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Video conferencing (VC) for multiple site collaboration is one of the key drivers to improve cross-functional collaboration and ensure that geographically dispersed teams communicate effectively. Over the last four years BP has deployed a system with close to 300 endpoints for video and application sharing across Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and the UK. This system links eight offshore facilities, a major terminal, three offices in Baku, offices in the UK, and pump stations across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. This is the largest integrated collaboration deployment within BP. One of the key success factors which has evolved over the deployment has been the transition from a dedicated petrotechnical user base to an integrated deployment across all elements of the business. Many users familiar with the PC based tools then become "power users" to support team members with the same tools in a room environment. Peer to peer, platform to platform use of the system offshore has developed into a useful knowledge sharing tool outside office hours. This changes the perception about VC technology from highly sophisticated and technical concept to a commodity IT enabler. We identify and discuss 10 major use case scenarios, each of them having a unique blend of technology and business process: Executive Meetings and Inter Office communications, Site to Site collaboration, Multi-site Mixed Audio/VC call, Multi-site VC conferencing with third-parties outside of BP network, Incident Management, Diagnostic Support, Staff Townhalls, Enhancing Interactions with employees, Turnaround, ACE to ACE and ACE to Advisor collaboration. Lessons learned on delivering ease of use to the end user, and in moving from a petrotechnical tool to a cross business tool with horizontal and vertical business integration, will be discussed. Some of the business value can not be quantified - e.g. improvement of daily/weekly planning process; helping deliver the nationalization plan; ability to rapidly diagnose an issue and get to the root cause; facilitating the development of an intrinsic knowledge base on 3rd party supplied equipment. However, there are some real monetary benefits that we were able to capture during the last 4 years - e.g. 0.5-1.0% increase of operating efficiency; 15% acceleration in the execution of planned work by enabling the completion of 7 quarters work in 6 quarters; 10% increase in operational offshore bed utilization; preventing several days loss of production.

The well's Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE) Community of Practice (CoP) was formed in March 2009 at BP's senior management request, to share good practice and promote standardisation in this area. Its mandate was one of self help and leveraging scale, but working through influence and consensus, with management support rather than by direct authority. It was also required to adhere to company IT standards and technology strategy.At the time of the CoP's formation, collaborative environments had been commissioned in various company locations worldwide, including Aberdeen, Baku, Houston, Stavanger and Tangguh. In the absence of any unifying well's concept, each of these centres had been developed independently, strongly influenced by local ideas, needs and resources. The approach was typical of the innovation stage referred to in the conference programme, but it was evident that connectivity between the different locations and with other disciplines was lacking and that effort was duplicated.Today the CoP has over 30 members, spanning wells, subsurface, IT and wells technology from 12 locations worldwide. It meets virtually, involving the widest possible membership in the different time zones. It has been instrumental in progressing and communicating standards, supporting the introduction and use of common tools and technology, leveraging its knowledge and expertise and helping start-ups in new areas. Overall the CoP has been a great success. The paper describes the CoP's evolution, from its formation to the present day and critically examines its achievements, shortfalls and future goals.In a rapidly changing technical environment, achieving and maintaining alignment between the diverse stakeholders in a medium to large organisation can be challenging. The CoP has earned its credibility and has proved to be an effective means of sharing experience and making good use of scarce resources, both keys for adoption at scale.Field of the Future is a registered trademark of BP.

Description of the material Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE) drives improvements to BP’s business performance by strengthening teamwork, encouraging mentoring and personal development, and enabling rapid response to dynamic situations, all supported by collaborative technology. Application ACE is a unique and proven holistic approach to delivering integrated operations in E&P, both in Drilling and Production Operations. ACE is a comprehensive, focused framework which intertwines local, global, and external methods and learnings, and over 35 assets have benefited. The ACE methodology continues accumulating and transferring the value delivered since 2003, and consistently stresses balanced emphasis on addressing People, Process, Technology, Organization and Physical Environment to accelerate the local adoption of collaboration in the field and office. This paper will provide some perspectives on the importance and learnings of each of these five elements. Both Drilling and Production Operations face non-technical challenges in their daily business: access to knowledge in locations remote from centers of expertise, the cost of travel, the drive to employ more national staff, the need to remove people from harms way, and to share knowledge amongst team members in building a sense of common purpose. How do we address these “softer” challenges, and ensure solutions are enduring? Results, Observations, and Conclusions Those assets which have embraced the holistic ACE solution have seen positive changes in culture and team interactions. Collaborative, synchronized working enables assets to plan better and react efficiently, and supports faster delivery of major initiatives. ACE enables a “one team” approach that significantly improves the decision making process and optimization of field operations. Assets’ integrated operations, including E&P Technology’s global support center, have been accelerated and assured by the comprehensive ACE method, including it’s business awareness, ability to conform to local needs, and central position in E&P. As ACE becomes an embedded part of BP’s Drilling and Production Operations, increasing numbers of anecdotes and benefits are attributable to this methodology. This paper will conclude with a summary of some of the key business benefits attained from the application of ACEs within BP’s Drilling and Production Operations. Significance of Subject Matter In the next decade the oil and gas industry may shed as much as three-quarters of its intellectual capital as experienced technologists and explorationists retire. In the 21st century, as we reach deeper and further to secure the world’s energy supply the leaders in global E&P will be those companies which can make the best use of scarce experienced human resource and can build expertise in areas where the workforce are well qualified but inexperienced. Collaboration and communication are the linchpins of this connected organization. Advances in technology have created an opportunity to address the future challenges of our businesses. The application of technology will allow BP to leverage data, knowledge, and expertise dispersed throughout the organization, to increase collaboration and ultimately, the efficiency and effectiveness of decision making. This, in turn, will deliver significant benefits in improved operational performance. Advanced Collaborative Environments will bring the right information, to the right people, at the right time, creating real time and multidiscipline decision environments supporting Drilling and Production Operations. ACE’s are more than just technology; they are about building our collaborative capability, allowing people to work collaboratively, regardless of distance, making better decisions, faster, thereby enabling enhanced productivity and delivering operational performance improvements.

