Traditional Acceptance procedures for drilling and production assets are equipment centric, and typically focus on structural integrity and electro-mechanical functionality of individual machines. In most cases, the control systems responsible for the safe and effective operation of the integrated equipment system are given only cursory attention. This gap in the acceptance procedure greatly increases subsequent risk, operational and safety issues.
Athens Group’s Asset Acceptance Services recognize that the asset is an integrated machine, not just a collection of individual machines. Our methods are rooted in an understanding that the evaluation of the safety and reliability of an asset must be a systems engineering effort that encompasses the direct relationship among the end user requirements, the integrated controls and equipment system capability.
The Athens Group Systems Engineering Methodology for Asset Acceptance consists of five steps:
1. Identification of requirements and key performance indicators (KPIs)
2. Evaluation of the structural and electro-mechanical machine capability
3. Evaluation of the controls software capability
4. Evaluation of the integrated systems capability
5. Evaluation of the crew competency management process
These steps follow a natural system oriented flow, building on each other. Other Asset Acceptance processes fall short when they fail to properly execute one or more of these steps. Skipping one or more steps results in a much lower confidence in the ability of the asset and crew to meet expectations for safety and performance.
For example, improper execution of step (1), the identification of requirements and KPIs, which systems engineering and test best practices consider to be one of the most important activities, is a primary cause of failure in acceptance programs. Requirements define the metrics against which the asset will be evaluated for acceptance. KPIs represent the metrics against which the ongoing asset operational performance will be evaluated. KPIs must be rooted in the requirements. This link between asset evaluation requirements and asset operational KPIs is often overlooked and the result is an asset that does not meet operational requirements because it was accepted according to different criteria.
KPIs methods typically fall short in three areas:
- They are not rooted in validated acceptance requirements.
- They start with a list of what to measure, without first defining why that measurement is important.
- They fail to consider how the measurement will be accomplished.
Athens Group can customize the delivery of Asset Acceptance services to meet your exact needs:
- Development of systems engineering based asset acceptance procedures and processes that can be integrated into your QMS, vendor communications and acceptance programs
- Assessment and evaluation of existing asset acceptance programs
- Development and review of asset acceptance test plans
- Third party witnessing and verification of asset acceptance programs
- Second party development and execution of asset acceptance programs
For more information, please contact us.