Equipment vendors often approach the Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) more like a demo than a quality assurance milestone. Focused primarily on hardware functionality rather than software validation, control systems testing is often limited to normal conditions and verification of input/output signals between subsystems, without consideration for the control logic that is being triggered by those signals. 

As a result, many defects are not discovered until commissioning and integration testing commence, when diagnoses and fixes can be much more difficult and expensive and are likely to result in delays in rig delivery and acceptance.  To help uncover defects sooner and prevent problems that might persist for months past the start of rig operations – causing inefficiency, NPT, and increased costs – we will:

  • Review the most recent version of functional design specifications, network topology documents, and any original commissioning procedures and user documentation
  • Analyze the control signal paths and equipment state behavioral models
  • Compare the compiled specifications and stated behavioral models to the planned FAT procedures to identify weaknesses and gaps and provide risk scoring on key criteria
  • Enhance any existing FAT procedures or provide auxiliary FAT plans and procedures to be executed independently
  • Provide witness testing to help ensure that:
    • Systems are delivered per the documented specifications
    • All identified tests are completed
    • All issues identified are tracked to closure

How We're Different

  1. Athens Group’s Drilling Technology Assurance Consultants have a solid understanding of software quality and testing best-practices.
  2. We have experience working with the majority of equipment vendors, so we know the strengths and weaknesses of their methods, as well as how to improve their testing procedures.
  3. We have strong knowledge of control systems software, interfaces, network topology, and hardware.

Failure Point Example *

During FAT, a specific test was conducted to ensure the proper functioning of a piece of software that would build stands without driller intervention. The test was simply to get one length of pipe from the rack and do one make-up -- there was no testing for most of the designed sequences and no error-handling testing at all. During the test, the racker was bringing the pipe back from the fingerboards and was supposed to bring it over to a safe area. While it was doing this, one of the FAT participants reached down and pressed the emergency stop, just to make sure that it worked, which it did. But when they started up again, the racker had forgotten it was supposed to be going to the safe area and went straight to the well centre. This could have been prevented if the FAT had been designed properly.

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