NEO Energy’s strategy is to build a leading producer in the UKCS through operational excellence and a combination of organic and inorganic growth, underpinned by a culture of continual improvement.

NEO is targeting production of 100,000 BOEPD in 2022 and continued growth beyond.

In 2020 NEO completed the acquisition from Total of a portfolio of operated and non-operated assets in the UK North Sea. The transaction includes NEO’s operatorship of two asset clusters, the Quad 15 and Flyndre areas, and an operator organisation of more than 60 highly experienced employees and contractors. NEO appointed Sword to undertake the associated IT transition work.

In 2020 NEO completed the acquisition from Total of a portfolio of operated and non-operated assets in the UK North Sea. The transaction includes NEO’s operatorship of two asset clusters, the Quad 15 and Flyndre areas, and an operator organisation of more than 60 highly experienced employees and contractors. NEO appointed Sword to undertake the associated IT transition work.

This focused on:

• Operational continuity first
• Minimising change
• Standardisation & Cloud-first strategy
• Reduction of vendor risk

Sword’s involvement in this work started in 2019, shortly after the agreement to acquire the Total assets was signed. There then followed a period of eleven months between signing and completion of the transaction in August 2020, during which Sword and NEO worked closely together to prepare for go live – against a backdrop of a global pandemic that necessitated new ways of working.

Sword rose to the challenge with up to forty people, including third parties, working via Teams to co-ordinate go-live activities. Mobilisation offshore was impacted in particular by the pandemic but was overcome by doing more remotely and working within the necessary restrictions for the essential offshore work. Sword take full responsibility for the project including Ping and other providers.

Based in Scotland, Ping Network Solutions is a Cisco Gold Partner and leading provider of Network and Security Managed Services. They are committed to delivering unrivalled expertise and service levels to their customers across a variety of sectors and are a prominent M&A network transition specialist to the energy sector.

Ping’s key partners include Cisco and Palo Alto Networks allowing them to provide best of breed solutions to their customers. Ping’s state-of-the-art Network Operations Centre enables them to provide proactive services to their global client base to ensure their critical infrastructure is monitored, managed and maintained twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week.

Terry Neill, Technical Services Director for Ping said:

“Ping were delighted to work with Sword on the transition of this asset from Total to NEO. Our offshore experience and our knowledge of the asset provided Sword with the comfort that we would deliver the project on time, on budget and in a safe manner.

Our offshore technical team are certified to the highest level of Cisco accreditation (CCIE) and this really enabled us to lead the network transition aspect of this project to ensure the network was designed, implemented and all services migrated in a seamless and efficient manner whilst ensuring operations could continue safely with minimal disruption to the asset.”

The Scope of Sword’s Work:

• Standing up a new UK office, datacentre and refreshing the FPSO IT equipment, rollout of solutions and on-boarding 170+ staff and contractors
• Provisioned a suite of on-prem and Cloud solutions supporting over 70 applications
• Built a SharePoint environment serving both internal staff and external partners with engineering, corporate and subsurface data
• Supported the procurement of IT services and hardware
• Transferred and reorganised over 400TB of data
• Re-designed the technical solution mid-project in line with change in parent organisation
• Completed the final IT transition from Total to NEO in three days

Sword helped NEO procure, design and install IT services and hardware to operate the assets as part of NEO. Partner organisations such as Ping provided communications and telecoms services to ensure NEO had offshore telemetry, public address and communications to operate safely and effectively, all managed by Sword.

Significant time and effort went into building a Microsoft SharePoint system to support the project activities and house well over one million GDPR-compliant records, replacing ProArc, LiveLink and Documentum systems. This included 32 new workflows and meant simpler operations, reduced software and support costs.

NEO IT Director, Jonathan Davis, commented: “We chose Sword as our IT transition partner as we valued their experience on the UKCS. We were delighted that Sword helped us through a complex transition journey and delivered our collective goal of a successful IT transition, without adversely impacting ongoing business operations.”

An asset transfer is clearly more than an IT project, which is where Sword’s wide experience helps:

• Experience of asset transfers of differing types and sizes over many years
• Partner network in oil & gas technical systems, we bring everything together
• Contracts & procurement, managing dozens of vendors – Sword has technical scopes and relationships with most of the key vendors, we know their strengths and weaknesses, and our repeat buying with them can produce lower cost solutions than buying direct
• Flexible team, in terms of skills, availability and location – all skilled in oil & gas; Sword applied its extended resource pool model to ensure the project was adaptable
• Deep knowledge of oil & gas engineering content & subsurface data
• Experts in Information Management – helping discover and govern all the data
• On-going support through our Resolve IT service desk & project teams

There are many aspects to deal with in such projects, here are some lessons learned from this transfer and previous experience.

