Oil and Gas
How would your business, as a fuels retailer, benefit from less downtime for fuel pumps, HVAC systems and refrigeration equipment? What would it mean to you if you could slash your maintenance downtime? Cut contractor HSSE exposure hours? Reduce energy consumption? Or have a firm understanding of your assets’ total cost of ownership? Or how much time would you save on your refinery if all your contractors could be managed centrally, all compliant with your strict regulations and working from a Contractor Portal app that speeds up work management, sign-off and invoicing on one platform? You may also want to remotely monitor those critical assets that are potentially dangerous and reaching end of life and act on alerts if they pose any threat?
These are all typical outcomes of Pragma’s approach to asset management. As the complexities of the fuels retail environment spiral, it becomes ever more challenging to maintain compliance in the various areas required – particularly as the nature of the business means that your asset base tends to be diverse and distributed. It might be easy to ensure that all contractors and equipment meet corporate standards if you are running just one site, but it’s much harder if your sites are dispersed across the country.
Our fuels retail and refinery solutions unpacked
We offer an end-to-end maintenance management solution that starts with the development and implementation of an asset management road map. The road map is based on a well-defined strategy that caters for your specific needs. This strategy is executed through our partnership model and delivers these services:
- the planning, scheduling, execution and reporting on day to day maintenance activities (facilities management call centre);
- critical equipment inspections;
- stringent compliance to Local Regulatory Requirements such as OSHAct, Construction Regulations and more;
- focused improvement projects aimed at improving efficiencies;
- Permit to Work (PtW) and HSSE Passport training and annual accreditation for contractors to improve process assurance;
- capital enhancement, refurbishment and replacement projects, such as the design and installation of fueling systems (tanks and pumps); and
- longer term strategic planning to ensure business sustainability.
In addition to the above, our solutions for depots and refineries include:
- maintenance readiness projects where we get involved in an early stage when you design and develop a new plant or refurbish an old plant;
- asset and system audits that include inspection check sheets for pre-startup and ongoing (quarterly) after a shutdown;
- the development of tactical asset care plans that focus on the unique requirements of your asset types and their criticality;
- spares optimisation where we help your procurement team to right-size the number of spares carried based on usage and criticality;
- asset health and performance management services where we set up an online monitoring and response service on critical assets, including specific condition monitoring interventions; and
- facilities management where we ensure that your buildings and office environments are neatly maintained, cleaned and a pleasant space for your employees to work in.
Planning, scheduling, execution and reporting on day to day maintenance activities (facilities management call centre)
Pragma can operate a 24-hour client contact centre for all your network maintenance query logging. Your retail outlet teams can log their maintenance requests online or via voice calls.
We use our Enterprise Asset Management system, On Key™, to accurately manage your asset registry and perform comprehensive work management and spare parts planning. We can integrate On Key with your EAMs or CMMS.
Focused improvement projects aimed at improving efficiencies
To ensure that our clients can attest to the continued value of our service, we partner with them on a continuous improvement journey to identify and create opportunities for improving operational efficiencies and supporting business sustainability.
We agree on time-based value improvement road maps with associated value improvement projects and focus on delivering these value improvement goals. For one of our fuels retail clients, our focus and dedication in this area delivered value improvement project savings of R32 614 million over five years.
Enterprise asset management systems and tools
Pragma has developed a range of enterprise asset management technologies and applications to support asset and facilities’ maintenance management processes. Apart from normal work management capabilities, powerful business intelligence dashboards and IIoT enablement, we also offer mobile applications that are specifically designed to streamline work processes and manage contractors in the oil and gas industry.
These applications include:
- On Key Work Manager app
- On Key Field Engineer app
- On Key HSSE app for logging leading indicators, HSSE incidents and near misses
For more about On Key, visit www.on-key.com.
Compliance with local regulatory requirements such as OHS Act and construction regulations
Globally, the oil and gas sector is strictly regulated and in South Africa in particular, the government regulates the retail price of most petroleum products. Regulatory compliance is therefore correctly seen as a licence to operate by oil and gas companies in South Africa.
From an asset and facilities management perspective, we support our clients to ensure that their operations comply with regulatory requirements. Where we are responsible for the appointment and management of contractors that perform maintenance at any facilities, we ensure that they are sufficiently trained and adhere to the requirements as stipulated in the following acts and regulations:
- Environment | Oil and gas companies are required to ensure the environment is not damaged as a consequence of their operations. Compliance with the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) is therefore critical.
- Construction | Compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS Act) and construction regulations is important for all maintenance and construction-related activities that companies undertake directly and indirectly through third-party contractors.
- Legal | Compliance with the Legal Metrology Act provides for the administration and maintenance of legal metrology technical regulations.
Maintenance management of fuel systems’ assets
We have a well-defined asset care methodology for the maintenance management processes of fuel systems’ assets. Assets like pumps, dispensers, underground storage tanks, fuel lines and ancillary equipment (automatic tank gauging, electronic line leak detection and more) have defined critical equipment inspection and asset condition survey schedules as part of their asset care plans.
Prevention of loss of primary containment remains a crucial control measure using Pragma’s Asset Health Monitoring business processes.
Long-term strategic partnership
We know that sustainable results in asset management are only achieved if asset management is guided by a clearly defined strategy and plan which is supported and executed by a capable and committed team, processes and technologies. Through a long-term strategic partnership, we make sure that we understand your strategy and take hands with your in-house team to execute daily activities and long-term projects to deliver this strategy so that you can focus on your core business. All our efforts and value-adding initiatives are geared towards achieving your asset management goals. We also ensure that our contractors fully understand your asset management strategy and their role in its execution. This we do by managing the full spectrum of contractor selection, contracting and service level agreement (SLA) management, accreditation, work management and performance reviews.
Our successful partnerships are founded on trust, collaboration, performance, clear plans, teamwork, partnership synergies, sharing successes and win-win approaches.
Download our Fuels Retail Industry Profile for a holistic overview of our offering, or read here about our award winning partnership with a leading fuels retailer in Africa.
The connected forecourt
We can help you prepare for the connected forecourt of the future by ensuring that all equipment functions optimally whilst also guaranteeing that other facilities – from bathrooms to retail offerings – uphold your reputation amongst clients. To mitigate risks and prevent downtime, we will help you identify your critical asset types and enable them with sensors to warn you of potential failure. Read here to find out more about our IIoT enabled solutions for fuels retail.
Refurbishment and replacement projects, such as the design and installation of fueling systems (tanks and pumps)
Through strategic partnerships with EPCM companies, we deliver greenfield and brownfield service station developments. This enables us to manage the full development cycle of your network from front-end engineering development to operations maintenance to decommissioning. We will help you to optimise the total cost of ownership of your assets to enhance the return on average capital employed.
Permit to Work (PtW), HSSE Passport training and annual accreditation for contractors to improve process assurance
We have a thorough understanding of the importance and value of competence. Not only can it save lives, it also saves money and enables efficiency. Through the Pragma Academy, we offer several courses to equip asset managers and artisans with best-in-class asset and facilities management skills to run their operations efficiently.
This includes a range of courses developed exclusively for the fuels retail industry to upskill and accredit contractors in the stringent HSSE requirements of the oil and gas industry. Courses such as ‘Permit to Work’ and ‘Oil and Gas Testing’ provide a thorough basis for compliance, and refresher courses are also offered to ensure that contractors maintain their accreditation. These courses are offered as classroom training, blended learning (a combination of classroom and online training), or as virtual instructor led training in which learners join a virtual classroom where an instructor hosts the training and monitors learners’ progress.
