Digital transformation has continued to grow in the oil and gas sector, and it is increasingly seen as an important part of the industry’s health and safety strategies. With tighter budgets and fewer people onsite due to the COVID-19 pandemic, efficiency is key to optimizing operations while maintaining safety standards.
“We don’t know when we’re going to come back to some sort of normality,” says Antonio Periera, EMEA marketing manager for portable gas detection at MSA Safety. “The current ‘normal’ is having fewer people onsite, and they are essentially asked to do more with less. This forces companies to examine their operations and procedures to try to figure out how to become more efficient and productive.”
Executives are more frequently looking to digital solutions as the means to make their companies more efficient, streamline operations, and improve safety. Pereira also notes that one key benefit is time saving, by eliminating pen-and-paper processes that are slow and not immune to human error. This improves efficiency and productivity. It also allows workers and safety managers to focus on bigger objectives.
“When you talk about technology, you talk about connectivity,” he says. Connectivity is the key word – with digitally connected operations – health and safety managers can use technology from multiple perspectives. Pereira gives the example of worker behavior, where technology would allow managers to understand whether workers are using personal protective equipment (PPE) correctly, or whether they are maintaining standard operating procedures (compliance) – even gaining visibility of how a worker reacts to a gas alarm from the detector.
“Technology gives all this visibility to help safety teams,” he says. “It allows managers to be proactive towards gas detection maintenance concerns and make sure gas detectors are bump tested and calibrated. It can also be used to inform the safety managers of exposures that take place so they can take action quickly.”
Connectivity is key to improving gas safety. It not only plays a big role making sure detectors are compliant and ready for work, but it also consolidates gas readings building one source of truth and providing safety teams with the ability to use smart data and insights to improve safety outcomes.
“The large amounts of data generated by the detectors can be overwhelming. It´s hard to organize the data to make sense and learn from it,” Pereira says. “The connectivity and the gas safety software such as Safety io Grid Services brings all of that data into one place, helping teams in charge of safety to focus on what matters the most.” This is where ‘smart data’ becomes crucial.
He notes that by providing ‘smart data’, masses of data can be simplified into an effective overview. This means safety managers are served the most important data, allowing them to easily understand what the most critical potential issues are and take actionable insights and make smart decisions more quickly and efficiently.
Connectivity also solves the logistical issues historically associated with record-keeping and incident reports. Documentation that used to be done manually, on paper, can be now automated. Gas readings go directly to the Cloud and the software makes it easy to find the information and generate reports. Pereira added that when there is a safety incident, an investigation will take place.
“Compliance data, such as valid calibration certificates, bump test reports and entry permits need to be readily available, and when you have hundreds of workers, that can be a challenge without a dedicated digital system in place,” Pereira concludes.
