Managing Drilling Real-Time Center Remotely Amid Covid-19 Pandemic in Compliance to 100% HSE

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic shifted the conventional working paradigms, forcing an accelerated adaptability to remote working, ensuring the wellbeing of the employees without sacrificing the effectiveness, in compliance to 100% HSE. To overcome this challenge, Drilling Real Time Operations Center (RTOC) transformed the conventional Monitoring Onsite Hub into a full virtual collaborative remote center operated from each individual's place. This paper describes how RTOC successfully, continued to support drilling operations off-site through secure portal during work-from-home period. RTOC ensured to have the sufficient connectivity resources and security protocols to access the IT company environment and execute the tasks at the same productivity level, as operating from the hub. The platform design involved virtual machine remoting in an integrated communication environment, in synergy with the conventional ways of communication. Several data access points were developed to ensure an unstoppable link between operational teams and the data deliverables. To grantee productivity, KPIs were established and closely monitored, e.g. active rigs count, connectivity issues, software support, real-time drilling performance reporting, engineering computations, with continuous quality audits. Despite several challenges at start due to change in the nature of the work, RTOC successfully overcame the difficulties by having proper procedures and infrastructure in place. The virtual collaborative environment allowed the team to operate the center remotely and meet the targets for deliverables. Defining a clear communication protocol created efficiency when addressing data aggregation problems. As a result, RTOC was able to maintain the resolution time for data aggregation issues and continue to produce drilling performance reports within time. RTOC launched a mobile application for drilling real-time monitoring to support user mobility prior to the mandate of work-from-home policy. RTOC continued to support drilling operations during work-from-home period by providing real-time computations for drilling operations, doing real-time interactions for drilling events and introducing data analytics platform for users to analyze drilling performance. In summary, systematic implementation of the workflows and following clear chain of command have proven to be effective in ensuring business continuity of RTOC. Building trust and respect helped boost the morale and productivity of the team while ensuring their safety and wellbeing. The pandemic has been, indeed, a tough period for the world but the shift of working lifestyle was indeed a unique experience. It broadened the horizon for RTOC to develop advanced collaboration tools and upgrade the infrastructure to be future-ready for higher mobility. This novelty can also be adopted as standard procedure for Emergency Response Plan.