Effective Alarm and Boundary Management
Optimizes Offshore Platform Startup
Greenfield alarm and boundary optimization project avoids costly problems
Case Study
About the Company
A new deep-water oil production platform is a gigantic project costing hundreds of millions
of dollars. The startup and initial operation must be smooth and uneventful. Historically,
major and expensive problems occur with the alarm and control systems during the startup
of a new platform.
The owners, a leading company in energy exploration and production, were determined
to have better results in the startup of one of the world's largest offshore platforms. They
engaged Hexagon for initial best-practices alarm configuration and for new technology for the
management of operational boundaries.
Challenge
On previous projects in the company, initial designs of process alarm systems were
regularly suboptimal, which resulted in poor alarm system performance in production.
These previous failures to properly configure the alarm system in the first place led to
startups that were plagued with thousands of nuisance alarms, high alarm rates and
major alarm floods. Instead of realizing its intended purpose, the alarm system became a
serious distraction and operators lost the ability to detect and resolve abnormal conditions,
resulting in needless and expensive shutdowns.
It is well known that correcting alarm problems post-startup can take years of expensive
rework. Thus, the goal for this major project was to have a properly configured alarm system
from the outset.
Business Benefits:
• Faster startup
without unnecessary
shutdowns
• Improved abnormal
situation handling
• Reduced operator
fatigue
• Automatic
notifications of
changes that
violate established
boundaries
• Automated
management of
change of alarm
and safety system
configuration
