W&T Offshore Drills Into Asset Integrity with CHAMPS CMMS/EAM

As an independent oil and natural gas producer with operations offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore in both the Permian Basin of West Texas and in East Texas, W&T Offshore, Inc. understands the importance of asset integrity. Maintaining assets is important, but even more critical when they reside on drilling platforms spread throughout the Gulf of Mexico. W&T Offshore has to ensure that uptime levels remain consistently high at all times for their operating assets. Planning and scheduling maintenance activities must coincide precisely with work schedules and available resources. This includes the company's Matterhorn deepwater oil and gas drilling platform — the largest of its kind ever constructed — which operates 30 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. In all, 72 offshore fields have to be proactively maintained in order to meet daily production goals. Not only is maintenance a necessity, it is a regulatory mandate that stipulates scheduled maintenance for essential operating equipment. In a business where production is measured in barrels per day and cubic feet of natural gas output, any shortages due to missteps from downtime translates into performance and revenue losses.

When W&T Offshore acquired additional fields and a gas processing plant, the company made the decision to standardize on a single asset management and maintenance management system. Legacy systems obtained through the acquisitions proved to be inadequate in the areas of technology and functionality — especially for common tasks such as equipment searches. W&T Offshore evaluated the CHAMPS CMMS/EAM already in place at two of the company's platforms and quickly determined that the system would work well for additional locations. A decision was then confirmed to migrate all sites and locations to the CHAMPS maintenance software solution.

Seamless Implementation and Data Migration

The implementation effort needed to be a smooth process without any glitches. To meet that objective, the master equipment list structure was revised and a data conversion plan was developed to pull information from the legacy systems to CHAMPS. Because government regulations mandate that all critical equipment is identified and properly maintained, W&T Offshore personnel wrote equipment definitions while those from CHAMPS worked on developing data migration plans. One of the legacy systems was SAP which required bringing over equipment and preventive maintenance data to CHAMPS. With the data loading programs in place, the conversion worked seamlessly and was accomplished without any issues.

An initial training session led by CHAMPS provided a system overview for supervisors and engineers. Then, classroom sessions led by W&T Offshore gave users a more in-depth look into the maintenance system and how it operates, including work order and preventive maintenance examples. The CHAMPS technical support team developed a user guide which documented how the system is used specifically during W&T Offshore's two week platform work periods known as 'hitches'. This was to help reinforce the initial implementation and training sessions provided for the users.

Increased Run Time with Downtime Prevention

With the maintenance system in place, 225 W&T Offshore personnel across 32 sites depend on it for work management and preventive maintenance. The key is prevention of equipment downtime and failures. This includes the critical operating equipment associated with platforms and rigs such as compressors, rotating equipment, turbines, sumps, pipeline pumps, and similar assets. Planners and schedulers use the system for work assignments including all tasks, schedules, and locations where work needs to be performed. Each week, the group meets to review the scheduled work to determine if any adjustments need to be made and to manage resources.

System reports provide accurate job and schedule statuses which let supervisors always know what their work loads look like at any time. These have proven to be especially useful for the 14 day work hitches. Work order reports specific to a hitch are generated and reviewed to ensure all assignments have been properly made. The reports also quickly indicate backlog statuses and which jobs have been completed.

Looking Ahead for Opportunities

Future plans for the CHAMPS system include expanded use of the software solution's functionality for deeper asset management and preventive maintenance management. Additional system features will be pursued that relate to more extensive equipment management with involvement from a broader user base throughout the company.