No abstract

Collaborative Work Environments (CWEs) have been implemented in the majority of Shell’s assets. The large scale deployment was achieved through a structured programme, taking assets and projects through a standard CWE design, implementation and embedding approach. This paper provides an overview of the progress of Shell’s CWE programme. It shows its reach, the value achieved, the learnings and the response to the current low cost environment. It also looks forward to further opportunities for collaborative working in wider business areas in an oil and gas company.

Collaborative Work Environments (CWEs) have provided significant benefits to Shell in production, field management and maintenance. The CWEs enable faster and better decision making by improved communication and easier sharing of relevant information and data. Business benefits include increased production, higher equipment reliability, lower operating cost and improved HSE. Considerable learning was derived that helps future implementations and ensures sustainability.

Shell's Smart Fields programme has built elements of Intelligent Energy into the key field developments over the past ten years. Considerable value has been achieved, from new technologies, new ways of working and global implementation. In Shell, Collaborative Work Environments (CWEs) have been implemented on a large scale, mostly focusing on the production and field surveillance area and on the real time drilling monitoring. More recently, collaborative work environments have been set up to streamline field development planning. The environments have provided significant benefits to the assets, by enabling new ways of working, improved communication and faster decision making. Shell and Wipro have teamed up to establish a flexible, global, large scale implementation programme. Gradually, the programme has converged on standard solutions and designs for processes and technologies and on a lean implementation methodology. Strong focus has been placed on embedding the changes into the organisation. Enticing field teams to adopt and keep new ways of working has required some inventive methods and intensive coaching of staff at all levels.

With seven years experience, Shell has concluded that Collaborative Work Environments (CWEs) provide significant benefits in the production surveillance and field management area. As a consequence, the company has embarked on a wide scale implementation in all its major existing and new assets around the world. Many of these are now in place. The environments have enabled faster and better decision making by improved communication and easy sharing of relevant information and data. Business benefits include increased oil production, longer equipment life, improved HSE and lower operating cost. The concept of CWEs has evolved, gradually expanding from original real time monitoring centres. Currently, centres for production surveillance and field management and drilling monitoring centres are the most common. The implementation programme has evolved, converging on standard solutions and designs. Standards are now available for processes, disciplines and organisation to be involved, the required information and data, the audio visual technologies and for the physical facilities, the collaboration rooms and offices. In each asset, an assessment identifies the key aspects relevant to the asset and formulates the best collaborative solution for it. Considerable learning has been obtained in various aspects, such as improved access to global expertise, introducing standard processes and ways to sustain the solutions and the benefits.