Introduction
In a recent thought leadership piece, our Head of Innovation, Bill Ballew discussed how digital tools serve as tool for collaboration to help organizations achieve operational synergy by improving collaboration and addressing risk management. As we delve into this piece on operational synergy within a wider team, it's important to also consider the challenges posed by digital disillusionment, a concept we've explored in depth in another article.
Since the advent of rudimentary machines up until the creation of the most complex AI, people have been concerned that they will be replaced in a variety of ways; after all, the lever had the strength of ten workers. We discover, however, that the human in the loop cannot be replaced. For instance, the lever never developed creative problem-solving skills.
The lever is still the same as it was two thousand years ago since it did not advance technologically on its own. Levers cannot cooperate to find solutions to issues. Levers are useless without a person pulling them, and only a person can see where a lever needs to be positioned and how much force to apply. Only humans can work together to accomplish great things, and they do this by pulling levers in a society that increasingly depends on individuals who use technology in collaborative and innovative ways.
Amplifying Human Potential
Levers as Force Multipliers: The Parallel Role of R2S
In a more technical sense, levers served as "force multipliers" for humans, a tool that, when utilized as intended, allowed the same number of humans achieve more lifting power. Hence the phrase "many hands make light work" applies, and the lever served as an inanimate set of "hands" by helping the human lift a heavy object while also putting the human farther away from the object to lower the risk of the human being crushed under it. As a result, a synergistic benefit was obtained, and it is likely that the idea of risk management was also created. Our digital twin application, R2S, functions similarly to a lever in your software toolbox, that is, as a force-multiplying tool.
The Role of R2S as a Lever
With R2S, we can find the same kind of leverage, numerous people can cooperate across a single "lever" at a greater distance from the risk and with less expenditure and effort at any time. Not only can we “work smarter, not harder”, but we can also work in a less risky way that enables us all to go home to our families at the end of the day while also collaborating with other individuals who no longer need to face the strain, expense, and climate-damaging aspects of lengthy travel to offer quick expertise and opinion on a project. This kind of collaboration with the R2S digital twin application increases onshore involvement, lowers travel costs, and enables users make the best use of the available bed space on the asset.
In recent times, technologies like R2S function as force multipliers, akin to levers, with focus on collaboration and risk mitigation. One of the true values of R2S is in its capacity to unite geographically dispersed teams across a shared digital platform, transcending traditional barriers of location, time, and risk. This synergy empowers individuals to work smarter, enhancing productivity while ensuring safety and efficiency.
Participation & Collaboration
How does R2S promote more participation and collaboration?
R2S democratizes access with its limitless usership, enabling personnel across roles and hierarchies engage seamlessly, transcending physical constraints. This means that anyone with an R2S account whether they are employees, contractors, subcontractors, or any other authorized party can use R2S from anywhere there is internet connectivity, at any time of day or night, and instantly transfer themselves to the asset. The unlimited user model promotes a culture of operational excellence among all parties involved by increasing access for everyone in a cost-effective, efficient, and most importantly, safe manner.
Collaboration:
As a result, operators can use virtual access to have more individuals working on the asset in functional areas, than bed space restrictions would typically permit and enabling more people than risk management could possibly authorize to be on board the asset. Operators can easily have 1000 people working for days at a time on an asset with only 100 beds, and those people can participate from around the globe at no additional expense. Therefore, promoting cross-functional collaboration and reducing the need for extensive travel, minimizing carbon footprint and overhead cost.
This model transcends bed space limitations, enabling simultaneous participation of a thousand individuals in a space that traditionally accommodates a fraction.
Innovative Use Cases
Use Cases Demonstrate R2S's Impact on Asset Management Operation and Collaborative Performance
One major IOC operating off the coast of western Africa was able to seamlessly shift toward a more optimized approach to asset management while directing personnel to focus on TAR project delivery through increased collaboration with onshore counterparts. Bringing processes back online just two days earlier than anticipated put the project around $5 million ahead of budget. Giving visibility to the wider team, both onshore and offshore, resulted in huge savings and a strong desire to repeat that performance in subsequent campaigns.
Likewise, a decommissioning client operating in the Gulf of Mexico took advantage of R2S’s self-capture kit and unlimited data ingestion model to photograph their own asset, then layered in third-party laser scan data to not only ensure they had the most up-to-date model, but to also improve R2S’s measurement tool accuracy during the planning phase for dismantling the asset. Incorporating this amount of data into a one-stop shop promoted increased collaboration between engineering and non-engineering functions, with the only added cost being the two hours it took for one person wearing a helmet cam to walk the asset – a cost that was more than offset as soon as the first person opened the model onshore and used it for planning.
Summary
Cost savings
The above examples are just some ways our clients have used R2S creatively and collaboratively to develop the ‘force multipliers’ discussed earlier, all of which have resulted in millions of dollars’ worth of cost-savings without losing a single job – much like the invention of the lever did not translate to having fewer workers on-site, but rather more workers with more levers moving more heavy stones, bringing projects in under budget and earlier than anticipated. All of this was not made possible by the lever per se, but by the change in practices using the lever brought into the larger picture for the asset in question, and the way it changed how people collaborated to achieve great things by focusing on the asset and not on the individual stone.
Summary
The historical analogy of the lever resonates in our technological age, underscoring the beneficial relationship between tools and human potential. R2S application serves as a modern lever that enables collaboration and risk management. The saying that technology adds value by complementing rather than replacing human intellect still holds true as this synergy is the true essence of growth.