In an effort to achieve reduced downtime and enhanced safety and environmental protection, operators engage and heavily invest in comprehensive inspection programs to identify anomalies before they develop into failures or major hazards. Once identified, these anomalies are often stored in various uncontrolled data sources such as spreadsheets and poorly managed.
AIE has developed a leading integrated online software solution, Veracity Anomaly, to bridge this gap and greatly improve and develop the anomaly management process. Veracity Anomaly comes with the following benefits:
- Stores anomalies in a central database
- Maps and manages the entire process from entering an anomaly through to assessment and close out
- Enables users to define, trend and trace monitoring/mitigation strategy based on risks
- Creates actionable anomaly inspection and repair order plans
- Provides multiple reporting options such as work packs and visual summary reports, catered for different types of audience
- Presents key data in intuitive and interactive dashboards
- Includes approval and deferral work flows which is adaptable to different clients
- User-friendly interface; most users can grasp its functionality easily with minimal training
- Role based accessibility ensuring data security
Using Veracity Anomaly, AIE has recently built a systematic and intuitive approach for managing anomalies at one of the world’s largest upstream oilfield facilities based in the MENA region, with an estimated oil production of 1.4 MBPD. This aged field consists of approximately 1000 wellheads that are connected to 14 process units via a network of flowlines which transfer the stabilized crude oil to their export facilities.
The operator was managing anomalous inspection findings using in-house Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with a range of challenges being faced due to the age, size and scale of the facilities. Anomalies identified from previous inspections were not being efficiently gathered, analyzed and reported. In addition, no future monitoring or mitigation repair program was in place.
This major shortfall in the previous anomaly management system resulted in a significant number of issues being faced leading to through wall failures and limiting the benefits from the inspection programs which had already been invested in and completed. These failure incidents raised concerns regarding the implemented anomaly management system and paved the way for the operator to start using AIE’s Veracity Anomaly software.
Prior to the implementation of Veracity Anomaly, AIE performed a comprehensive and structured review of all inspection data to ensure all the existing anomalies were captured in the software and linked to its historical records (e.g. P&IDs, Isometrics, GA Drawings). To simplify the anomaly criticality assessment process whilst maintaining cost efficiency, AIE categorized the anomalies into two main groups:
Loss of primary containment (LOPC) anomalies that could realistically lead to an LOPC event from the hydrocarbon/water system in the foreseen future e.g. significant Wall Thickness loss indicating ongoing corrosion, cracking, excessive vibration or any kind of physical damage. Each LOPC anomaly was then ranked based on criticality and remaining life using a traffic light ranking i.e. Red Anomalies with remaining life (RL) of less than 6 months, L1 Anomalies with RL less than 1 year, so on and so forth.
Fabric Maintenance (FM) anomalies which could not realistically lead to an LOPC e.g. coating damage, corroded gratings, etc. This category was further divided into 2 sub-systems namely FM1 (Anomalies that might present safety risk) and FM2 (Anomalies that do not present a safety risk).
Following this desktop exercise, almost 5,000 anomalies were imported to Veracity Anomaly, through the software’s bulk upload tool. Associated documents such as P&IDs and marked drawings/isometrics, were linked to each anomaly within the software.
The main benefit of the software is that it now also drives the future monitoring repair and fabric maintenance programs whereby workpacks can be automatically generated from the system and handed off to inspection, maintenance and operations teams for execution. The software also has a fully integrated function to manage temporary repairs such as composite wraps and box clamps.
CLEAR AND CONCISE REPORTING
Through the interactive dashboards on Veracity Anomaly, our client gets the benefit of reviewing key information in a visual summary.
The following sample from the dashboard illustrates the distribution of anomalies across the client’s facilities and their respective criticalities. These visual summaries are generated in a report format from Veracity Anomaly and communicated to the top management on a regular basis to improve visibility.
Monthly/annual KPIs are driven around targeting and executing highest risks. Based on the criticality, the software dashboard also shows the summary of planned mitigation actions which are due each month for the next year to aid the planning process for the operator.
BENEFITS OF USING VERACITY ANOMALY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
Veracity Anomaly helped the client to plan the mitigation actions efficiently as per the anomaly criticality with clear alignment of Anomaly and task tracking until mitigation. Systemized anomaly management increased the productivity and efficiency levels whilst also increasing reporting standards and auditability.
Migration to AIE’s Veracity software from the operator’s previous anomaly management system was simple given that Veracity Anomaly has the capability of accepting bulk anomaly uploads with the help of loadsheets. The new anomaly management system has proven to be more efficient in terms of understanding of the anomalies and the planning of relevant mitigation actions (i.e. repairs). The client has expressed satisfaction with the features and performance of the Veracity Anomaly software.