KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • In-built de-duplication and document clean up tools like those in RedEye can accelerate the digitization process to enable faster ROI.
  • When asset drawings and documents are treated as valuable assets in their own right, substantial operational savings can be made by reducing search time and re-work.
  • Having a 3D model which accurately represents physical assets can improve servicing of and troubleshooting about those critical assets.

 

THE COMPANY

WestSide Corporation is an oil and gas production company operating in Australia and New Zealand. The Australian operation produces Coal Seam Gas, while the NZ operation produces conventional oil and gas.

The organization’s focus is on growing production and reserves, and improving drilling and connection efficiencies in its strategically located acreage, in a safe and environmentally responsible manner.

For WestSide, maintaining control of engineering drawings and documents is essential in terms of cost control, construction details, designing changes to existing equipment, new projects, and troubleshooting.

The Oil and Gas producer now uses Accruent’s RedEye, a cloud-based Engineering Drawing and Document Management Solution, to manage some 53,000 critical artifacts including as-built drawings, documents, photos and videos, with more than 200 users accessing the system.

0 %
Reduced costs
0
ZERO rework
0 %
Saved productivity time

 

THE CHALLENGE

Four years ago, and prior to using RedEye, WestSide was trying to manage over 220,000 engineering documents, with multiple copies and revisions stored in multiple locations.

WestSide’s designs were provided by external engineering design contractors, different drawing numbers were used, and drawing lists and registers were not complete or up to date, which complicated its drawing management processes.

Due to the remote location of WestSide’s assets, travel times to and from each site took many hours, and onsite staff were not always confident they were accessing the latest drawings. Drawings were constantly being copied, marked up and changed by many people.

WestSide understood that documents were important as they held key safety and design information. It became a top priority for WestSide to provide access to accurate drawings both for safety reasons, to design future modifications and avoid costly re-work.

We really have digitally transformed our engineering process.
— Rob Trout
    Digital Transformation Leader, WestSide

 

THE SOLUTION

WestSide chose RedEye to create a single source of truth for its engineering drawings and documents. The oil and gas producer ran two separate projects, each taking six months to complete. The projects collated documents from many sources, triaged and loaded them into RedEye’s cloud-based SaaS platform, and tested and cleaned the documents in bulk.

WestSide also used RedEye’s cleanup tools to “fold in versions” and reduce duplication, added metadata to assist search, and implemented tailored workflows. Extensive training was also conducted to ensure key staff knew how to use the system.

We chose RedEye because of its clean up ability, as we had such a disarray of information. That was the key reason for us because it gave us those tools to help go back and clean up our documents.
— Rob Trout
    Digital Transformation Leader, WestSide

 

THE RESULTS

Using RedEye, WestSide now has a single source of truth for all of its asset engineering drawings and manuals, documentation such as procedures, design and datasheets.

WestSide’s teams have fast access to the system anywhere on site, from a mobile device or the office. They also benefit from a trusted revision control, version history and review and approval tools.

Representing assets in 3D

WestSide also stores three dimensional models of their facilities in RedEye, which gives them as close to the experience of being on the ground as possible, without actually being there.

“It allows us to delve in, and from anywhere in the world, take a deep dive through our assets. We can…orient ourselves to what is actually on site. We have photos and videos too, which are very useful, especially for people who are remote and can’t travel to the site as much as they’d like to,” said Rob Trout.

“I’m used to being able to go from the control room straight into the operating facility, to see what is happening and, and what needs to change. We can’t do that as well now. So we rely on RedEye to help, as well as a lot of team calls to the site.”

Streamlined operations, reduced operational costs

Since implementing RedEye, WestSide also reports substantial operational cost savings in many areas. WestSide estimates that its digital transformation project with RedEye and the associated business process changes are resulting in an estimated 16% saving from their engineering budget every year.

“Reduced search time for information is the biggest contributor. Based on 40 people in engineering doing at least one and a bit searches a day, and that taking hours each time they’re looking for something, the associated costs really add up. By bringing that down from hours to seconds, we’re saving 12.5% in engineering time and costs, which is really significant” said Rob Trout.

WestSide is also a saving of 1% of their annual engineering costs, by not having to recreate lost documents, and saving 3% in engineering time by reducing travel time to sites.

With an eye on the future, WestSide is exploring integrating its core engineering asset data and drawings in RedEye, with other corporate systems. Rob Trout noted that having a centralized store of information will make many future digital initiatives possible.

What we’ve built effectively is an accurate digital twin, albeit mostly two dimensional, of what we have running in our facilities. I can go in there and tell you how most of our facilities work, how they’re connected, how they’re controlled, how they should be operated, using that digital twin.
— Rob Trout
    Digital Transformation Leader, WestSide