It is critical to ensure that your control room team has the right tools to face all the challenges encountered when operating pipelines. How can you ensure that the controllers then use these tools at their highest potential?
SCADA is the foundation of any pipeline control room. It encompasses all aspects of monitoring, controlling, and operating your pipeline, it is the heart of your control room.
Advanced applications, such as leak detection and batch tracking, rely on accurate and reliable information for their calculations; from elevation profiles, instrumentation and pipeline specs, to consistent operational data delivered from the field through SCADA. The advanced applications process this data and provide valuable information related to the status of your pipelines such as; leak status, ruptures, product interfaces, PIGs location etc. The advanced applications are the brain of the control room. It is imperative that the controllers know how to interpret and react to the information provided by these applications.
Access to the data output of these advanced applications does not guarantee that your team will address the problem in the most effective way possible. A comprehensive Control Room Management application will give controllers the right tools to make informed decisions on the events flagged by the applications and take the effective action to minimize the impact of this kind of events.
Control Room Management (CRM) applications should go beyond the traditional event log book, and provide the tools to guide the controller quickly and seamlessly through the response process to safety alarms and critical events. CRM should facilitate and track down the communications and interactions between the control room and all the third parties involved in these response processes, as well as, ensure that all the control room documentation, including Standard Operating Procedures and Company Protocols are updated, accessible, and understandable.
Automated Control Room Management applications play a very important role within the corporation by honing the human factor in pipeline operations and becomes the soul of your control room.
Successful control rooms have combined all these systems, a solid heart, a consistent brain and a trustable soul together with a strong controller training program to create a truly safe environment where pipelines can be operated most efficiently.
Tory Technologies, Inc. provides a very innovated solution for CRM, known as MaCRoM™, for more information contact us at info@tory-tech.com
Rene Varon has a Bsc in Electronic Engineering, and a Master of Business Administration from the Bauer School of Business - University of Houston, currently is the President of Tory Technology, Inc. a Houston based company. He has more than 20 years of experience in the Oil & Gas industry, specialized mainly in advanced software applications and measuring systems for pipelines & terminals.