Why energy and resources companies should consider intelligent asset management as part of their digital energy transition

As the energy transition accelerates, it’s piling the pressure on asset-intensive industries. With the energy system growing more renewable and distributed by the day, managing energy assets is getting increasingly complex.

The more assets that are connected to the grid, the more challenging it becomes to ensure that they are deployed, tracked and maintained efficiently. This can lead to higher costs, lower efficiency and greater risk of service interuptions and downtime for critical infrastructure.

Now more than ever, organisations need effective asset management. It’s always been vital to gaining visibility of where assets are, how they are performing and when they need to be repaired or replaced. And, as we move towards a decarbonised future, intelligent asset management will be the crux of resilient and profitable energy operations.

What is intelligent asset management?

Intelligent asset management (IAM) puts data and digital to work to optimise an organisation’s physical asset management system. With a focus on integrating data, teams and processes, along with automating workflows, IAM helps to streamline asset maintenance and management.

Crucially, IAM allows companies to evolve from a reactive approach, addressing issues as they arise, towards preventative, predictive and prescriptive operations. Given that the average oil and gas company experiences at least 27 days of unplanned downtime – costing roughly $38 million – each year, managing assets proactively goes a long way to driving more productive and profitable operations.

Delivering on the IAM opportunity

At Baringa, we’ve been helping companies to embrace IAM as they navigate a changing energy landscape. Our approach strengthens foundational business process capabilities and augments them with digital, turning asset data into actionable insights to help clients optimise the performance of existing and new assets.

Key building blocks of Baringa’s IAM framework include:

• Foundational asset management: Orchestrating digital tech for foundational asset performance and measurement. This supports better integration of assets across the business and better insights for improved decision-making.
• Predictive asset management: Creating an integrated digital thread across the whole asset lifecycle and laying the groundwork for predictive alerts and prescriptive analytics. With these capabilities, energy companies can minimie downtime and extend asset lifespan by predicting and addressing potential issues before they escalate.
• Digital twin technology: Driving the journey towards process twins and asset twins, and converging both into unified digital twins. This provides a more complete data picture of energy assets, improving testing, planning and maintenance for greater operational efficiency and quality.

Driving transformation for energy and resources clients

Baringa has supported multiple asset-intensive clients, ranging from oil and gas majors to mining companies. Our approach to IAM is deeply rooted in a genuine understanding of our energy clients’ business context and drivers. We prioritise value, cutting through product hype to find pragmatic solutions that significantly impact asset performance. We put people at the heart of change, recognising that improving asset performance hinges on engaging stakeholders across the entire company. Here’s a sample of some of our latest work in this space.

Digital asset management strategy and implementation for green hydrogen manufacturing

• Pioneering a world-first 200MW green hydrogen facility, our client needed to translate existing oil and gas processes and systems into a new hydrogen manufacturing context.
• Baringa defined an architectural strategy for the facility’s asset management and ERP systems, supported solution selection and worked to deploy and integrate the new tools.
• The client is now ready to bring an integrated and optimised hydrogen value chain to market and make the most out of its operation from day one.

Mapping the vision and path to intelligent asset operations

• Following a major acquisition, this upstream-focused oil and gas operator looked to unify disparate assets, data and processes with a cohesive digital strategy for operations.
• Baringa crystallised a digital vision and roadmap for the entire business, and defined a new data architecture.
• The business now has a comprehensive 3–5-year digital roadmap with prioritised use cases and corresponding benefits and costs, elevating operational productivity, quality and safety.

Digital core for chemicals manufacturing reliability and efficiency

• Experiencing surging demand for certain crop protection chemicals, this client wanted to improve overall equipment efficiency (OEE) in the factory to lift production output.
• Baringa built out a digital core for assets and operations, including integrated activity planning, forecasting, materials management and preventative maintenance.

• Integration of embedded OEE processes alongside digital workflows has improved fill rates and reliability, and is expected to deliver cost savings of £4m in year one.

If you’re looking to improve the value that your assets deliver to the business, get in touch with us to explore how Baringa can revolutionise your asset management strategy.