Long before offshore asset managers – and the contractors who support them – begin to manage pressure in the well, they must first confront the pressures they face in the office.
Oil price volatility. Uncertain commitment to offshore investment. Ever- escalating pressure to lower costs – with the expectation to simultaneously raise production.
On the downhill receiving-end of this cost-containment pressure are contractors, starting from the moment the bidding process begins.
Historically, operators funded pre-FEED (front end engineering design) and concept work since there were many more new fields and a limited number of suppliers.
Today, however, operators expect offshore engineering companies to provide more extensive 3D subsea modeling concepts and images at no charge to the operator before they will award a project.
This new beauty contest requires bidders to showcase their engineering skills. Any misstep on the runway greatly reduces the chances of winning the project.
Beyond simply recognizing this current reality, McDermott, a Houston-based provider of integrated engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) services for upstream field developments worldwide, decided to seize the opportunity to gain first-mover advantage over its competitors by embracing oilfield digitalization to control its own increasing cost burden while out-engineering competitive bidders.
But first, the forward-thinkers of McDermott would have to scale a major hurdle in their effort to digitize: well-entrenched legacy systems that proliferate and store mounds of redundant and obsolete offshore oilfield data.
Further, the inability to properly analyze McDermott’s existing data not only prohibited efficient internal work performance, but also pre-FEED product output delivered to customers. As a result, the company struggled to take home the crown in the steady stream of pageants initiated by E&P companies with offshore interests.
And then, the McDermott team discovered FutureOn and its offshore digital solution, FieldAP.
And with that discovery, the company’s future sales pipeline could be seen in a whole new, bright light.
With FutureOn’s partnership to help make FieldAP McDermott’s own game-changing advancement, the software was customized to include McDermott’s various unique assets and vessels. Specific functionality was added to help them develop new field concepts that would make the company a more competitive bidder.
Now, McDermott is able to generate many more field concepts in a much shorter time, eliminate weaker options quickly, and declare with confidence that the options being presented to the client are accurate —without the need to spend significant up-front expense on outsourced engineering firms.
But more important to the McDermott brand and its future prospects — with its newfound ability to see more possibilities and risks during the pre-FEED process and make more and better use of talent and investment — FieldAP has enabled McDermott to leap ahead of competitors who remain in neutral, all the while bemoaning the slow, old, traditional ways they continue to do business.
Beyond the bidding cycle, forward-thinking McDermott also recognizes the offshore industry is rapidly moving to unmanned platforms. Deploying FieldAP to create a digital field in the cloud allows McDermott to form a base data model (much like survey or bathymetry data) that will be used in field simulation studies, automation planning strategies and remote maintenance optimization.
And, in case you’re wondering, our friends at McDermott did indeed leverage FieldAP capabilities to beat out all the other contestants and be crowned the winning bidder, with roses in hand and a FieldAP ace up its sleeve, ready to take the future on. Ready to challenge your own organization to see more about its past-based limitations and make more of what the future holds?
Talk to us today about how FieldAP and FutureOn developers can place you far ahead of all those offshore field planning wannabes still talking about “what’s coming.”
