Oil & Gas Producer TAQA North Chooses InterPro’s EZMaxMobile To Identify and Correct Hazardous Conditions in the Moment
Safety incident reporting increased 100 percent within one month
“The workforce truly saw this as a significant benefit to their work environment and toolset. TAQA North has a very solid Health and Safety culture and offering this mobility solution reinforces this culture and demonstrates the support given to the remote field staff.” – Bill McCagherty, Manager, IT at TAQA North
At a glance
Company:
Objectives:
Given the extensive, remote locations of their operations, TAQA North required a mobile solution to complement the main Maximo platform upon which the HSSE solution would be built. The mobile solution needed to:
- Have an offline, disconnected mode, since many of the TAQA North locations are out of cell range.
- Be seamless with Maximo by utilizing the Maximo logic and business rules as much as possible, eliminating a requirement to maintain two development platforms.
- Have a simple, easy to use app interface.
- Be available on all phone/tablet platforms: iOS, Android, and Windows.
- Increase the HSSE reporting KPIs metrics which tie to overall corporate performance.
- Capture the moment in the moment.
Results:
- In the first month of using EZMaxMobile, reporting of safety opportunities was up 100% from the previous month.
- Field staff now have the ability to identify and correct hazardous conditions in the moment.
- More than 65% of all HSSE entries have been entered into Maximo via EZMaxMobile since its launch.
Challenge
TAQA North is a top 15 oil and gas producer in Western Canada. TAQA North’s commitment to safety culture is one of its core values. The company’s original Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) tracking software was nearing its end of life and the organization decided it was time to switch software and to add a mobile component to support HSSE capabilities throughout TAQA North’s extensive geographic areas and remote locations.
Many of TAQA North’s remote locations do not have any cellular coverage and with the mandate of capturing the moment in the moment, the company wanted to find a mobile solution that would work online or offline (with fail-safe data synchronization once a device is back on a network) and instantaneously update Maximo.
Solution
TAQA North evaluated a number of mobility solutions focusing on an intuitive interface, seamless integration, technical support and offline capabilities as the main selection criteria. The TAQA North team learned about InterPro during a Maximo User Group event. InterPro Solutions offers a suite of Maximo mobile apps built exclusively for Maximo that O&M teams need to do their jobs efficiently and effectively without the cost, complexity and service impacts of available alternatives. InterPro’s EZMaxMobile provides companies with a mobile app that extends and enhances the capabilities of Maximo to technicians in the field — both online and offline.
TAQA North went live with Maximo and EZMaxMobile in November 2019. “InterPro’s knowledgeable technical staff made quick work of the development which was a fraction of the cost of TAQA’s initial Maximo build,” notes Bill McCagherty, Manager, IT at TAQA North.
The project team took extra effort to prepare the organization for change with regular communication, executive endorsement, and provided sneak peeks of the software. Training was both online and face-to-face, resulting in more than 200 people getting trained in the first week.
Results/Benefits
The intent of all HSSE systems is to enable workers to proactively identify, report and correct hazardous condition and acts. With EZMaxMobile now in place, TAQA North is able to prevent hazardous situations from becoming a near miss or incident. And in the event that a technician experiences an incident or near miss, they now have the ability to “capture the moment in the moment.” In the first month of using EZMaxMobile, reporting of safety opportunities was up 100% from the previous month. More than 65% of all HSSE entries have been entered into Maximo via EZMaxMobile since its launch.
The benefit of EZMaxMobile allows TAQA North’s workforce to use their device of preference, including Apple, Android and Windows phones and tablets. Online/ offline mode allows users to access their data at any time, regardless of whether there is an internet connection. EZMaxMobile’s offline mode is made possible with its patented sync technology that allows for lightning-fast, no-fail transfers of large amounts of data between the mobile devices and Maximo – typically in seconds.
According to McCagherty, when TAQA North staff are at their desks or using laptops, they use the EZMaxMobile on app on Windows 10 desktops, which they prefer using to the native Maximo interface for data entry. “The InterPro interface is simpler and more intuitive than Maximo’s – desktop use was an unexpected benefit,” he says.
TAQA North implemented EZMaxMobile before the pandemic hit. “We were thankfully ahead of the curve, so when COVID-19 hit our field operators were able to report incidents remotely and enter permits without delay,” says McCagherty. “If we had not had EZMaxMobile in place, we would have struggled with incident data entry.”
The TAQA North workforce adopted EZMaxMobile enthusiastically. “The workforce truly saw this as a significant benefit to their work environment and toolset,” says McCagherty. “TAQA North has a very solid Health and Safety culture and offering this mobility solution reinforces this culture and demonstrates the support given to the remote field staff.”
After using EZMaxMobile and seeing its potential, TAQA North is expanding its use of EZMaxMobile beyond just its HSSE work to other Maximo modules.