OTC 7764 - Sharing information to promote oil & gas industry standardisation

By G.A.N. Thomas, BP International Limited; P.T.N. Reeve, Shell Intl. Petroleum Mij. B.V.; J.M. Spanhel, American Petroleum Institute.

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Abstract

This paper outlines some of the relationships and communication methods for sharing information on the standardisation work of ISO/TC 67 ‘Materials, Equipment and Offshore Structures for Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries’.

The paper also describes the development and distribution by ISO/TC 67/AG 3 of a Database of Committees, Standards and Delegates that is now freely available through the API and national standards bodies.

Introduction

ISO has been regarded as a remote group, who develop standards haphazardly and very slowly with few gaining real international acceptance. Indeed, the view still abounds that 'ISO' means the ISO 9000 series of Quality Management System standards and no more. It is becoming well known, however, that ISO is working ever more closely with the API to take the lead in maintaining key international standards for the oil and gas industry globally.

ISO works in this area not only because the industry wishes it, but also because the industry provides the technical resources that enable it to do so. The resources must be managed to maximise effectiveness and secure delivery of the standards. This information must be shared widely to be sure that all interested parties are contributing, and so that the resulting standards can be promoted for international use with confidence that benefits will accrue.

The ISO process has been well covered in papers previously presented at OTC. The most recent review of the work in ISO/TC 67 was given by Reeve, Johansen and Lautier in their 1994 OTC paper [ Ref. 1 ]. An industry update, on behalf of the E&P Forum, is given in another 1995 OTC paper by Thorp et al. [ Ref. 2 ] and this emphasises the need to improve and accelerate the processes in order to meet industry needs.

ISO/TC 67 has seventeen standards published (at end 1994) and has some one hundred work items on the work programme. This work programme will expand in 1995 as more new work items are introduced. This information is being communicated in a variety of ways: formally, through the established hierarchy of standardising bodies; informally by papers such as this one; by training workshops; and by industry and company initiatives for standard presentations and Newsletters.

ISO/TC 67 has an Advisory Group, AG3, whose work includes maintaining information in the form of an electronic database for Committees, Standards and Delegates. This database was first issued in 1994, and forms the principle management information tool for ISO/TC 67 to plan and coordinate the work. This paper describes the AG3 Database in some detail.

The overall goal of the communication initiatives is to encourage the widest participation in ISO/TC 67 and the associated work. It is intended that duplication of work at regional, national and company level is avoided, and that the industry world-wide can agree a "single set of words" for adoption at all levels. Successful promotion of this solution to practising engineers will deliver benefits including whole life cost reduction and operations integrity; safety and environmental protection as well as equipment reliability.

The adage is ‘Do it once, do it right, do it internationally’.

Standards bodies—hierarchy

The oil and gas industry itself is not concerned to compartmentalise the types of organisations that publish standards. Companies will adopt a useful document, whatever its origins, provided that it is fit for purpose. And the industry has in many cases developed its own standards through voluntary cooperation.

The industry has now begun to work within the existing framework of international standards-making. And in some regions of the world, for example in Europe, the industry is subject to legislation that formalises this framework. The framework gives an hierarchy among the many standards bodies, that is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Standards bodies relationships

The oil and gas industry needs to acknowledge this framework and understand it in order to make effective use of the existing systems, particularly for sharing information and ensuring appropriate representation to create a single set of international industry standards. It is clear from this framework that the ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation (together with the IEC its companion organisation for electrotechnical matters) is where the national bodies can work formally together. Current industry efforts are focused on ISO, in particular on technical committee no. 67 (ISO/TC 67).

International, Regional and National standards bodies are ‘recognised’, both by each other, and by other agencies for example government agencies. The national bodies are the key; it is the national bodies who have joined together regionally and internationally to form bodies such as CEN and CENELEC (the European regional standards bodies) and ISO and IEC. Representatives from the national bodies govern these ‘higher’ bodies, run their committees, and nominate the experts to their working groups.

