Lowering risk and increasing efficiency

Pipeline operations provides a very complex environment – a highly distributed workforce, stringent and changing health safety and environmental regulations, and an on-going need for operational excellence.  There are various tools out there for the management and monitoring of the technical aspects of pipeline performance (e.g. leak detection and integrity management) – but what happens when an incident is detected? A related “human” process is intiated – to assess the problem and then solve it. These human processes are often unstructured and ad-hoc – which means that there is a guideline on how to address the issue, leaving employees to rely on their knowledge and skills to solve the specific problem. That’s not a bad thing, the problem is that the “office-work” involved executing these human processes – meetings, documents, emails – make the process unmanagable and unmonitorable. They allow people to get the work done, but they provide no feedback or visibility to management, and they allow items to fall between the cracks.

Using email and documents for these critical human processes is convenient, especially since they are usually the only tools available, but they are also at odds with the needs of the  head office.  The head office wants the work to be done effectively and efficiently, but they also need a consistent view across the organization of the status of these business critical processes, while still enabling a collaborative approach to corporate accountability and responsibility across different business areas. This is especially true when the processes are regulated, and there is the need to comply with various government regulations. Human Process Management is a way to address this issue – providing just enough structure to standard email and documents to allow these human processes to be managed, but not so much as to strangle them.

The ability to manage and track the use of emails and documents in service of a specific process also enables organizations to provide a system of record for unstructured processes. This means that you can study and analyze how actual processes evolve in the field, rather than rely on theoretical procedures and guidelines. This provides a feedback loop from the documents, describing the process to actual execution on the process in the field, which enables true organizational learning and an iterative, real-world approach to achieving operational excellence through your processes.

These human processes are everywhere. If you look closely, you’ll find that about 80% of the processes in your organization are unstructured, human processes. For example:

Compliance process audits. When a regulatory requirement is not met, many times the underlying unstructured, human process that should have ensured compliance is at fault. These underlying unstructured processes need to be audited by linking the procedure or process related to the regulation with the actual execution of that process. For example, if an emission regulation missed, it could be because of a problem in the processes or procedure related to ensuring that emission standard is met. Linking the compliance issue with the processes related to it enables an auditor to ensure that processes (as they are really executed) are relevant and up-to-date.

Audit tracking. While executing an audit, various types of findings are generated – items are missing or misplaced and procedures are not being followed. Today, most companies use emails to follow up and track the progress on solving the issues raised in the audit. This causes a flurry of emails and manual follow up, with no centralized documentation of the corrective actions being taken. Organizations need to instantly know the status of all of the actions taken as a result of the audits and can generate management reports of the standing of ongoing audits. Given today’s focus on risk management, this is a real benefit to the audit committee.

Quality issue resolution tracking. Quality issues are handled outside the standard process management systems, since they involve many people that do not use the process management systems and in many cases tend to be ad-hoc problem solving exercises, rather than rigorous pre-defined processes. For example, rectifying a problem caused by replacement parts being shipped to the wrong location usually ends up being handled via email and documents, with the last chain in the process updating the management system. However, the process of solving the issue is lost to the organization and with it any possibility of organizational learning. The organization needs to have complete records of how each quality issue was handled, and assurance that the issue was followed up to completion. Also, management has to have complete visibility of quality issues and how they are handled.

Complex project management. Project management software is great at helping plan the project and its resources, and generating reports and summaries. However, it doesn’t allow for the actual tracking of progress and communications regarding the project, since this happens outside the project management system, usually in email and documents. Using a human process management (HPM) system in conjunction with your project management software, enables the project manager to have much more real-time visibility into an executing process.

HPM systems are emerging IT tools to manage exactly these types of ad-hoc, unstructured human processes for pipeline operations. These systems provide a layer on top of traditional email and documents that allow participants to remain in their standard email and documents environment, but provide process email and process document capability. Process email acts like standard email, but is a shared, managed email which provides participants with all of the process content and context within the email itself, and a complete audit trail. Process documents are live documents that drive the execution of the process and enable users of the document to see reports of how the processes relating to the document are progressing. Process mail and process documents, in essence, link the document context and the actual process context which it describes.

 These systems let organizations work as flexibly as they can with email and documents but with the added benefit of enabling them to control and track their processes, while also providing the organization with the ability manage and gain insight into these human processes.

The author

Jacob Ukelson is CTO of ActionBase, a company that provides Human Process Management Solutions that enable businesses to manage their business critical processes.