Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A) Ltd.

Registered in England No. 06820031

(Incorporating the wholly owned subsidiary companies ORA Systems Ltd. and ORA Services Ltd.)

Introduction

Over the last 15 years, the leading Project Performance Analysis companies have been monitoring the performance of Oil & Gas Mega-Projects, evaluating them against the four questions listed opposite.

Data from 300+ projects showed that more than 65% of projects were judged as having failed on one or more of these criteria and many exhibited continuing operational problems into the 2nd and 3rd years after start-up.

Essentially, stakeholders in such projects cannot wait until a project is declared as complete and handover to the operations team is imminent, to discover that something has been omitted or overlooked which would subsequently prevent or restrict operation of the asset to the design intent.

The solution to this problem is to ensure the requirements of the Owner/Operator are addressed during the conceptual, design and construction processes to ensure the Operability and Maintainability (and therefore the viability) of the asset is achieved. This is done using the Operations Readiness & Assurance process.

What is Operations Readiness & Assurance (OR&A)?
Operations Readiness describes the process of preparing the custodians of an asset under construction (and the supporting organisation) such that, at the point of delivery/handover, that organisation is fully prepared to assume ownership of the asset, accepts responsibility for, (and is capable of), performing the safe and efficient operation of that asset in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner.

Assurance, in this context, refers to the act of providing assurance to the various stakeholders in a project or venture that both their asset and supporting organisation is in a state of Readiness to Operate, (or that it will be, by the time acceptance/handover occurs).

OR&A is a continuous process that is implemented from the earliest point in a project, ending after a successful handover to the asset custodian is achieved.

Involvement of the operations team as early as possible in the project ensures that critical decisions can be validated during the project concept, incorporating Lessons Learned and Best Practice examples from earlier projects and avoiding many of the mistakes often made in the pre-feed and early design phases when practical operational experience is overlooked. The OR&A process includes the identification and collection of Lessons Learned during the project.

Using this approach, Life-Cycle cost and Total Cost of Ownership is often significantly reduced, however, this can only be achieved by application of a structured process (OR&A) and a rigorous governance process to monitor compliance.