Wrycan streamlines document review and approval processes to ensure health, safety and environmental compliance standards are met at major US petroleum company.

Overview

Managing one of the largest petroleum pipeline systems in the United States, this petroleum company is responsible for pipeline systems that move crude oil from production fields to the company's refineries as well as from offshore platforms to pipeline systems owned and operated by other petroleum companies.

Wrycan partnered with Information Mapping US and together both companies were engaged to create a document management solution to not only manage the editorial process around creating and reviewing documents, but also to ensure that documents would remain compliant with respect to compliance regulations from regulatory bodies such as the Department of Transportation.

Challenges

There were numerous challenges with implementing a system to manage documents with the level of diligence required to track all points of compliance. After facilitating several information gathering sessions, we uncovered four (4) primary challenges to be addressed:

#1: Review Periods

Regulation requirements stated that documents must be reviewed on a scheduled basis and that failure to do so could result in warnings or even fines. The determination for when to review each document was being tracked by hand.

#2: Advisory Group Review and Balloting

When new documents are written or when substantial changes are made to existing documents around certain subject matter, groups of advisors need to review the documents and cast their vote with respect to the content of that document. This process was also being managed by hand.

#3: Timed Distribution of New/Updated Information

Particularly important when adding or removing safety procedures based on when old equipment is retired and new equipment takes it place, the document managers needed the ability to specify when new and updated documents would be made available once they were approved.

#4: Distribution of Materials to Remote Resources

Many of the resources that would be the consumers of the documentation managed by this solution were considered “remote” resources and would not have reliable access to the proposed documentation portal on the company’s Intranet.

Solution

Together with the client, we coined the name “controlled document”, a name given to documents that required special treatment with respect to compliance and accuracy. Starting with our XMS content management system, Wrycan implemented a web-based system to allow the customer to manage the lifecycle of all controlled documents from document creation through document distribution.

The system moves documents from one user’s web-based inbox to another, allowing users to quickly and effectively perform edits, reviews or approvals all while the system kept track of the documents and ensured that the right people were involved in the process. Once the document were reviewed and signed off on they were only distributed when appropriate.

Publications were set up to generate an a documentation portal with HTML and PDF versions of each document. The portal was designed and branded specifically for the pipeline division and it didn’t rely on any back-end system to be viewed, meaning that the portal could be shipped to remote user laptops for viewing when not connected to the company Intranet.

The client’s process oriented business logic was used to set up XMS workflows that enforced the client’s business rules around review periods and advisory group ballot reviews and the review ballots could now be done completely on the web, with each member of the advisory group able to view, comment and vote on the required documents.

The final solution also leveraged other ContentBase / XMS features including new document and change request controls, content distribution acknowledgements, and email notifications sent out at certain junctions in the document workflow to ensure people knew when they had to take action.

Result

Once the solution was introduced and users began using it to manage controlled documents, the time and effort required to request that a document be changed, perform those changes, receieve all the proper approvals for those changes and distribute to the proper end users went from a few weeks to a matter of days.

The time required to prepare for a compliance audit was drastically reduced. The review statuses of all documents were available at the fingertips of the documentation managers, allowing them to answer questions and provide a timeline of changes made to the document. Accuracy and document lifecycle enforcement reduced the possibility of documents being out of compliance, which translated to less chance of a compliance action or fine.

Contact us today to talk about how we can develop a solution for you that will save time, money and headaches.