The national bodies are recognised as providing an open and transparent forum for all national interests to be represented: industry (users, manufacturers), regulators, consumer groups, environmental groups, social partners etc.

Other organisations, that may be nationally or internationally based, are not ‘recognised’ standards bodies in this formal hierarchy. They normally provide their technical input through a national standards body. However the regional and international bodies do have mechanisms for allowing a formal position for regional and international industry bodies, known as ‘liaison’ status. This allows participation but no voting rights. The Oil Industry International Exploration and Production Forum (E&P Forum, see below) is one such body, that has a formal liaison status with ISO/TC 67 as indicated in Figure 1.

The implementation of the distinction between national bodies (above the line in Figure 1) and industry organisations (below the line in Figure 1) has some subtle variations of emphasis in different regions, and two are contrasted below.

United States

In the United States, the distinction between ANSI, the American National Standards Institute and an organisation such as the API, the American Petroleum Institute is of mostly academic interest. ANSI is the ‘recognised’ national standards body of the United States, while the API is a industry sector organisation financed by that industry to serve the industry needs. ANSI accredits many associated bodies such as API, as competent to develop and issue standards in particular fields. ANSI itself provides an umbrella for these bodies. It provides a formalised voting mechanism that allows documents to become 'ANSI/API' standards, but does not play a part in the programming nor in the technical work.

API has procedures for its technical work that ensure participation by all sides of industry. In some cases they are organised into ‘'user’ and ‘manufacturer’ subcommittees, that establish a factional position for a main committee to reach consensus. The resulting document, when published, is in effect a national industry consensus standard.

The United States government is content to refer to API Standards, perhaps requiring legislative compliance, without concern as to whether the API Standards are ‘ANSI-recognised’. Within the United States domestic scene, then, the advantage of ‘promoting’ API standards to become ‘ANSI/API’ may not be obvious. Therefore for many years the API standards remained as API documents. Only recently in response to international considerations have many API Standards become ‘ANSI/API’, and in that way have become standards that can be ‘recognised’; in Europe for example.

Europe

The national standards body in a European country has been historically important. The typical national standards body itself includes committees dealing with all aspects of national standardisation. The British Standards Institution (BSI) is an example. BSI has various sectors such as mechanical engineering, information technology, building and construction. Each sector has committees and subcommittees in which representatives participate. Every BSI committee is open to any interested organisation (but not to individuals except by invitation). People wishing to participate normally form or join a pressure group that is accepted by BSI as validly representing a faction of national interest.

Below the line in Figure 1 are the industry and other private and public organisations and pressure groups that may nominate representatives to BSI. Figure 1 shows a couple of examples: EEMUA the Engineering Equipment and Materials Users Association represents users of major equipment in the process and energy industries. A different organisation, the EIC (Energy Industries Council) represents the manufacturers.

The companies nominate their staff to committees in these ‘below-the-line’ organisations, who in turn nominate representatives to the BSI committees. The BSI committees nominate representatives and experts to ISO and CEN committees.

Overall

The United States and European models are different ways of achieving the same goal. Variations in these models are found in the standards bodies in other parts of the world. The typical European roles of factional pressure group and national standards bodies are, in the US, combined in the committee arrangements of a single accredited industry body. When the different cultures meet to work together, there is clearly some learning required to maximise the effective use of the resources that are provided by the various routes.

And when a line is drawn between ‘recognised’ and others, it is the differences rather than the similarities that are highlighted. This line and its consequences has generated much debate in Europe, and has been the driver for API to 'promote' many of its E&P and Refining Standards to become 'ANSI/API'.

Cascading information through the hierarchy of standards bodies

An advantage of the hierarchy described above is that a unique formal route is established for cascading information on ISO activity to all interested parties. Any-one who wishes to be in the information chain has only to be a member of a relevant industry body in order to receive information via the national standards body.

