Time is money in the drilling business. With the cost of drilling conventional and unconventional gas wells rising into the millions of dollars, reducing downtime and expediting setup time are critical to all stakeholders.

Biarri recently worked with the Australian division of Savanna Energy – a subsidiary of the Savanna Group, a premiere North American energy services provider headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Savanna Energy came in contact with Biarri through a referral from an existing client who recognised that Biarri offered a range of capabilities that could help solve Savanna’s unique supply chain and logistics problem.

Biarri built a cloud based Transport Request Tool that facilitates the movement of equipment and resources required by oil and gas well sites.The tool deals with Savanna’s challenge of maintaining satisfaction with the various Coal Seam Gas (CSG) proponents by effectively, and efficiently managing their communication.

Tzara Ayton, Biarri Project Manager and Core Developer explained,

“The initial goal of the project was to develop a tool that would take Savanna’s existing fleet requirements and find the best way to automate the allocation process. However, it was quickly discovered that Savanna required a modern, operational tool that would make their day to day operations easier, and act as a platform to collect clean data so that Biarri could build an optimisation solution. As it turns out, Biarri was suited for this problem as we have strong capabilities in not only smart strategic systems, but intuitive and powerful operational tools.”

Stephen Baily, Transport Manager at Savanna Energy said,

“Biarri built an efficient system for the computerized booking of transport movements for Savanna Energy. The software delivered to us is an extremely workable, efficient and user-friendly product.

The new approach has allowed us to reduce man hours and gives us a quicker turn around on job tasks. It also allows us to track our vehicles and kilometres travelled at the click of a mouse.”

“We wanted to ensure that the implementation of a new Transport Request Tool added greater visibility, improved coordination between field services and supply, enhanced responsiveness and added rigour to standard operating procedures”

said Ash Guy, Design Lead and Core Developer.

Savanna had a clear focus on ensuring the Transport Request Tool was customised to their particular requirements and met stringent use criteria. It was important that any changes to systems or processes were accepted by Savanna staff. As result, all of the new interfaces were collaboratively designed to be consistent with formats that Savanna Planners were already familiar with.

Savanna’s old excel spreadsheets were replaced by an interactive gantt chart which displays truck assignments, and their designated driver. This process happens in real time. The visibility has been enhanced allowing the Senior Pusher to see across his entire fleet, identify what has been assigned and what hasn’t. It also feeds back validation information helping to prevent assignment of the same driver to two vehicles at the same time, overlapping jobs on the same vehicle and vehicle assignments going outside of the requested time bounds.

The new Transport Request Tool allows Savanna to track any changes made to each individual transport request. This is particularly relevant when last minute changes require hiring extra trucks to satisfy urgent demand. The improved level of granularity delivered within the tool means that Savanna can identify where last minute changes were made and charge an appropriate service premium.

Management also benefit from the improved visibility. It gives them a ‘birds-eye-view’ of what is going on everywhere within the supply chain. Risk is also better managed through an audit log which allows traceability across any changes that have been made with each request. This was a significant enhancement for Savanna who can now better track what was ordered when and determine the specific costs arising from last minute changes to the plan.

Tom Forbes Chief Executive Officer at Biarri stated,

“Having a tool that facilitates accurate and consistent communication across all key logistical stakeholders is key in any business situation. Not only does the tool provide direct benefits to Savanna but it also produces clean, reliable data, so that we can find even more cost and efficiency savings within their business processes through value added optimisation.”

Savanna Energy now has access to files via the cloud ensuring far greater communication. The Transport Request Tool forms the core of the scheduling process and is a central resource across the organisation catering for all key stakeholders.

Stephen Baily said,

“My colleague and I worked closely with the Biarri team and they were able to tailor the tool to meet our specific requirements. They also allowed us to easily troubleshoot any obstacles that were presented. In all, a very professional and well-engineered product.”

If you wanted to find out more about how Biarri can help across your oil and gas operations, or how we can deliver savings across your entire oil and gas project, get in touch today!