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At the ARC Advisory Group’s Industry Forum this year, Andy Young, Director of Remote Operations, with Pioneer Energy presented on the Role of Process Control at his company. Pioneer Energy is a relatively new entity, based in Colorado. It is a service provider and original equipment manufacturer that develops and deploys new technology to help solve gas processing challenges on the oilfield. Its business revolves around mobile gas processing trailers that the company operates remotely.
Due to its youth, the company enjoyed the advantage of being able to build an organization without the baggage of organizational history. Pioneer integrated seemingly disparate Design, Fabrication, Process Control and Operations departments to create more collaborative working relationships. to the organization’s relatively small size, there is a greater need for high-quality people. Pioneer doesn’t have an IT department so this role needed to be filled by the existing employees, which means the employees must possess a wider range of skills. The company also leverages outsourced resources for specialized expertise and extra help.
On the technology side, Mr. Young spoke about selecting the best tool for the job, rather than the best platform. He used the term “atomicity” to describe this. Due to the geographic dispersion of equipment, the company placed a high priority on network connectivity. All technologies must support remote operations. Networking, however, only matters if the “glue” is in place in the form of familiar and flexible protocol(s) for communications. This allows personnel to view the assets from a single view and reduces complexity.
As Peter Drucker famously stated, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” What is your company culture? Is your corporate culture restraining your organization from real solutions to the process control dilemma? What would your organization look like if you started from scratch