As part of Stena AB, one of the largest family-owned companies in Sweden, Stena Drilling has a rich heritage.
But the contractor, which provides drilling units and related services for the oil and gas exploration and production industries, is also constantly looking to innovate and adopt new technologies.
It has worked with Cohesive since 2019 to ensure its assets – including one semi-submersible unit and five MPD Proven Ultra Deep Water DP3 drill ships – are managed as effectively as possible, using the Maximo enterprise asset management (EAM) system.
In October 2024 it decided to step-up its asset management and transition to the IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS). MAS is a single, integrated platform that uses AI, IoT and analytics to optimize performance, extend asset lifecycles and reduce operational downtime.
Together our teams have successfully completed this complex technology program – on time and on budget. MAS is now live at Stena Drilling and will be used as its core asset management system across its fleet.
The project is believed to mark the first time that the MAS solution has been used in a disconnected state (ie. not connected to the internet) in a marine environment.
Overcoming challenges
The implementation, which got underway in October 2024, presented multiple challenges: First, Stena had seven Maximo environments. One, their ‘central instance’, was hosted on premise at their Aberdeen based HQ, and used by their 30 strong team of onshore personnel. In addition, they had six remote instances based on each vessel. To overcome connectivity challenges found when working in remote geographies, these environments were used in a ‘disconnected state’, meaning they are not connected to the internet.
Stena instead used Cohesive’s proprietary data replicator tool, CDR, to seamlessly synchronize data between its Aberdeen HQ and the remote sites. The CDR was designed by Cohesive to support business continuity by overcoming high latency and low bandwidth restrictions and enabling reliable, two-way, read-write data replication across remote sites, mobile teams, and disconnected environments.
Secondly, the new architecture requirements for MAS posed complexities, especially for local installations on vessels. Single Node OpenShift (SNO) was not a standard deployment for MAS implementations at the time.
Disconnected MAS deployments needed solutions for user and license management, and media updates. These issues are absent in a connected model but require overcoming technical challenges in this disconnected model.
Seamless service
To eliminate downtime during the upgrade and ensure each remote instance could be upgraded in series, Cohesive used our proprietary Cohesive Data Utility (CDU) tool – an ETL toolkit designed to support complex MAS upgrades, like those found in offshore and remote environments. It ensures a near zero downtime upgrade, whilst mitigating much of the risk associated with ‘big bang’ upgrades. The CDU is switched off and removed once all users have moved to the target Maximo environment and the system is ‘live.
Cohesive also provided another distinct offering – our Cohesive Cloud Maximo Application Suite hosting. This single source, end-to-end turnkey MAS hosting and implementation offering enables upgrade clients to focus on their core business without having to become familiar with the OpenShift/Red Hat platform.
Mission complete with MAS
The Stena Drilling team is now able to fully realize all the capabilities of MAS to enhance their asset performance management and their reliability centred maintenance.
Martin Eklund, Asset Performance Superintendent at Stena Drilling, said: “One of the biggest benefits of working with Cohesive has been their understanding of our business and how we operate. Having a project team from similar backgrounds has been key to success.
“Committing to this upgrade would unlikely materialize without guarantees as to having the same professional core team as we had back in 2019. Maximo Application Suite will enable us to expand further in the powerful areas of Industry 4.0.”
Cohesive will now continue to work with Stena to implement further MAS capability. Our voyage together continues…