistency and implement additional FIELD OF THE FUTURE capabilityFocus on continuous improvement to apply feedback and learnings towards enhancements and new capabilities Introduction Managing a self-sustained offshore oil production platform has been done for some time now. These platforms are typically located hundreds of miles from land. How do you extend the support resources more readily available onshore to the offshore platform so that it is available when needed, easy to use and becomes second nature to use? How do you bring the platform opportunities and issues onshore? Phones, pagers and voice mail have been used to make this communication link in the past. However, communicating using that method can be slow. With the advancements in communications technology, we can now virtually extend the offshore platform to the onshore office (and vice versa) by:using always-on video conferencing and real time data feeds to improve communicationsextending visibility of the offshore process control system onshore for shared operational contextproviding collocated support resources for quicker, better decision support