The digital workforce – disruptive technologies changing the way work gets done

Abstract

Digital technologies are extending human capability, creating breakthroughs and disruptive levels of performance. It does this by increasing the information and connectedness of people, equipment, processes and systems. Mobility, analytics, cloud, social and smart objects including phone, watches and glasses, all help personnel accomplish tasks, make better decisions and amplify their performance.

As an example of digital in action, during a planned turnaround one organisation used radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to connect people, equipment and vehicles, combining these with contractor management dashboards that tracked activity. The results were impressive: safety was enhanced and contractor productivity increased by 15%.

But a digital workforce extends beyond RIFD tagging. The end-to-end processing of documents, intelligent work allocation and digitally providing all information required to perform a task is making workforces smarter, faster and more efficient. By consolidating information across operations, work and document management, scheduling and safety systems onto a single platform to provide full visibility, one organisation achieved a 40% savings in the time to allocate work. The company also saw a 10% improvement in tool-time productivity with the right information at the right time. Finally, they are benefitting from immediate and accurate knowledge capture as information is analysed whilst work is being performed.

Harnessing digital technologies requires radical rethinking of traditional approaches to resources, jobs and organisation design. This paper will provide insights and examples of how specific digital technologies are being applied to oil and gas operations to achieve new levels of safety, productivity and cost effectiveness.