Established in 2000, Oman Gas Company (OGC) is the principal gas transportation company in the Sultanate of Oman. OGC operates a 2,500 km high-pressure gas transmission network spread among more than 40 facilities, including three compressor stations and 38 gas supply stations that run the length and breadth of the country.
With annual gas transmission volumes of around 21.549 billion m3, the company distributes gas to 4.4 million people, as well as to the majority of the sultanate’s industrial sectors, from power and desalination plants to fertiliser, methanol, petrochemicals, refineries, and cement plants.
- The challenge
- A connected digital solution
- Automating reliability and integrity processes
- Integrating handheld devices
- A successful digitisation
The challenge
The company’s small reliability team manages the performance and reliability of the numerous plants and widely distributed assets throughout the country. The engineers conducted performance calculations for reliability and availability using manually collected data stored in disparate databases.
A connected digital solution
OGC sought to digitise and automate all data and processes within its reliability and integrity program to eliminate human fault analysis and improve resource effectiveness. As a result, the company determined that Bentley’s AssetWise Asset Reliability was the most cost-efficient technology solution that also allowed the entire framework to be managed and maintained within one platform.
OGC began the digitisation process in 2017, working with Advisian, a top consulting firm, to implement AssetWise and support their advancing processes and practices to maximise asset value and maintain safe, secure, and reliable operations.
The integrity framework features a risk-based inspection workflow and supports an integrity database management system, including calculating remaining asset life. In addition, Bentley’s interoperable technology is integrated with operational technologies like OSIsoft PI and enterprise asset management system SAP EAM for work execution.
OGC captures full, partial, and potential failure data from the maintenance work completed in SAP to update the reliability and integrity program in AssetWise. With this closed-loop process, OGC achieves a living and continuously improving program.
The asset performance management system serves as the basis for calculating overall equipment effectiveness, identifying bad actors, performing root cause analyses (RCA), and eliminating defects. In addition, tracking key performance metrics in AssetWise dashboards has ensured adherence to process and has assisted in shifting the work culture to be more proactive and reliability-focused.
The flexibility and interoperability of AssetWise Asset Reliability enabled OGC to consolidate and analyse all condition monitoring and operation maintenance data from manual and Internet of Things sources, providing visibility into condition degradation trends and critical health parameters for proactive maintenance.
The auto-alert notification in Bentley’s AssetWise has been a key enabler, helping us to improve our reliability at a significant rate of about 9% a year.
Fahmi Reza, head of Reliability and Condition Monitoring, Oman Gas Company
Automating reliability and integrity processes
OGC automated several reliability and integrity processes that were previously completed manually by a reliability engineer using spreadsheets. The software automatically performs all reliability-related analyses, approvals, and associated recommendations from bad-actor analysis, RCA, reliability-centred maintenance, and risk-based inspections. Now, the system is configured to calculate the weekly reliability and availability of individual assets, in series and in parallel, based on an exponential reliability model.
The software identifies the bad actor equipment and uses that information to perform RCA. The application also triggers alerts and emails recommendations and reminders to the appropriate personnel until the corrective work is implemented. For example, if a due date is approaching, AssetWise automatically sends the line manager a notification, establishing accountability at every level.
This approach significantly increased equipment reliability because implementing recommended changes is the most important aspect of RCA. The AssetWise system increased reliability performance by 9%, which is worth significant savings to OGC.
Integrating handheld devices
As part of its automation and digitisation efforts, OGC integrated handheld devices for routine operator duties to help bridge the disconnect between the engineers and the field operators by mapping trends, monitoring operational parameters, and providing necessary remote technical support. In addition, introducing barcodes and handheld devices interlinked with AssetWise enhances quality in the field and ensures the facilities’ reliability, availability, and maintainability.
Operator readings and first-line maintenance are remotely recorded and automatically uploaded from the mobile devices to AssetWise to update asset health performance. Clear visibility of current asset health, degradation trends, and historical performance on dashboards make the day-to-day work much easier for reliability and maintenance professionals. Additionally, the interoperability and connectivity established proper digital workflows and standardised processes to promote safety, quality, and accountability in the field.
A successful digitisation
The successful implementation of AssetWise as the digital solution for OGC’s reliability and integrity program has driven a cultural transformation toward asset performance from a reactive to a reliability-centred approach.
The information transparency motivated the people in each plant to internally compete for better reliability performance and management than their sister facilities.
With a top-down commitment to synergise all resources to support digitisation using AssetWise, OGC has moved from time-based maintenance to a risk and reliability-focused strategy, supporting its vision to achieve operational excellence.
With reliability-centred maintenance now at the forefront, OGC is prepared to move into industrial 4.0 digitisation by 2024, using AssetWise as the digital platform supporting this goal.
