Resources  White Papers

Selecting a SCADA System

In the last five or ten years, SCADA has become a well-known term in the energy industry as companies search for solutions to the challenges of aging personnel and equipment and a looming shortage of expertise. However, the current market for SCADA is incredibly difficult to navigate, due in large part to a lack of standardization. With no market-level pricing, costs are truly all over the map. Licensing is another challenge, with varied and confusing approaches that make side-by-side price comparisons difficult. This article outlines the challenges of navigating the current SCADA market and best-practices to choosing a SCADA provider.

Work Processes' Role in the Digital Oilfield

Many energy companies have made significant strides towards the "digital oilfield", but one critical element remains largely stuck in the past - the actual people and processes that support day-to-day field operations.
This paper addresses how automating common field processes can help companies:

• Manage field project activity with dashboards and workflows
• Give management high-level views and the ability to deal with only issues that are 'out of tolerance'
• Impact efficiency from the field to the back office
• Address the issue of retaining knowledge from the industry's aging workforce

Linking SCADA Development with Operational Needs

Information management should be a two-pronged approach: first defining what is important, and then working to capture it. All too often companies skip the first component, and focus just on capturing all the data they can-delivering an encyclopedia when the decisionmaker needs just the section of elephants. Actionable information is derived by starting with the end in mind. This article addresses how to work backwards to create reports that reflect the data that is important to management, engineers, accounting and field technicians.

Leveraging Remote Monitoring to Achieve Greener Field Operations

The energy industry's impact on the enviroment is a much-debated topic. Announcements about efforts to go "go green" are often met with skepticism from outside the industry and resistance from within the industry. The resistanceis typically bred by fears of high cost, or implementation difficulty. However, basic steps can often produce efficiencies that directly benefit the bottom line. Changing how field personal operate and integrating equipment into existing SCADA systems are two such efficiencies.

The Role of a Project Execution Plan in the SCADA Project Management Process

Project management processess are a foundational element to SCADA system implementation. Approaching SCADA system development and implementation with a work process leads to on-time, on-budget project completions, whether small field or large scale implementations. This article addresses a 'best practices' approach to defining the scope of work.