Aker Solutions is undertaking a digitalization project aimed at streamlining the development of new oil fields. Computas is contributing expertise in Big Data, cloud technology, and innovation methodology to redefine how the oil service company designs drilling platforms. The software has the potential to address fundamental challenges faced by all players in the petroleum industry.

“The new solutions that Computas has helped us create are a significant contribution to strengthening our competitiveness,” says Are Føllesdal Tjønn, Senior VP of Software Engineering at Aker Solutions.

The cloud technology developed by Computas and Aker Solutions makes massive amounts of data accessible, enabling Aker Solutions to design drilling platforms significantly faster than before. Traditionally, drilling platform design was started from scratch, but cloud technology now allows for a much more efficient process.

Aker Solutions develops and builds installations for the petroleum industry. When the oil price plummeted below $30 per barrel, there were significantly fewer contracts to compete for. Like the rest of the oil industry, the company realized that it needed to reduce costs to maintain its competitiveness.

“To remain competitive in developing new fields, we had to significantly reduce our investment costs. We identified a digital solution, based on Google Cloud Platform, as the most effective way to increase both our efficiency and sustainability”, he says.

Massive Amounts of Data Available

Together, the parties developed several cloud-based applications that digitize the design of oil platforms and automate large parts of the process. One of the challenges Aker Solutions is now facing, which Computas is helping them to solve, is unlocking, opening, and connecting data from previously completed projects.

“Much of the data we need is ‘locked down’ in large and complex ERP systems and CAD programs, making it difficult to search for and find the exact data we require. Therefore, we are now working to extract data from these large systems and make it available in a completely new way in a cloud-based solution. With powerful search engines, it is easy and quick to navigate these large amounts of information,” continues Tjønn.

The software makes 30 million data points from previous projects searchable and reusable. By leveraging past experiences and insights, engineers can more quickly arrive at the correct designs for new drilling platforms. In this, Aker Solutions is receiving assistance from Computas in using machine learning to find search results with the highest possible relevance.

The examples from Aker Solutions illustrate very well how technology such as Big Data, search technology and artificial intelligence can be used to make an industry more efficient and profitable

Morten Forfang, Director of Cloud Platform and AI at Computas

Saves 200,000 Hours per Rig

Where Aker Solutions previously spent six weeks planning the construction of a drilling platform, they now take as little as two hours. The applications alone have enabled Aker Solutions to streamline development costs for new fields by as much as 20 percent.

“A typical construction usually takes one million hours, so saving 200,000 hours is a significant saving for both us and the environment we are part of,” says Tjønn.

Morten Forfang, Chief Technology Officer at Computas, believes the key is to work more closely with the customer to develop the best possible solutions.

“The examples from Aker Solutions illustrate very well how technologies such as Big Data, search technology, and artificial intelligence can be used to make an industry more efficient and profitable. Today, we also work much more closely in projects and present progress continuously using an agile project methodology. This allows us to reach our goals faster, and customers can adopt the new solutions more quickly”, says Forfang.

Scalable cloud solutions also provide much more flexibility.

“Before, it might take a few weeks to procure a server that was configured correctly. Today, hardware has been replaced by the cloud, and the correct configuration is just a few keystrokes away. In other words, everything has become much more efficient”, concludes Forfang.