Abstract Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE) drives improvements to BP's business performance by strengthening teamwork, encouraging mentoring and personal development, and enabling rapid response to dynamic situations, all supported by collaborative technology. In the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), ACE is transforming the way teams, offshore and onshore, work together, aided by real time data monitoring and video links. This higher level of connectivity between the offshore operation and onshore office is fundamentally changing the way BP works. ACE enables a ‘one team’ approach that significantly improves the decision making process and optimization of field operations. BP has several ACEs in operation around the world, supporting application of the Field of the Future concept. Faced with a set of operating challenges particular to GoM, BP has realized significant value from ACE at Atlantis and Thunder Horse by improving the efficiency of operations. Starting up a deepwater, subsea completion, offshore production facility for the first time is a very complex process. There are complexities associated with reservoir management, in-well controls, well head controls, production processing and export. During start-up, all of these areas of field management are changing. Each of these areas needs to be managed simultaneously on a continuously changing basis. Also, during normal operations, even seemingly simple operations can be made more efficient, to better utilize our valuable resources. GoM, as one of the original BP sites to adopt ACE, has a long history of continuous improvement through ACE. As ACE becomes an embedded part of GoM's production operations, increasing numbers of anecdotes and benefits are attributable to this methodology. This paper will review how ACE in GoM, specifically Atlantis and Thunder Horse, enables both the complex operation of start-up, and the day-to-day operations, to drive improved production performance. The benefits of ACE are translating into increased production, lower costs and improved safety and operational integrity. Introduction BP's Gulf of Mexico platforms Atlantis and Thunder Horse are located over one hundred miles from land (Figure 1 - Gulf of Mexico ACE Overview) and require readily available onshore support resources. Nevertheless, because of geographic distance, accessing those resources could be slow and cumbersome. Additionally, all offshore platforms face the problem of limited Personnel On Board (POB), and these two platforms were no different. As a result, BP implemented the Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE), a component of the Field of the Future concept, as a method of addressing the issues. Ultimately, the goals for the ACE had to be consistent with the company's goals for these two platforms, safe and efficient operation. When everything runs as it should, with no incidents and no harm to people or the environment, it's often called Silent Running. To achieve these ideals, the ACE was constructed to:Remove people from harm's way, lowering the number of people exposed to the process environment, by creating remote support centersImprove business performance through a multi-discipline, real-time interface with the production operationRemove boundaries between teams networked across long distancesImprove the quality of the decisions made by leveraging the company's experienced resources across multiple crews and multiple platformsDrive continual improvement through shared learning and training opportunitiesLower travel and housing costs

Advanced Collaborative Environments (ACE) have been shown to generate improvements to BP's business performance. To deliver efficient collaborative practices, asset teams have altered their ways of working, their organisational structures and business environments. These ACEs are designed to ensure that offshore production facilities can have immediate access to shore-based specialist support teams via visual, audio and data connectivity to improve the quality of decision making and the problem-solving processes.BP has several ACE programmes in operation around the world, supporting application of the Field of the Future concept and driving better decisions faster. This paper describes the performance benefits (in terms of increased production, lower costs, improved safety and operational integrity) that the creation and usage of these ACEs have brought to the organisation, as well as highlighting the need to see collaborative environments not as purely process or technology driven initiatives, but more as a capability transformation programme. The authors explain the necessity of genuine engagement and ownership by the end-users so they can search for and leverage advantage themselves. ACE programmes require significant operating expenditure, and it has proved of vital importance to put efforts into maintaining the programme profile, sustaining senior management endorsement and encouragement of the programme, both in funding and leadership behaviour.This paper also describes the need to develop relationships centered on trust and respect between the onshore and offshore communities so that jointly made decisions can be consistently implemented with confidence.The personal characteristics and behavioural traits and etiquettes which individuals need to have to work effectively within these environments are also discussed. Offshore personnel need to know when to ask for advice and in turn onshore users can become "respected brokers" to either deal with the issue themselves or seek further input from specific functional teams.The similarities and differences between the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and North Sea programmes illuminate the forces which are at work when shaping an ACE programme, and along with the successes, areas for further improvement and plans for the future of both programmes are analysed.

The Advanced Collaborative Environment (ACE) Programme is BP's strategic deployment vehicle for the global implementation of ‘Real Time’ Production and Drilling Operations Support Environments. ACE's are a key theme within BP's FIELD OF THE FUTURE technology leadership area. This paper will describe current operational environments in Stavanger, Aberdeen, Houston and Baku and then move on describe future plans for multi-asset support environments to support Deep Water GOM assets, Caspian assets, North Sea operations. It will also highlight the opportunity for the fully collaborative office environments in a number of new office locations within BP. BP believes that there are five key elements for success when implementing Advanced Collaborative Environments: – People – Process – Technology – Physical Environment – Organisation The integration of these five elements is the key to a successful ACE implementation. The paper will conclude with a summary of some of the key business benefits attained from the application of ACE's with BP's drilling and production operations.