Empowering Precision Drilling to optimize asset productivity with operational digital twin

Precision Drilling is a leading drilling contractor in North America. Precision employs cutting-edge technology to deliver industry-leading performance and efficiency. Precision’s AlphaAutomation platform leverages on the power of real-time data to optimize critical drilling processes.

As today’s business environment pushes drilling operations harder and farther than before, coupled with above-inflation increases in maintenance costs and challenges in retaining talent and sourcing new labor, asset productivity has become a high priority in the energy sector.

Precision partners with Prescient to build an operational digital twin solution to optimize the productivity of its fleet of drilling equipment at scale. This solution combines data from Electronic Drilling Recorder (EDR), drilling control system, work logbook, and predictive maintenance sensors to construct a holistic view of the rig equipment performance. It enables the remote operations center to monitor hundreds of rigs at the same time and the field teams to perform equipment maintenance and inspection based on real-time data intelligence. The maintenance data continues to accumulate in a knowledge database, which enables the operations and field teams to make smarter decisions over time.

Instead of defining a massive scope at the start of the project, Precision and Prescient collaborated to take a low-code, bottom-up, and iterative process to building operational digital twins. This process started with one asset class, the mud pump, built the solution within one month, and iterated with the field team weekly to refine the solution within the second month. This process delivered immediate business impact at minimal cost, improved employee engagement and commitment, and served as the foundation for continuous innovation.

“Prescient’s low code platform and domain knowledge enabled a level of innovation and execution unheard of not only in the drilling industry, but the broader energy industry.” Says Russell Whitney, IIoT Manager at Precision Drilling. “We look forward to pursuing more projects with Prescient and challenging the status quo.”