Dealing with the unexpected
An unfortunate meeting between one of our desanders and a low bridge brought out the best in our company culture and taught us a lot more about improving our game than we could ever imagine.
The scene played out in a smaller country in Western Europe several years ago, where a trailer carrying one of our desanders was manoeuvring towards its destination on narrow roads. Along the route were underpasses at several bridges, and one of them turned out to be too low for the load on the trailer bed.
The impact buckled metal, skewed the welded frame of the desander and damaged expensive, high-tech components. When the unfortunate message was relayed to our headquarters in Bergen, many of us thought: Now what?
An incident like this has significant consequences. Our equipment is highly specialized and configured for a specific installation, and it’s simply not the case of being able to pick another identical unit off a shelf somewhere. Operational windows for installing equipment can be very tight; miss the window and the operator must find other options or delay for months or even years. And of course, the cost of destroying perfectly good equipment in an accident is counted in millions of NOK.
But incidents do happen, as everyone in this business knows. The key lies in how you respond to and learn from such incidents.
The scene played out in a smaller country in Western Europe several years ago, where a trailer carrying one of our desanders was manoeuvring towards its destination on narrow roads. Along the route were underpasses at several bridges, and one of them turned out to be too low for the load on the trailer bed.
The impact buckled metal, skewed the welded frame of the desander and damaged expensive, high-tech components. When the unfortunate message was relayed to our headquarters in Bergen, many of us thought: Now what?
An incident like this has significant consequences. Our equipment is highly specialized and configured for a specific installation, and it’s simply not the case of being able to pick another identical unit off a shelf somewhere. Operational windows for installing equipment can be very tight; miss the window and the operator must find other options or delay for months or even years. And of course, the cost of destroying perfectly good equipment in an accident is counted in millions of NOK.
But incidents do happen, as everyone in this business knows. The key lies in how you respond to and learn from such incidents.
All hands on deck
In this particular case, the FourPhase company culture and mindset came to the fore. This was an all-hands-on-deck call, bringing together key personnel from engineering, finance, HR, quality assurance and sales to assess and handle the damage, start a candid dialogue with our customer, brainstorm alternative solutions and settle on a plan of action. We got really busy, really quickly.
Of course, we have insurance protection that kicks in when unforeseen incidents like this happens, and that is a good financial foundation to build incident management on. With the damaged unit back in our workshop, we could sort through the wreckage and determine what needed to be replaced, either from our own inventory or from subcontractors. Lead time is a factor for sourcing specialized equipment, but a flexible and can-do attitude from trusted suppliers helps a lot. So does a customer who was quite understandably unhappy but also able and willing to adapt their operational schedule to accommodate a delayed delivery of a new desander.
While our engineers had their hands full rebuilding the damaged unit, our quality assurance people were looking for the root cause of the incident. We had over 100 deliveries without mishaps before this. Top of mind was also the fact that this was actually the second of two similar incidents in a short time span, and we were both a bit embarrassed and determined not to let this happen again.
Quality assurance works according to ISO standards and maintains a risk matrix that applies to everything we do. Needless to say, our risk matrix now reflects measures to guard against similar risks that have been embedded in our quality system.
Of course, we have insurance protection that kicks in when unforeseen incidents like this happens, and that is a good financial foundation to build incident management on. With the damaged unit back in our workshop, we could sort through the wreckage and determine what needed to be replaced, either from our own inventory or from subcontractors. Lead time is a factor for sourcing specialized equipment, but a flexible and can-do attitude from trusted suppliers helps a lot. So does a customer who was quite understandably unhappy but also able and willing to adapt their operational schedule to accommodate a delayed delivery of a new desander.
While our engineers had their hands full rebuilding the damaged unit, our quality assurance people were looking for the root cause of the incident. We had over 100 deliveries without mishaps before this. Top of mind was also the fact that this was actually the second of two similar incidents in a short time span, and we were both a bit embarrassed and determined not to let this happen again.
Quality assurance works according to ISO standards and maintains a risk matrix that applies to everything we do. Needless to say, our risk matrix now reflects measures to guard against similar risks that have been embedded in our quality system.
The (simple) solution
In the end, we were able to rebuild the damaged unit, test it to ensure that it was working perfectly, and ship it off to our customer for installation in one operational piece. But what did we change, and what were the lessons learned? It turned out that that one, simple change in how we shipped our deliveries was crucial.
Our desanders are built to fit a standardised well slot of 2.2 x 2.2 metres footprint and a height of 3,65 metres. On top of a lowboy semi-trailer bed, the load height is supposed to be below standard bridge clearances. Except for bridges that do not follow standard, of course.
The solution was to ship our equipment laying down.
This simple change entailed that we build our desanders with some additional component supports within the outer frame, but benefits were greater than this small, extra cost. Trailer capacity is unchanged; we had eliminated the risk of hitting bridges and learned more to boot.
It also turned out that laying a desander on its side lets us fit the whole unit with additional equipment inside a 20-foot open-top ship container. As container transport is regarded as “regular” transport this is cheaper as opposed to “special” transport that does not conform to standard handling and logistics routines. With the desander laying down, it also fit well in aircraft when equipment needs to be airfreighted to global destinations, simplifying this process and enabling quicker response time as well.
Our desanders are built to fit a standardised well slot of 2.2 x 2.2 metres footprint and a height of 3,65 metres. On top of a lowboy semi-trailer bed, the load height is supposed to be below standard bridge clearances. Except for bridges that do not follow standard, of course.
The solution was to ship our equipment laying down.
This simple change entailed that we build our desanders with some additional component supports within the outer frame, but benefits were greater than this small, extra cost. Trailer capacity is unchanged; we had eliminated the risk of hitting bridges and learned more to boot.
It also turned out that laying a desander on its side lets us fit the whole unit with additional equipment inside a 20-foot open-top ship container. As container transport is regarded as “regular” transport this is cheaper as opposed to “special” transport that does not conform to standard handling and logistics routines. With the desander laying down, it also fit well in aircraft when equipment needs to be airfreighted to global destinations, simplifying this process and enabling quicker response time as well.
Pulling together
We have now adapted our business model to include lease options for desanders. This makes sense financially for customers, but also gives a degree of freedom and flexibility for FourPhase. With our current suite of topside desanders a replacement unit is easier to find, as we can now make use of stored units to facilitate a faster turnaround time in case of damaged gear.
The best learning, however, was seeing how the entire company came together when most needed. We find that this is what really embodies FourPhase culture. We emphasise a collaborative, problem-solving and agile approach to whatever challenges arise. In circumstances like these, people step up, get together and start working on solutions to manage risk and safeguard deliveries.
Check out our problem solving for customers with sand producing wells in our case study section LINK
The best learning, however, was seeing how the entire company came together when most needed. We find that this is what really embodies FourPhase culture. We emphasise a collaborative, problem-solving and agile approach to whatever challenges arise. In circumstances like these, people step up, get together and start working on solutions to manage risk and safeguard deliveries.
Check out our problem solving for customers with sand producing wells in our case study section LINK