- Operational Assurance
Why operational assurance starts long before the report.
When I wrote about EWIPS a few months ago, I mainly focused on well integrity and how the system supports organisations in managing and demonstrating the integrity status of their wells.
Since then, an important next step has taken place. Eraze IT and Gorilla IT have launched the full AssuriCore platform, bringing eWIPS together with other HSEQ modules in one connected environment.
For me, that raises a broader point about assurance.
In daily operations, the value is not just in reporting. The value is knowing that the right actions, checks and approvals happen at the right time. Compliance is not something that is automatically proven at the end of the month. It is the result of the way people work every day.
- By Coen Rodenboog
Assurance during daily operations.
In my former daily operations, different systems supported different parts of that process.
During drilling and well intervention activities, EWCAT provided the assurance that the required process-safety controls were in place. Once the permanent well setup was established, EWIPS became the basis for monitoring well integrity throughout the life of the well. It provided the people involved with a clear view of the integrity status and the evidence required to demonstrate it.
When changes or deviations occurred, EMOC helped guide the Management of Change process. This ensured that changes were properly assessed before implementation and that the required actions were followed through.
These are different HSEQ processes, but operationally they are closely connected.
The challenge is often between the processes.
In the past, information was not always shared automatically between the tools supporting these processes.
That meant information had to be copied or transferred manually. Apart from taking additional time, every manual handover creates another opportunity for information to be missed, copied incorrectly or become outdated.
This is where I see an important benefit of AssuriCore.
By connecting the different modules and the information behind them, the platform helps reduce duplication and creates greater consistency between related HSEQ processes. The individual process still matters, but so does what happens before and after it.
Connecting actions as well as information.
The same principle applies beyond well operations.
Actions can come from many different sources. A Management of Change process can generate follow-up actions, but so can HAZOPs, HAZIDs, audits and other HSEQ activities. These actions need ownership, clear timelines and evidence that they have actually been completed.
The Action Tracker within AssuriCore is intended to support that by bringing important actions together in one place, rather than allowing them to remain spread across separate tools, files or local systems.
The importance grows with complexity.
I can see particular value for larger organisations and organisations operating across different locations.
As the span of control increases, maintaining oversight of compliance and assurance becomes more difficult. Information may sit in different systems, on different servers or on local computers. At the same time, people change roles and responsibilities move.
That increases the risk of data errors, missed actions and reporting mistakes.
Connecting processes and using a consistent source of information does not remove the need for good operational discipline. But it can make that discipline much easier to maintain and much easier to demonstrate.
For me, that is the real value of AssuriCore.
It is not simply about reporting what happened. It is about connecting data, processes and responsibilities so people can do the right work, in the right way, at the right time, with the evidence available to demonstrate it afterwards.
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