6 ways Skedulo drives efficiency and safety in the oil and gas sector

The oil and gas sector has been a foundation of our world for as long as anyone can remember—playing a crucial role in powering our lives for centuries. 

While the industry faces new challenges in a post-COVID world, and is now competing with rising alternative energy sources, oil and gas is still considered to be the largest industry in the world. In the United States alone, it employs more than a million workers and represents over 5% of all jobs. 

These jobs are typically highly mobile, with workers engaged in upstream (exploration), mid-stream (transportation and processing), and downstream (refining and distributing) activities which ultimately enable delivery of services to people’s homes and businesses.  

As the industry continues to struggle with ongoing skills shortages, employers are increasingly turning to contract workers to close the gap. 

Managing a blended workforce of full time, part time, casual and contract workers who operate in the field is difficult at the best of times. But when you’re operating in a high risk environment, the challenges can seem insurmountable. 

This is why oil and gas companies are turning to smart cloud-based scheduling platforms to help them:

• Manage a highly mobile workforce
• Seamlessly schedule permanent, casual and contract workers
• Gain full oversight of field operations
• Boost operational efficiency
• Obtain data analytics for decision making

Skedulo is working with several oil and gas companies within Gulf Coast states to help them overcome their scheduling and mobile workforce management challenges. 

Here are 6 Skedulo features that oil and gas companies can leverage to simplify and improve their operations:

1. Full oversight of worker schedules for total transparency

Skedulo makes it easy to create and manage all worker schedules at a bird’s eye view. For managers and scheduling teams, this means no more disparate spreadsheets and countless emails about who is taking on what job and when. 

Complete transparency enables:

• Rapid scheduling during periods of peak demand and emergencies
• Fast replacements when a worker cannot attend a job
• Smart scheduling to maximize employee allocation of work
• Oversight of all resources across disparate locations
• Compliant scheduling to eliminate overwork and fatigue

This not only frees up schedulers and managers to focus on higher level tasks, but provides leadership with a complete overview of who is working for them, when, where, and on what tasks. 

Where an oil and gas company has staged work to be completed across multiple days (such as maintenance), Skedulo allows you to schedule “groups” of workers who are automatically notified when the prior group has completed their tasks.

2. Skills tagging and certification management for assurance

For oil and gas companies, it’s crucial to get the right person in the right place at the right time. 

Every worker entered into Skedulo can be tagged based on their skillsets, qualifications, years of experience, location, and so on. When a job needs filling, the system will automatically prompt the scheduler to choose the best person for the job based on these qualities. 

Skedulo also keeps track of certification expiry dates, so you’re never left wondering if the person you’ve sent into the field is properly qualified.

3. Route optimization to cut windshield time and increase utilization

When you’re managing a large cohort of field workers, optimizing routes and minimizing travel time matters.

The Skedulo mobile app takes care of this through our proprietary optimization engine which assigns jobs and suggests routes from the workers’ start location to the field location.

Field personnel get to where they need to be on time, waste less of their day behind the windshield, and increase utilization by more than 20%. The result is a huge impact on your bottom line.

4. Job check in and check out for safety

Health and safety is crucial in all sectors, but is especially complex for oil and gas companies. 

According to statistics, oil and gas extraction workers are 8.5 times more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident on the job than all private wage and salary workers. Falls, explosions, high pressure equipment and other risks weigh heavily on the minds of workers and employers day in and day out. 

Skedulo empowers office-based and desk-based staff to collaborate on issues of health and safety—no matter where they are. 

With the Skedulo mobile app on workers’ smartphones, schedulers can:

• See when a worker arrives on site and checks in
• Have workers read and accept safety notices before starting work
• Know when a worker leaves a site and checks out

In addition, workers can communicate centrally and in real time via the app if they have questions or the office needs to send out an emergency update.

5. Auditable data trail for informed decision making

It’s difficult to prove compliance without an auditable data trail.

Skedulo captures every scheduling decision that is made—including communications and check in/check out/break times recorded by workers in the field. 

In addition to audit and compliance, data trails enable accurate forecasting as managers and leadership can clearly see:

• Resource availability and limitations
• Demand for resources
• Gaps in resources 
• Sources of inefficiency (such as unnecessary travel time or under-utilization of resources)

6. Real time communication and self-service to empower workers

When there’s limited opportunity for two-way communication, it’s tough to know what’s happening at the frontline.

Skedulo empowers your frontline workers with real time communication and self-service functionality so they can pick up extra shifts, complete forms digitally, request assistance, make job notes, and much more. 

Workers are fully equipped with all they need to plan their own schedules, and arrive on site with everything they need to do a stellar job. 

To find out how Skedulo can support your oil and gas company with smart scheduling, reduced travel time, better health and safety plus more, simply book a free demo.