FutureOn Insights

Oil & Gas Isn't Behind - it's Just Not Connected Yet.

Digital transformation isn’t just about replacing old tools. It’s about shifting the way we work and the approaches we take. Just as AutoCAD took years to replace paper drafting, digital twins face similar inertia, especially in oil and gas.

Other advanced industries have been more bullish with adoption; automotive, aerospace and manufacturing in particular have seen heavy investment in digital twins, and adoption is now also surging in healthcare, logistics and smart cities.

Oil and gas has always been slightly more conservative in adopting new technologies, and understandably so; safety risks, the high cost of failure, long asset lifecycles and our deeply ingrained risk-averse culture. There’s a balance to be struck between chasing the efficiencies of new technologies and maintaining a healthy dose of caution and skepticism as they’re implemented. 


Oil & Gas Isn't Behind - it's Just Not Connected Yet.

March 9, 2026

Authored by


Roman Gautreaux

Director of Customer Success, FutureOn

What’s in this article:

Maintaining the best of the past

The analog systems that the oil and gas industry is built on shouldn’t be dismissed, they should be respected. We must maintain the best of older systems, while moving the industry meaningfully forward.  

Projects today demand faster, safer, more efficient and more connected ways of working. We’re drowning in information but yearning for usable data.  Valuable time and precious context are lost at handovers. Disconnected systems lead to under evidenced decisions.

FieldTwin offers a model for this shift. It doesn’t replace everything, but it does offer the benefits of tying it all together. Centralizing, standardizing and streamlining data from disparate tools, so we can put it to use to drive even better outcomes.

FieldTwin connects people, tools, and decisions across the full project lifecycle. And with FieldTwin Intelligence, teams can ask their project anything and get instant answers from decades of data; ensuring no decision, insight or inspection ever goes unused. 

Connecting the best of your tools

Specialized solutions should continue to serve their own important roles. The goal should be to incrementally connect these systems in service of smoother workflows and better data sharing.

Nobody wants to throw out the tools they know and trust. CAD, GIS, spreadsheets; they're the backbone of your work. The real problem isn’t the tools themselves, it’s the constant jumping between them, trying to make one system play nicely with another.  

FieldTwin has been developed to be completely configurable; so that instead of replacing what works - we can connect it. Imagine a workspace where your CAD drawings, GIS layers, 3D models, spreadsheets and project metadata actually talk to each other. No more version mismatches or duplication. Just one connected environment that lets you design, iterate and share.

Keep the tools you most trust; just make them work together. 

Connecting the past to the future

FieldTwin is designed to preserve knowledge across entire project lifecycles, from design to installation to operation to decommissioning. By mapping and storing rationales and pertinent information at key gateways and attached to specific assets; it doesn’t matter how far along the project lifecycle a user is - they can quickly understand why certain decisions were made, and in turn, make better, more informed decisions themselves.

Ultimately, FieldTwin ensures that knowledge doesn’t get lost as teams evolve or projects move from one phase to the next. Critical decisions, context and reasoning flow directly to future teams, so when staff or contractors change, corporate memory remains intact. 

Connecting people across projects

Engineering teams are juggling countless tools, workflows and deadlines, hunting for project data across disconnected systems. As one of our customers recently put it: 'Every single department has their own files and approvals.'

It's understandable, of course. Majors are complex, mature businesses - grown organically and through acquisition - streamlining diverse teams and disciplines isn't straightforward.  

Each organization is different, and from the strategic vision to the granular detail, digital integration looks different for everyone. That's why FieldTwin has been built to be entirely configurable. Working with what you've already got, and the stakeholders who are already involved, to provide an integrated, visual workspace. One platform where engineers, operators and leaders can work together in real time, from concept through to decommissioning.

Learn more about FieldTwin, and the capabilities we’re building to support our industry’s digital future. 

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