Case studies

Project: Planned and routine maintenance and corrective work, including the maintenance of safety equipment, fire and gas equipment, instrument equipment and high voltage equipment, as well as lighting and low voltage electrical maintenance including rope access solutions

Client: BP

Location: Northern North Sea, UK

Petrofac manages planned and corrective maintenance on all of BP’s offshore UK North Sea assets. From the Eastern Trough Area Project (ETAP) – one of the most commercially complex North Sea oil and gas developments of the last 20 years – to the Clair Ridge, one of the largest recent investments in the UK.

Following the successful TUPE transfer of over 100 offshore personnel in 2009, we reviewed and then reduced the number of individual vendors on the contract, immediately introducing cost-savings for BP.

We have since established a self-managed, onshore support team located within BP’s offices to support core maintenance services. While maintaining a permanent presence on BP’s platforms, we deploy multiple offshore equipment maintenance campaign teams that are rope access qualified to handle high volume, low complexity, electrical and lighting and spring hanger maintenance work.

Through this delivery model we continue to deliver strong safety performance and excellent productivity on BP’s assets. In 2019, our team further enhanced offshore productivity through the introduction of digital technologies.

Working closely with BP, we combined the use of Digital Twin and Connected Worker technologies with our proprietary software BuildME™, to fully digitalise our execution processes. On the Operator’s Clair Ridge platform, this work has achieved significant productivity gains compared to industry standards.

In April 2020, we were awarded a three-year extension to the existing maintenance contract, plus a new four-year metering contract that covers both on and offshore consulting and support services.

Key facts

• The Petrofac maintenance team includes more than 75 offshore technicians
• We have improved scheduling and increased productivity by ensuring all work scopes are accurately planned and co-ordinated and consistently deliver more than nine productive hours per day
• We have proven our ability to modernise traditionally time-intensive planning, execution and reporting processes by automating and integrating them through digital technology
• A process to continually review planned maintenance routines ensures accurate estimated hours and job content for all work
• Petrofac’s forward and future planning programmes provide continuous improvements to scheduling and workflows
• We work with key performance indicators (KPIs) to provide a streamlined and focused work programme for BP

Nick Shorten, Managing Director, Petrofac Engineering and Production Services, West, said:

We are proud to build on our long-standing relationship with BP, who have been an early adopter of our digital execution processes. We look forward to building on the gains made through this approach and establishing our metering services provision.