Figure 2 gives some indication of how this works in BSI. At the top is shown the Committee and Subcommittee structure of ISO/TC 67. Within BSI, a series of ‘shadow’ committees are linked to each of the ISO committees; when BSI receives papers from ISO, they are automatically routed to the BSI secretary of the designated ‘shadow’ committee. The BSI secretary circulates all papers to the people who are registered on the committee roster.

Figure 2. UK national hierarchy for cascading information from ISO/TC 67 and its Subcommittees

The BSI committee members mostly represent industry organisations and pressure groups who have their own rules for what happens next, ranging from formal procedures for further cascade, to informal networking. The better-organised groups (in this respect) tend to have their own committee structures that formally nominate the BSI committee member and that require reporting back. The company members of these groups then receive the information and can distribute this within their companies.

Informal networking

The drawback of the formal cascade described above is the sheer volume of detailed and often indigestible material that is received. There is a role for informal networking, in that specific information is targeted at people who can make use of it.

In practice, much of the useful business is done by informal but proactive networking that allows progress to be made and the necessary experts to contribute when necessary. The formal committee procedures then provide both a reality check and a fall-back position should important national interests feel excluded.

ISO — the international organisation for standardisation

ISO communicates in a variety of ways. There is the ISO committee structure, where the Technical Management Board cascades to the Technical Committee, and the TC cascades to the Subcommittees and Working Groups (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. ISO Committee structure

The Central Secretariat of ISO uses a variety of media, including:

the ISO/IEC Directives — these set out the rules and procedures for setting up and running committees, for performing the work, and for the drafting and presentation of standards. The ISO/IEC Directives can be purchased, e.g. from national standards bodies.
ISO Communiqué—– this is a periodic newsletter that typically includes information from the Technical Management Board and the executive. However, this seems to be neither widely nor consistently distributed.
ISO Programme Database — this is maintained in Geneva and print-outs are available on request to the technical committees. It gives the status of all work items on the committee work programmes, with target dates and latest dates achieved. Normally a print-out is sent to each TC once a year, however ISO/TC 67 is receiving this four time a year. A drawback is that information is entered and updated based on formal committee resolutions and can therefore be significantly out of date.
Internet — ISO has details of its committees, and its draft and published standards, available on the Internet world wide web. This is to be welcomed, with the hope also that this will presage new and more effective ways of working.

A way forward to communicate the widespread adoption of ISO Standards, is for all bodies that publish them to retain the ISO numbers. There will then be a single set of numbers used world-wide. In Europe, CEN and the national bodies have recently reached this agreement. The ISO 9000 standard published in 1994 is adopted in Europe as EN ISO 9000, and in the UK as BS EN ISO 9000.

E&P Forum

The upstream International oil companies have found the E&P Forum to be a useful forum for sharing information and identifying common ground regarding international standards. All face the problem of voluminous in-house standards and procurement costs that are higher than they should be. The international industry has reached a consensus position on the way ahead, and this is described in Ref. 2.

The E&P Forum has created a standard presentation that is freely available on 3.5 inch diskette in one of the leading personal computer presentation software formats. This presentation has already been used successfully in a variety of fora.

The E&P Forum also allows oil companies to share their own internal communication initiatives. Internal Newsletters are an effective way to communicate widely within a company. The success of the ISO work depends on up-take by specifying engineers and a culture change within companies is necessary in order to maximise the benefits.

ISO / TC76 / AG 3

ISO/TC 67 ‘Materials, Equipment and Offshore Structures for Petroleum and Natural Gas Industries’ has established an advisory group AG3 ‘Planning and Liaison’. AG3 is about delivering the ISO Standards needed by the oil industry. Its scope is to assist in the overall management, planning and coordination, and in providing direction to the TC67 subcommittees and working groups.

AG3 is working with the ISO and TC67 secretariats to improve procedures and to provide management information. The TC67 secretariat has developed a training workshop for secretariats and working group experts to assist them in meeting time and quality goals. This was held in 1994 at four European sites, and US locations are planned for 1995.

