Digital Twins: The ‘system of systems’

BY RAY SCIPPA

Accolades are pouring in for ConocoPhillips’ Digital Twins solution. On the heels of a 2023 SPIRIT of Performance Award, the company’s Digital Twins program received the 2023 CIO 100 Award, recognition that transcends the oil & gas industry.

Well-managed source data feeding Digital Twins are the foundation that will enable broad digital transformation across ConocoPhillips global operations. Pioneered by ConocoPhillips Norway and adopted by innovative teams in Alaska and Australia, the technology is poised to spread to new locations and to expand to exciting new use cases.

Today’s Digital Twins answer basic questions: Where is a piece of equipment located? Do I need to plan for scaffolding for this job?  What will be the safest escape route if I block this walkway?

Knowing where a piece of equipment is located may sound like a trivial problem, but some large facilities have up to half a million parts. In the office you can type in a tag number and receive directions directly to the piece of equipment. Using a Digital Twin with a handheld device, operators are guided through a list of equipment needing maintenance. In a recent field-study, ConocoPhillips Norway achieved 15%-time reduction associated to basic work orders and up to 90%-time reduction associated to preventive maintenance checks and the many items difficult to locate without the aid of a Digital Twin. 

“The Digital Twin Maintenance and Inspection apps have demonstrated efficiency gains both in preparing for the work and locating multiple items on complex offshore facilities,” said Technical Information Director Inger Mette Staalesen. “What enables these efficiency and safety gains, is management of various source data feeding the Digital Twins and the automatic update of the Digital Twins as the facility is modified, ensuring evergreen Digital Twins. We are now preparing for roll-out of these apps on mobile devices across the Greater Ekofisk Area.”

A community that shares and supports each other

Digital Twins was pioneered by ConocoPhillips Norway for its North Sea platforms. The Norway team then held knowledge-transfer sessions with groups considering the technology. A Microsoft Teams site serves the global community with regular progress updates and information sharing sessions. The popularity of the site has grown quickly, and it is recognized as the place to go for information and help. 

Collaboration has extended beyond the community to the Digital Twin software itself. Modules that were created in one location have been deployed and enhanced in the next installation, leading to a shared approach for software improvements.

“Collaboration has been instrumental,” said Alaska Operations Team Lead David Finocchio. “Without the pioneering efforts made by Inger Mette and team in Norway, and the rapid adoption by Nic Christodoulou and team in Australia, we would not be on the current path toward broad adoption of Digital Twins companywide. This critical mass created through collaboration allows us to develop global architecture, use a common software provider, and leverage best-in class capabilities of the tool.”

Where will Digital Twins go next? 

According to Emerging Digital Technology Architect Nick Purday, Digital Twins technology is poised to “expand and industrialize.”

“Expand is more than just adding Digital Twins,” Purday said. “It's about how we expand the capabilities and value of the existing Digital Twins, adding new use cases and new workflows for asset integrity, maintenance information and emissions measurement.

“Industrialize is about building out the Digital Twin Platform so that it is both sustainable and supportable across all assets,” Purday said. “We are using a single solution for our Digital Twin Software and the next step is to build out a common cloud and data access layer. In addition, we are developing a global support model that will move Digital Twins from an emerging technology to the technical capabilities.”

Purday added that the team is researching technologies to expand the use of Digital Twins for the company’s unconventional assets. The focus is on developing simple, cost-effective models. 

“The solutions that work for our large conventional fields are not necessarily appropriate for Lower 48 unconventional operations,” he said. “Research includes investigating building Twins from aerial imagery acquired from plane flights and moving up the scale to look at fast 3D data acquisition systems.” 

While expansion into more geographically spread assets is on the horizon, continued expansion of Digital Twins dense, complex assets like Norway continue to progress. During the past year, Norway successfully used their eight topside Digital Twins for the Greater Ekofisk turnaround planning and execution and gained valuable experience and ideas for expansion. Recently seven Digital Twins were added for subsea installations, including the Tor II, Tommeliten A and Eldfisk North Projects.

“Digital Twins allow us to visualize the projects under execution, and use them in preparation for handover to operations,” Staalesen said. “Subsea they provide additional benefits in processes using Remote Operating Vehicle (ROVs), where the Digital Twins represent reality as water visibility varies for the ROV. Since we cannot visit the physical subsea facilities, the digital copy of the facility provides important insights.”

The Alaska Digital Twin has expanded from one drill site (CD3) to the entire Alpine field.

“Using simplified visualization and data architecture allowed us to expand fieldwide quickly and at a very low cost,” Finocchio said. “This model may serve to benefit other legacy North Slope fields and ConocoPhillips’ assets elsewhere that do not have up-to-date 3D models of their facilities by reducing the cost of entry into Digital Twins.”

