Business Situation

Forest Oil drills between 300 – 500 oil and gas wells every year using a contract workforce. The process of drilling a well, while repeatable, is complex and requires adherence to standard processes and safety regulations. One missed step can cost the company millions of dollars. To manage the drilling process, Forest Oil has used large cumbersome binders. As employees come and go, the chance of steps being missed or completed incorrectly increases. Forest Oil needed a simple, online method to manage and track the process.

Solution

Using Agile methodology and SharePoint Server, Avanade built a custom application called DrillSmart to track progress and status of drilling a hole for oil production. The application leverages out of the box functionality and custom code so that drilling engineers and field workers can follow a step by step process, read relevant documentation and update checklists throughout the process.

Results

The Avanade team, Drilling Department and IT Department worked closely to identify the most relevant features for the application. DrillSmart will help the drilling engineers and the field workers easily track the progress of drilling a well. As a result, best practices will be captured, steps will be completed and costly mistakes will be avoided. In addition, the amount of training and reading that field workers require will decrease. In all, the field workers will be more productive and able to shorten the overall time it takes to drill a well.