This leading natural gas services company provides a full range of contract services, sales, operations and maintenance and equipment to the domestic and international natural gas industry.  It serves natural gas producers, gathering systems, pipelines, refineries and petrochemical operations and is one of the  largest providers in the United States, with sales and service locations in every major domestic natural gas producing region. 

The operational performance of this organization as benchmarked was currently strong:  first/second quartile in cost, strong relative industry performance in leaks and spill volume and above average in safety performance.  However the company felt that there were opportunities to improve and there was considerable risk to current operations by failing to explore improvement possibilities.  Risks by failing to improve performance could lead to continued escalation of costs and incremental addition of resources, failure to meet growing demands relative to internal and regulatory requirements and risks to HSSE, availability and compliance performance.

The organization had a number of additional concerns regarding it's future.  Production and service revenue forecasts indicated a flat line in revenue growth for the near term.  Tighter operating margins due to accelerating costs of equipment and infrastructure maintenance were growing constraints.  Long term profitabiltiy projections had fallen off significantly despite a robust overall gas commodity market.  In addition, current operations processes and organizational structure were unchanged since mid-1990's despite changing business and regulatory requirements and demands.  Skills and competency requirements failed to evolve and advance. 

Tech Shelter Group Ltd. was engaged by management to assess these concerns.  Focus areas included field labor productivity, core operating practices, responsiveness to current internal and regulatory compliance demands, as well as materials and supply chain effectiveness as supporting processes.  Further, an assessment of supervisory effectiveness and organizational structure was conducted.

The assessment uncovered significant opportunities to improve O & M performance, increase productivity of technicians and supervisors, reduce costs of daily operations thus improving the return on capital employed, and increasing operating margins. 

Field services locations were located throughout the central and western U.S.  As a result of mutiple mergers and acquisitions during the past decade, there were few common processes in existence.  Operations and maintenance practices varied widely among locations, as did information systems, procurement sources, organization structures and performance standards.  Work place cultures and terminology also differed. 

Data collected during the assessment also indicated:

• Planning horizions for field service technicians was done daily, if at all. 
• Resource scheduling was continuously hindered by customer call outs, equipment failures and poor communication.
• Stock outages and materials supply chain difficulties were hurting custumer service. 
• Materials management processes differed by field location. 
• Technicians and supervisors had little confindence in legacy inventory systems that had few linkages to a recently acquired work order system. 
• Field supervision lacked training and empowerment. 

Of an encouraging nature, however, we found a robust demand for services in the near term and an acknowledged awareness and commitment by management that common processes must be engineered in order to sustain future growth and profitability. 

Following a presentation of assessment results, we joined with our client’s key personnel to begin the design, development and implementation of several key initiatives. 

First a common work management process (WMP) was designed and developed to support each field location by a representative group of technicians and managers from within the organization. The work order component of the newly acquired CMMS was implemented as the initial common tool at all locations.  Benefits gained through use of a common process and system were carried forward to all employees through a comprehensive communication campaign that is ongoing. 

Hands on training in the Work Management Process focused upon the following initial elements: 

• Planning of existing equipment moves, maintenance and installation by customer
• Labor & materials estimating & forecast building
• System Work Order generation and tracking 
• Vendor consolidation and common procurement practice implementation 
• Daily & weekly manpower schedule generation
• PM task list creation by equipment type & frequency 
• New customer call out protocols & costing parameters
• First line supervisor training and mentoring 
• Work order and technician time sheet linkage

These primary improvement opportunities provided the organization a number of baselines by which to measure future performance.  While the teams continued the facilitation and coaching necessary to sustain and grow these intiatives, a scorecard of first stage metrics was developed for periodic reporting and management review.   

The results of our combined efforts continue to accrue. Many of the initiatives and work activities described above are ongoing. However, as of this date we can describe the following benefits.

•  Majority of field activities are now planned and scheduled one week in advance
• A 28% reduction in technician overtime
• A 22% reduction in customer call outs due to equipment failure
• A primary score card of key performance inidcators embedded in key processes at all locations 
• A 15% reduction in consumable inventory value, 10% reduction in critical spare compression
• A 20% reduction in vendor population
• Growing understanding and use of estimated work orders (CMMS)