CASE STUDY
Pisys Action Tracker (ATMS) in Wood PLC
Summary
This case study explores the transition of Wood, a leading company in the oil and gas sector, from using Excel for action tracking to adopting the Pisys Action Tracker Management System (ATMS). Excel’s limitations in providing visibility and managing actions across the company led to the need for a more robust system. The ATMS was selected for its effectiveness in tracking actions, ensuring safety, and improving oversight across global operations. The change was catalysed by a historical emphasis on safety, highlighted by the Longford disaster, underscoring the need for efficient hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs) and action tracking to prevent accidents.
Background
Wood is a global leader in the oil and gas sector, operating in the high-hazard industries of North Sea oil and gas extraction and petrochemical refining across the world. With safety as its paramount core value, Wood emphasises providing its workforce with the necessary tools to work safely and prevent accidents.
Traditionally, the company relied on Excel for action tracking. However, this method proved insufficient for the company’s growing need for comprehensive visibility and efficient action closure. The adoption of Pisys ATMS signified a strategic move towards integrating a more advanced action tracking solution, aimed at enhancing operational safety and efficiency.
The Longford Disaster and Its Lessons
The Longford gas plant disaster on September 25, 1998, in Victoria, Australia, resulted in the deaths of two workers, injuries to eight others, and a two-week gas supply outage to Melbourne. A series of unforeseen failures, including a significant leak from a steel cylinder and subsequent explosions, highlighted systemic safety and operational deficiencies. Critically, the disaster was attributed to inadequate hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs), a failure in identifying and mitigating risks in the plant’s operations. This tragic event serves as a stark reminder of the importance of rigorous action tracking and hazard analysis to prevent accidents.
Challenge
Wood faced significant challenges in tracking actions across its global operations, particularly in ensuring the safety of high-hazard processes. The inadequacies of Excel as a tool for recording and managing actions relating to HAZOPS (Hazard and Operability Studies) and other studies included a lack of visibility into action status, difficulty in managing and closing actions efficiently and the lack of suitable governance or auditability of actions.
Additionally, the Longford disaster served as a stark reminder of the critical importance of effective action tracking and hazard analysis in preventing accidents.
Solution
In response to these challenges, Wood selected the Pisys Action Tracker Management System (ATMS) for its comprehensive features configured to meet the company’s specific needs. ATMS stood out for its action tracking capabilities, offering unparalleled visibility of all actions to stakeholders, robust security of access, and streamlined paperless approval workflows.
The system’s ability to provide corporate oversight and reporting on action status, quality, and resolution timelines represented a significant advancement over previous methods. Its deployment was facilitated without the need for IT specialists, showcasing its ease of use, efficient administration, and automatic auditing and logging capabilities, which were crucial for governance.
The system also provided the facility for Wood staff to configure their own data capture forms which meant that the system could be quickly configured to match new requirements.
Result
The deployment of Pisys ATMS marked a transformative phase in Wood’s action tracking process. The system was rapidly adopted by the team, leading to immediate improvements in oversight of actions. Corporate visibility into the status of actions, including those overdue and the quality of action text, was significantly enhanced.
The paperless approval workflow not only streamlined processes but also bolstered security measures for data access, underpinned by Pisys’ ISO27001 Information Security Management processes to ensure security of all data stored on the system. ATMS provided a robust platform for tracking actions across 20 major contracts, involving thousands of actions globally. The flexibility, ease of deployment, and straightforward administration of the system were instrumental in its success, enabling Wood to continually find new applications for ATMS in its expanding global business.
The fact that the tool was web-based had several advantages, not least the fact that local IT teams did not have to manage or support deployment. It was also very straightforward to offer access to teams in any region where Wood operates.
1000
Active Users
200
Active Review Sessions
3000
Actions
Testimonial
The Pisys ATMS has been an excellent tool for us, providing visibility, security, and efficiency in action tracking that Excel could never offer. It supports our core value of safety assurance across our global operations, allowing us to manage actions effectively and prevent accidents. The system's adaptability and the quality of support from Pisys have been pivotal in its successful integration into our processes. We continue to find new applications for ATMS as we expand, reflecting its value to our business.
ATMS is a web-based action tracker
Typically used to manage and report on high-governance actions such as HAZOPS and Audits, the Pisys ATMS is highly configurable and comes with full KPI dashboard, Power BI interface and a built-in audit trail.