Oil and gas Superintendents manage the performance and compliance of oilfield operations and guide the work of multiple foremen. That’s a lot of assets and a lot of people to keep on track while factoring in shifting corporate priorities, production trends, chemical rates, evolving safety and compliance regulations, and maintenance surprises.
Most Supers would admit that sometimes they are flying a little blind, drawing on experience as much as data to guide foremen. Few producers have a central source of operations data usefully analyzed to guide decisions for high-performance operations and to operate by exception. But what if you did?
How Superintendents can use software to improve oil and gas operations
While a lot of oilfield software is focused on monitoring or controlling machinery and equipment, software can also equip Superintendents with the essential abilities to:
- Automate operations activity and scheduling.
- Make operations strong and consistent across assets.
- Empower foremen to do higher value activities.
- Get visibility on foreman performance.
The EZ Ops team has more than a 100 years of collective experience in oil and gas operations and we developed technology to help us predictably get more performance out of assets by equipping foremen and field teams to do their best work.
Let’s dig into how this helps operations Superintendents.
1. Create an operations backbone of automated activity and scheduling, with best practices baked in.
It’s common for operations to take on a culture of knee jerk reactions. There’s an issue. The Super calls on foremen to find out what happened, why, and what shouldn’t happen again. Then there are new processes established to prevent a repeat event, and lots of time goes into micromanaging that until the next issue or new company priority consumes attention.
Effective oil and gas operations take ideal processes to achieve company goals for optimal production, cost management, compliance and safety, and reporting and automate them into one schedule that forms the backbone of operations. The software recognizes that no human can retain all the micro lessons, and builds them into automated best practices to free the team’s focus to observe and resolve more complex issues.
2. Use the same operations backbone across assets for consistently strong operational performance.
Many producers have star operators or star assets. They can achieve high performance – just can’t scale it. Especially with experienced operators retiring at a greater and greater rate, Superintendents need a way to support junior hires and raise operations performance across all assets.
With field operations management software, Supers can take what’s proven effective at one field, turn those processes into an operations backbone of automated activity and scheduling and equip teams in other areas to do their best work. At the same time, you’re standardizing strong compliance management across the company.
3. Empower foremen to do higher value activities.
Talk with most foremen and they’ll say if they just had time to pull up above the mundane details of the day, they know there are opportunities to improve performance. With operations technology automating routine activities and scheduling, those foreman can win back time to optimize performance. And for Supers that means less babysitting and discussion of basic tasks, and refocusing management effort on high value activity.
4. Get visibility on foreman performance.
For Supers to prove the worth of the ops team they need to show who’s performing, what operations activity is completed, what’s not done, and how foremen are adhering to compliance and safety processes. Operations software puts this knowledge in the Superintendent’s hand to demonstrate team performance – and gives visibility to head office, to see operations achievements not just issues
Not all operations software is created equal
Beyond the capabilities we’ve discussed, when assessing software ask about how the technology makes communication and closing the loop easier across the operations team? EZ Ops provides real-time updates and alerts across entire teams to ensure targets are being met, and delivers automated reporting.
In six weeks of active use, EZ Ops delivers key performance gains for Superintendents and their companies:
- Higher value work becomes the focus – Foreman and field teams spend less time on mundane daily tasks and paperwork, and more time on high-value priorities.
- Compliance issues are minimized – Effective monitoring is automated to ensure that repeat problems and failures don’t occur.
- Strong operations processes stick – Instead of knee jerk fixes with short-term gains, entire operations see improvements in productivity, reduced OPEX and strong ESG.
- Activities no longer fall through the cracks – there’s less operator risk with scheduling automated, less stress, and more peace of mind at head office.
- Faster resolution of issues – Superintendents report more rapid resolution of issues and fewer occur.
Learn how EZ Ops can help you improve operations
EZ Ops’ software provides the necessary backbone to make ops activity consistent and strong across your company. We work with Canada’s most admired and ambitious oil and gas producers. Our software is built by operators for operators we are proud to have a record of 100% adoption in the field.
Contact us to learn more about how EZ Ops can help you start operating by exception in just weeks.
About Patrick Herren, Director of Customer Experience
Pat’s been operating numerous assets around Alberta for the past decade and knows firsthand the demands of the job working in the oil patch as a former production operator.
Pat leads our on-boarding and training team, providing responsive helpful service that has earned EZ Ops a 100% adoption track record in the field.
