Add Energy Aim’s High With Digital Transformation Technology

As the global oil and gas industry seeks every more efficient operating methods, optimising asset performance and maintenance programmes while reducing risk is a priority.

Aberdeen-based, Add Energy Asset Integrity and Maintenance (AIM), has developed a thriving technology division to deliver the benefits of digitalisation to the integrity and maintenance sector. Here, Peter Adam, Add Energy AIM’s Executive Vice President, discusses their four components of building an innovative offering.

The digital transformation of the energy industry has brought clear opportunities for forward-thinking companies to both benefit from and develop a digital offering. Evolving and modernising our offering was critical to ensuring we continue to be at the forefront of our specialism – we believe this technology lead is what will deliver our business goals over the next 10 years.

Moving from a traditional consultancy to one with next-generation technology at its core has not happened overnight. It’s been part of a long-term strategy that has focused on four key strands.

Expertise

Regardless of whether we’re providing traditional consultancy services or developing new software, acting from a position of knowledge is crucial and we have invested heavily to ensure we have the right blend of people with the right expertise. We now have one of the largest team of asset and maintenance specialists in the world and support super majors.

We don’t expect everyone to know everything. Our subject matter experts provide guidance based on their in-field experience. They work alongside our data scientists, lead analysts, trainers and facilitators.

More generally, our expertise of working with many of the world’s major operators and large service companies as well as being active in other sectors has enabled us to develop an in-depth understanding of the industry’s asset integrity and maintenance challenges while drawing on lessons learned from other industries. This enables us to address even the most complex problems with confidence and ensure our technology is tailored to provide the most effective solutions.

People

We may be evolving to become a technology-led company, but it’s driven by our people. We are who we are because of our people – it’s they who have developed our cutting-edge solutions andit’s their commitment to pushing the envelope that has seen Add Energy achieve unprecedented growth over the last three years.

Culture

Developing a strong and consistent culture across our global team has been central to fostering innovative ideas and solutions. Having a senior team who leads by example is fundamental to developing that culture.

As a company we have always been hugely resilient and innovative – these are values that all our people live by. We thrive on doing the jobs that other people pass up as being too difficult. Hiring bright minds and letting people know it’s OK to fail provided they learn from that has been a key part of building our technology arm.

Relationships

Forging mutually beneficial relationships with both our clients and industry peers is the cornerstone of Add Energy’s growth. An unwavering duty of care to our clients and collaborations with companies who are already looking ahead to where they want to be in the next decade have been founding principles.

As our clients have succeeded and grow, we in turn expand the support we provide to them – often partnering to problem solve in new areas. This has allowed us to expand into new areas of expertise.

One of the relationships I’m most proud of is our award-winning partnership with the University of Salford, which through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership programme saw us work with their students to develop and launch our Aim-Hi™ solution which provides real-time visualisation and data insights into asset performance, maintenance and risk.

AN INNOVATIVE SOLUTION TO RISK AND PERFORMANCE

Aim-Hi is a cloud-based tool that provides real-time visualisation and data insights into asset performance, maintenance and risk across the energy and utility sectors.

The software, which is the culmination of a five-year partnership between Add Energy AIM and the University of Salford, has already been deployed on three assets including a power generation plant, a mining and metals business and a gas processing terminal, where it has helped maintenance teams to save time and cost by expediting the traditionally complex and lengthy process of preparing KPI data manually, reduced corrective maintenance by 8% and halved the amount of time spent on emergency work.

In addition to providing greater transparency around key performance indicators, Aim-Hi™ also enables users to understand why assets are performing as they are and make informed decisions based on reliable, up to date data.

It focuses on five core areas of compliance analysis including preventative maintenance, corrective maintenance, emergency maintenance, scheduled maintenance and planned vs unplanned maintenance compliance.

The approach to the design and utilisation of the software was to enable users to get what they need in no more than three clicks:

• With no clicks, users can see an overview of how they are performing
• With 1 click, users can discover more about a single KPI, including why they are not hitting their target
• And with 2 clicks, users can dig even deeper, and identify specifically what is causing the issue.

Aloysius Peter, Business Solutions Architect at Uniper Energy said: “Aim-Hi™ not only tells you how you are performing against your KPI’s relating to maintenance but, more importantly, it tells you the why behind them.

“Gaining access to such insights at the click of a button, enables business to be more efficient by focusing on fixing issues, rather than manipulating data and spending excessive time investigating the reasons behind underperformance.”

Ultimately, Aim-Hi™ provides asset managers with the top critical issues they need to go after, with specific data points that back it up.