Integrated e-Operations-e-Maintenance: Applications in North Sea Offshore Assets

There is a clear growth of interests today on the development and use of e-maintenance concepts for industrial facilities. This is particularly seen in the offshore oil and gas (O&G) production environment in the North Sea in relation to a major reengineering process termed ‘integrated operations’ (IO) that began in 2004–2005 as a new development scenario for the offshore industry (OLF 2003). Major challenges to conventional operations and maintenance (O&M) practice have been seen unavoidable under this new IO initiative. Subsequently, the industry began to develop some serious interests on novel and smart solutions for O&M. The developments began in 2005 seeking long-term changes to the conventional O&M practice. The change process has been relatively slow during the 2005–2006 period, but seemingly has gathered gradual and steady pace by now. This is a large-scale change, and hence the current plan is to realize fully functional e-operations e-maintenance status by the years 2012–2015 or so. Even though the integrated e-operations and e-maintenance applications in the North Sea are still at their inception, the learning process and the state of current knowledge can be very valuable for similar efforts in the development and implementation of novel solutions in other industries and /or regions in the world.