Procurement:

• Needing to change suppliers / items to meet deadlines
• Speeding up approval cycles for purchasing, often buying on a single-source basis
• Govern all vendors so they deliver on time and meet scope requirements
• If client procures some systems these must fully integrate into the transfer project

Infrastructure:

• Constantly checking all proposed systems and interdependencies
• Watch out for long-lead items like radio licenses
• Ensure key skills are available throughout the project

Information Management:

• Ensure you start early enough to manage any engineering projects underway
• Clear log maintained for all data transfers with consents
• The buyer may modify the detail of what will be transferred and when

Applications:

• Sometimes easier to use a new system than spend too long customising another

Support:

• The cutover from the project team to on-going support is very important

Our main strength is having the experience of many transfers to draw upon, and a team with defined plans and working methods.

The successful transfer of assets is a major milestone that follows significant effort, but it is not the destination.

The next step is to ensure all systems and information are supported and governed to maintain production and work safely. This includes IT helpdesk and support services, on-going procurement, and new projects. There are multiple projects to introduce improvements post-transfer (business process reviews, infrastructure optimisation, quality improvements, increased use of analytics and dashboards to simplify things). These can all be classed as applying industry best practice, innovation and new ways of working.

Further growth is anticipated so the technical environment must be ready to scale and incorporate additional information. Having a proven partner to handle new transfers is a significant advantage to the business as there is goodwill, confidence and reduced risk.

Acquisitions are by their nature commercially sensitive, so can come as a surprise and need to move quickly once announced. However, there are factors that can be taken into account whilst deals are still at the formative stage. Asking the right questions of the seller and clarifying the scope of information and system handover can pay big dividends later. Knowing about specialist transfer partners such as Sword can also help you to move fast when the time comes.

We have scopes from many previous similar projects so can help the buyer determine their requirements without starting from scratch. Sword also advises sellers on how to prepare for transition and what information is likely to be required. This greatly helps align buyer and seller objectives and timelines.

Pre-deal:

• Is the timing technically achievable?
• Has sufficient provision been made for transition costs?
• Are there penalties for delays?
• Have you a draft scope to allow rapid RFP / proposal from your transfer partner?

Soon after deal announcement:

• What will transfer and what will not
• Security and compliance (company rules, management approval, laws such as GDPR)
• How will data be transferred, using hard disks, cloud only or other methods?
• Contracts & procurement strategy and capability/capacity
• This can be complex with so many contracts, potential novations and new bids

Sword are focused on solving key business challenges within organisations, centred around developing the management of day to day IT, helping to optimise organisational infrastructure to allow customers to focus on high value activity. Sword support customers to succeed in their digital journey by introducing and implementing technology as an enabler not an inhibitor.

Every organisation is on a journey, there are many conversations taking place around digital transformation and what it means across a range of industries. There is sometimes an assumption that Digital Transformation is an event when really, it is about leveraging what is available today to better prepare for the needs of the business moving forward. We have been digitally transforming for decades and it is a mindset of constant evolution.

Whether it is discrete projects or a long-term partnership, we want to help in all aspect of your business – we are the experts in this field and will help identify what works best for your business. We have partnered with many different clients over the last 20 years, consistently meeting the needs of their business through multiple technology developments and trends.

CNR

ENI Agip

Transition of all applications and infrastructure for the Balmoral asset including onshore support personnel

Dana

Devon

Migration of all Devon assets into Dana’s standard applications and infrastructure

Encana

Amerada Hess

Infrastructure transition of Scott applications and data plus Scott based personnel

Nexen

Encana

Implementation of Nexen corporate infrastructure following company acquisition

DNO

BP

Infrastructure transition of the Thistle platform

CNR

Kerr McGee

Full application and infrastructure transition for the Ninian/Murchison/Hutton assets to CNR

Talisman

Shell

Transition for Fulmar and Auk applications and infrastructure

Aker Kvaerner

Amerada Hess

Transition of Ivanhoe / Rob Roy (AH001 asset) as AK assumed the duty holder function from Hess

Dana

Amerada Hess

Transition of Triton FPSO and associated assets (applications, data and infrastructure)

N/A

Hess Corporation

London Office Closure – all IT + the physical and digital data storage elements of the project. Data and applications transitioned to the Houston / Copenhagen.

Chrysaor

Shell

External transition project review (mid-point and final review before go-live) of IT and Information Management elements of the project

Serica

BP

Full IT & IM transition of the asset acquisition including establishing new environments, networks and systems

Neo Energy

Total E&P

Information transfer of assets including the Global Producer III FPSO & full IT setup

Neo Energy

Spirit Energy

Babbage asset information transfer and setup of IT systems