Many different automated drilling systems come together at the driller’s chair. As a result, drillers can quickly become overwhelmed by the hundreds or thousands of alarms that these systems produce. Critical alarms are often improperly mapped or buried under lower priority alarms – or worse, not mapped at all. This situation increases the likelihood that the cause of the alarm will not be addressed and corrected quickly enough to prevent critical equipment failures, non-productive time (NPT), and health, safety and environmental (HSE) incidents.

To help prevent these circumstances, Athens Group's Proven Practices for Alarm Management include the following deliverables:

  • Alarm Philosophy Documentation including recommended improvements to your existing alarm philosophy or the preparation of an alarm philosophy document for review and approval by your representatives
  • Industry and Regulatory Requirements Review to ensure compliance with NPD YA-711, EEMUA 191, ISA 18.2 and equivalent requirements from the Brazilian ANP and UK HSE, pursuant to the availability of the pertinent documentation
  • Master Alarm Documentation including: alarm tag, alarm text, priority of the alarm, a complete description of alarm significations, the alarm annunciation point, related equipment, detailed action required of the operator, and emergency/maintenance contact(s)
  • Alarm System Training Materials including a syllabus and handouts for a “train the trainer” session
  • Periodic Audits to identify process gaps and recommend changes
  • Performance Benchmarking including the identification of metrics for alarm system performance and the recommendation of processes, methods, and tools as appropriate for measuring performance

How We're Different

  1. Our focus on the drilling control network and corresponding equipment is unique. This is an operations-critical area because it is often the only advanced warning of an impending failure.
  2. Years of experience with many common equipment combinations and integration points are documented in our Drilling Technology Assurance Knowledge Base and are and available to all our consultants, enabling them to more accurately identify potential failures and recommend effective mitigations.
  3. Because we do not manufacture or sell equipment, you can rely on our objectivity. As an independent third party, we help reduce the finger-pointing that inevitably slows delivery and reduces the quality of your asset.

Failure Point Example *

A mud pump failed on a particular rig. It was assumed that a bad sensor caused the problem. The sensor and the mud pump were replaced, leading to a subsequent failure of the replacement mud pump in the same manner as the first. The real cause of the problem was indicated by an alarm but it was buried so deep on the alarm screen that the driller never saw it. Because testing of the possible alarms had not been done, no one was aware that this alarm was being mishandled. A review of the alarms supported by the system, their prioritization and their mapping into the Human Machine Interface (HMI) on the driller’s chair could have prevented this.

* All Failure Points are issues we have identified on multiple rigs on which we have worked