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New: Atkins and Repsol Sinopec – Improving Management of Risk-Based Assessments and Inspections Using Bespoke Software

9 August 2018

Problem Statement  

To assess potential integrity hazards associated with their assets and take suitable measures to prevent, detect, control and mitigate these, Oil & Gas operators typically use risk-based assessment and inspection strategies. However, their implementation is generally achieved through Excel-based assessments, which have inherent management and usage issues and offer limited visibility of the overall risk across the entire fleet of assets and the different disciplines.

 

Aims

  • Work closely together to develop a modern, web-based environment that facilitates the management of risk-based assessments and inspections for an entire fleet of assets, in line with Repsol Sinopec’s RBI methodology.
  • Improve consistency and objectivity through embedded workflows for determining the likelihood of failure for different threats.
  • Increase visibility of risk across assets and disciplines, through enhanced dashboards and reporting.

Method

  • By combining Repsol Sinopec’s asset technical knowledge with Atkins’ modern software development capabilities and innovative vision, the team developed ARIA, a web environment that enables management of risk-based assessments and planning of inspections across all assets and relevant disciplines. Repsol Sinopec and Atkins worked closely throughout the development, identifying the key features for a modern RBI tool. The Atkins software team developed the application in line with these requirements. Using an iterative approach, the software was continuously reviewed and improved from user feedback, ensuring the final product is easy-to-use, efficient and works as expected. To improve consistency, minimise data loss and avoid operational impact, the existing RBIs were transferred to ARIA and rationalised using an automated tool.

Impact 

The development of ARIA provided significant benefits for improving the management of risk-based assessments, understanding the risks associated with all assets better and identifying inspection requirements. These include:

  • Providing a central hub for risk-based assessments for multiple disciplines
  • Developed in line with the latest RBI methodology, ensuring alignment and compliance across all assessments.
  • Improved consistency and enabled an objective assessment of risk by developing guided workflows for determining likelihood of failure for each applicable threat, in line with industry standards and best practices. Input data transferred for over 2,300 assessments for Pressure Systems was rationalised into predefined lists to enable further consistency and facilitate reporting and analysis (e.g.: 760 ways to refer to 13 materials).
  • Better visibility and understanding of risks across the entire fleet of assets through enhanced dashboards, filtering and reporting.
  • Clear understanding of inspection requirements and improved inspection planning for all assets.
  • Facilitating peer reviews and allowing approved inspection overrides to be used.
  • Efficient, robust and flexible application, that is intuitive and easy-to-use.
  • Proven success for bespoke software development.

Added value

  • Alignment
  • Compliance
  • Consistency
  • Visibility
  • Efficient
  • Robust
  • User-friendly
  • Modern

Total Savings Anticipated

£0.5m / asset

 


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