Rhys Davies.
General manager, QGE Group.
Rhys is General manager of Ex-Online (part of QGE Group) and is an electrical engineer with over 15 years experience across oil and gas, and mining. Rhys is a specialist in classification, design and inspection of electrical equipment in hazardous areas (EEHA), and he has held roles as lead E&I engineer on numerous major green field tank farm projects for clients such as BP and Puma Energy. He has also been a EEHA consultant to clients on major hazard facilities. Rhys is now driven to collect and use effective data to help clients build and maintain safe and compliant installations, with reduced cost and effort.
Your questions answered.
Does Ex-online need a live Internet connection to the cloud server for the inspector in the field?
No, the inspection tool works off-line to allow inspections to be completed in the field with no internet connection. Once back in the office you can then upload from the inspection tablet back into your online dossier.
What is a typical implementation timeline for Ex-online?
Being a dossier database and inspection tool, “implementation” may not be the right word for it. It’s an out of the box solution that allows you to start using it immediately to complete inspections in the field and build your dossier from scratch. Alternatively, you have the option to upload existing information from various formats you may have used in the past.
What sort of economies have you seen being achieved through use of this technology?
We’ve seen inspection campaigns times come down by around 53% on average from paper based inspection campaigns. The efficiencies are achieved in reduction in set up, optimising inspections, and automating the post inspection data entry processes. The larger the inspection campaign the greater the efficiency benefit.
We’d add that the improved data quality from the inspections is the key benefit we focus on, reduced costs to achieving compliance through the above efficiencies is a bonus.