Finocchio believes other onshore assets will be able to adopt the simplified Alpine expansion model to create a fit for purpose tool.  

“But I think a lot of the progress will be happening behind the scenes,” he said. “We are working hard to implement even more consistency in the common data and software deployment architecture with our existing twins.”

Expansion to new locations such as Surmont and Montney in Canada is underway. 

“Both have similar use cases to Alaska where access to remote capabilities and visualizations is important,” Purday said.

Benefits now and into the future

Today the key benefit of Digital Twins is as a visual information hub, helping people find information quickly. For assets like Alaska, it can serve as the one-stop-shop for equipment information and drawing access.

“It's much more intuitive to go and find something when you can point to an object and ask show me the information around that object,” Purday said. “This idea that we can just click on something and get all the connected information across multiple disparate systems, is basic but huge.” 

Equally valuable is the benefit for remote work. With fewer people residing at the physical assets, Digital Twins provide tools that make it feel like they're there without being there. This is especially true for contractors that are not necessarily as familiar with facilities. It is also true for future facilities in Alaska that provide the maximum value to the company if both production and cost are optimized together.

“Fortunately, our licensing models support unlimited use of the software so that we can reach the widest possible audience,” Purday said. 

Longer term, the ambition is to expand the Digital Twins beyond visualization and digital work processes. “We're starting to build out into the Internet of Things (IOT), that would move us up the Digital Twin classification scale from visualization to monitoring. Ultimately, we'll advance to simulation where it makes sense. Three or four years down the road, we'll be touching on all those different areas of Digital Twins: visualization, monitoring and simulation.

“I see unlimited opportunities when we globally align information requirements and find smart ways to connect the data sources created.”

“In five years, I see growing value realization from existing Digital Twins, and scope to include new work processes and data integrations. I believe we will be using Digital Twins for virtual onboarding and training, including emergency preparedness training,” Staalesen said. “We could integrate Digital Twins with simulators, include digital wells, field overviews displaying active flights, bed capacity and boat traffic together with weather and wave predictions, and perhaps robot-assisted maintenance.”

Purday acknowledges possible future challenges, including the often-difficult change management process that accompanies moving from non-digital to digital workflows.

“This challenge, however, is proving easier to overcome than you might think,” Purday said. “Once people get their hands on this technology, they embrace it. Having become accustomed to similar technology in their daily lives, it’s easy to see the benefits of this. It's eye-opening.”

Support for the company's business strategy 

Safe and efficient operations are fundamental to ConocoPhillips’ long-range business strategy. Digital Twins offer a foundation for the future, addressing all the key tenets for success: safety, reliability, collaboration and innovation. 

Purday summed it up: “I can't think of a more important foundational layer than having a Digital Twin of your asset and then using this framework to integrate all your digital processes and efforts. It may be a bold statement, but I would say the Digital Twins is becoming the system of systems that deliver optimized autonomous operation of our assets.”

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Global Digital Twin Program wins CIO 100 Award

BY kathryn donelson

In late 2022, ConocoPhillips was invited to submit a technology solution to be considered for the coveted CIO 100 Award. This annual award recognizes the top 100 organizations whose teams are using IT in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth or improving relationships with customers. 

Applications are reviewed by CIO 100 editors and evaluated and scored by two external judges chosen from a panel of industry experts, academics, business executives and former CIOs. Emphasis is placed on demonstrated excellence in technology innovation and business value delivery.

“The Global Digital Twin Program was a strong candidate because of its use of leading-edge technologies,” said Sanjay Mehta, Applied Digital Technologies Manager. “The timing was ideal because the program not only met the award criteria, it had also reached a level of maturity that allowed us to prove and articulate business value.”

The CIO 100 award is an acknowledged mark of enterprise excellence in the U.S. and Canada. Adding to the prestige, ConocoPhillips was the only winner in the Oil & Gas category. As the Project Lead, Emerging Digital Technology Principal Architect Nick Purday submitted the application on behalf of the program, which comprised a global team from Emerging Digital Technology, as well as the Norway, Alaska and Australia business units.

“The Digital Twin program aligns with our digital strategy and helps further the company’s digital journey,” said Pragati Mathur, Chief Digital & Information Officer. “I am proud of the global team that exemplified how much we can accomplish when we work collaboratively and with an enterprise-wide mindset to create scalable solutions. I look forward to the many ways the program will contribute improvements in the safe, efficient operation of our assets.”

“Digital technology will drive the next wave of innovation in our industry, and digital twins are a base component of this revolution,” said Purday. “This award is important validation of how far we’ve come in digitizing our operations and assets to make them more automated, intelligent, efficient and safe. While we’re pleased to be recognized, we represent just a part of the exciting innovation happening across the company. ConocoPhillips truly is leading the way forward in the digital transformation.”