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Cimage Enables Improved Efficiency At
British Gas HRL

British Gas Hydrocarbon Resources Limited (HRL) is part of leading energy and essential services provider Centrica plc, operating the North and South Morecambe gas fields in the East Irish Sea. Over 400 staff and contractors work across the Morecambe operation, both offshore and onshore. The Morecambe gas field has been helping provide gas to British Gas customers since 1985 and currently supplies over 15% of the UK's peak gas demand, enough for 3 million homes to boil a kettle for 37 million years.

HRL had a legacy Logistics and Offshore Management System (LOMS) for stock control, purchasing, maintenance, document retrieval and passenger & cargo movements. LOMS was 15 years old and increasingly difficult to support therefore a decision was taken to replace LOMS with modern systems. It was decided to replace the core LOMS system with SAP™ and MAPS™ (for passenger movements) and an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) to replace the LOMS Archive module.

Finding an EDMS supplier with a long history in delivering successful solutions to the Oil & Gas industry.

The 24/7 demands of HRL demanded a robust and reliable solution to cover its offshore platforms in the East Irish Sea and plants in Barrow and Heysham. The system proposed would ultimately need the ability to control electronic & physical documentation throughout its lifecycle from conceptual design through to As Built status and beyond.

An evaluation panel consisting of HRL's Project Leader and members of Document Control & IT was created to find a suitable supplier. Thirty-five Document Management companies were identified and through a rigorous process of evaluation, Cimage was selected as the solution provider.

The Project Leader explains: "The Cimage system provided a near-total match on requirements and the company demonstrated a high degree of industry knowledge and proven experience. All agreed that the solution offered by Cimage was the strongest technical fit and the most risk free."

Cimage has been providing and supporting solutions, similar to the one required by HRL, in the Oil and Gas Industry for over 10 years. As a result of this long-standing relationship with the industry and the close working relationships that have been developed with their customers, product development has been greatly influenced by their requirements and the ever-changing demands of the Oil and Gas industry. This close relationship also ensures Cimage has a full understanding of industry requirements for document management & workflow solutions.

Replacing LOMS Archive

The LOMS Archive was used to support the archive function of the HRL. This provided a database to signpost the physical location of microfilm and hard copy technical documentation. HRL required a fully functional replacement for LOMS Archive, populated with all technical and historical LOMS Archive business records relating to offshore platforms and onshore terminal facilities.

Phase One of the EDMS Project at HRL was to implement Cimage and to migrate all LOMS Archive data (about quarter of a million document records) but initially only for records management. The project began in August 2001 and was completed by December. During the build process Cimage trained HRL at their Bracknell offices. Once the LOMS Archive Replacement System was in place HRL proposed to develop and expand the EDM system, eventually incorporating functionality such as electronic document lifecycle management, a scanning / PDF station, electronic redlining and integration with CAD systems. This was to become Phase 2 of the EDMS Project.

Phase 2 implementation began on 2nd July 2002 when a project team was assembled consisting of Cimage and HRL personnel. The core responsibility was to deliver a quality user-accepted solution to the Business within budget and on time.

'The new system went live on 15th January 2003, meeting this criteria.'

Providing lifecycle management and accessing information from offshore platforms, onshore terminals and support offices

The Cimage EDM solution at HRL is an electronic catalogue of technical documentation and related data, including document numbers, titles, disciplines, location codes, tag numbers and vendors. As well as providing rapid access to CAD, PDF, Office and TIFF files, the system manages references to the location of external documentation and allows users to place scan requests when required. The system provides lifecycle management of documentation whereby documents are checked out, modified and checked back into the system at a higher revision. The system retains all revisions permanently whilst ensuring only the latest revision is available to standard users.

Audit trails maintain records of all events, user id's, dates and times. Security and profile management ensures robust access control, by document or user profile. All document index information, version history, audit trails, user profiles and access control filters are stored in the central Cimage database, which may be queried by a third-party reporting tool to generate ad-hoc reports.

The Cimage solution consists of a central Compaq Proliant server located in Heysham and remote cache servers at Barrow-In-Furness and Offshore. The cache servers store recently accessed documents to improve performance by ensuring commonly used files are copied across the 2MB network each time they are viewed.

The architecture of the system allows users to access information from any of HRL's offshore platforms, onshore terminals or support offices. The system has a community of 250 named users from Barrow, Heysham and the offshore locations. The vast majority of users use the system only to search and view technical documentation and therefore have read-only access to the data. Heavy use of the system is made by Drawing Office and Archive Administration who are responsible for indexing, document modifications and editing data.

Accessing Electronic documents in seconds

Cimage implemented Kofax Ascent™ Capture 5 software to provide an integrated scanning and indexing station. Documents can be scanned individually or in bulk and the solution was also configured to provide integrated PDF rendition and editing software.

The system now contains a broad array of technical documentation which includes:

• Cable / junction box schedules
• Cause & effects
• Change notice packages
• Commissioning dossiers
• Data sheets
• Design calculations
• Design drawings, engineering line diagrams
• Design specifications
• Fabrication dossiers
• IOM manuals
• Isometrics
• Maintenance manuals
• Operating manuals
• P & ID's (ELD)
• Studies & reports
• Vendor data dossiers
• Vendor drawings

As part of the initial migration from LOMS to Cimage, 250,000 document master records were indexed into the Cimage EDMS. Over 3 million equipment and vendor records were imported to aid document retrieval. HRL were tasked with data cleansing prior to import into the EDMS. Cimage then imported the data into EDMS and reported any errors.

Currently, only 10% of the document records feature electronic documents though a five-year plan is in place to replace the microfilm system in its entirety. The majority of documents are MicroStation™ and AutoCAD™ files, though increasing numbers of PDF and TIFF files are being prepared for loading.

HRL's Project Leader recognised the challenge, "the most difficult aspect of the project was the data migration phase, which is still in its infancy. Fifteen years worth of legacy data had to be populated and a bulk-scanning project was required to capture hard copy documentation electronically. However, electronic documents are now accessed in seconds."

Benefits of installed Cimage Solution

The Cimage system provides an up to date remote repository of all technical and general documentation that is required to safely and efficiently operate and maintain the HRL assets in Barrow and offshore.

HRL has access to information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Users are able to locate more relevant information in a faster manner than before. Relationships between different types of information allow users to become more knowledgeable about information that exists to support their current work activities.

A full audit history of all changes provides the security required to satisfy internal audit and external regulators. Reducing the need to print and distribute paper around the organisation has shortened Handovers and internal distribution cycles.

The new system features a user-friendly front-end with a standard Windows appearance and drop- down description menus and as such, the impact has been minimal in terms of training and adjustment periods.

The Cimage solution provides the scalability to support future increases in the users and the ability for HRL to extend the usage of the system to new application areas and departments in the future.

HRL's Project Leader states that "a significant number of man hours are now being saved in retrieving information. Users have expressed a positive attitude towards the system, which is assisting their work in terms of safety and productivity alike."

"Cimage delivered a system, which exceeded the expectations of its users, within budget."

For the future, it is anticipated that HRL will be in a position to expand the system in-house, both in terms of content and application. The EDMS shall be expanded to replace several bespoke databases and manual document systems. Wider technical documentation will be considered such as Process Operator Guides, certification and reports.

For more information about Cimage Oil and Gas solutions, please visit http://www.cimageoilandgas.com.

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