AG3 is also working to develop guidance for the working groups on interpretation of the ISO Directives and on the approaches and solutions to common problems such as normative references, metrication, use of product specification levels, regional requirements, TC67 supplementary procedures for new work proposals, and advice on the Vienna Agreement and on parallel voting in CEN.

AG3 database

AG3, assisted by the E&P Forum, has developed a three-part database. AG3 has recommended that the AG3 database should be the primary form for recording TC67 progress information. The TC67 secretariat will use the AG3 database information to pass to ISO/CS for ISO/CS to maintain their database up-to-date.

Background

By 1993 there was clearly a need to improve the management information available to all those participating in the efforts of ISO/TC 67. An AG3 sub-group met to discuss the options; it was agreed that a database was needed — but using what format and protocols?

The decision was made to adopt a personal computer format that would run with the operating systems of the two leading hardware platforms worldwide. The data would be available as a two-dimensional spreadsheet, in the format of one of the leading cross-platform programs. However for functionality and user-friendliness, the leading cross-platform flat file database software was chosen. The AG3 database was constructed, and the Figures that follow in this paper are computer screens using this database software.

The spreadsheet format data is obtained from the database, as raw data with no user interface. The spreadsheet format provides a base level interchange format that gets over the problem of attempting to impose a single sophisticated solution on a diverse international community. Recipients can easily import the spreadsheet data into whatever system they prefer, and can construct their own user interface.

The AG3 Database is maintained by the Exploration & Production Department of the American Petroleum Institute, USA on behalf of ISO/TC 67/AG 3. It may be freely copied and distributed.

Objective

The objective of the AG3 Database is to provide information; both to improve the management of the activity in ISO/TC 67 and to enable anyone who is interested to find out what is happening. The database provides easy access to information on:

what standards are published and in progress;
which are the responsible organisations and committees;
what are the target dates for drafts and for publication;
who are the people involved.

Scope

The AG3 Database is, in software terms, three separate database files that contain details as follows:

Committees — titles, scopes, national secretariats and chairmen of several hundred technical committees, subcommittees and work groups of interest to the petroleum and natural gas industries, mostly in ISO and CEN.
Standards — titles and publication dates; and for work in progress, target and actual progress dates, and the name of the Project Leader. All ISO/TC 67 and CEN/TC 12 work items are included.
Delegates — chairmen, secretaries, national representatives to TCs and SCs, work group experts and Project Leaders. Their postal addresses, telephone and FAX numbers and, where available, e-mail addresses are included.

Operating the database

Main Menu

Each database (Committees, Standards and Delegates) has a ‘Main Menu’ from which all the necessary facilities are available. There are buttons for information about the database and this version, and for HELP. There are buttons for finding and displaying the information wanted.

Layouts

Apart from the Main Menu, the database contains four types of Layout:

Information layouts — such as Help text
‘Find’ Forms — for entering search criteria to find particular information
‘Browse’ Layouts for viewing the data, in summary or in detail, after finding it
‘Print’ Layouts — special for printing (sized for both A4 and US letter paper)

Buttons

‘Buttons’ are highlighted areas on the screen for performing pre-defined tasks. To ‘press’ a button, the mouse pointer is moved over that area and the mouse button is clicked. In both Summary and Detailed ‘Browse’ layouts, buttons at the top of the screen allow rapid access to Sorting and Printing.

Committee database

The Main Menu of the Committee Database is shown in Figure 4. The buttons on the main menu allow the particular committees or groups of committees to be found.

Figure 4. Committee database main menu

The user interface is intended to be self-explanatory. There is a two-page printed user guide available [ Ref. 3 ]. However there is more comprehensive on-line help: Figure 5 is the Help Menu from the Committee database.

Figure 5. Committee database help menu

The ‘Find’ form for ‘Find particular Committee(s) by Number or Title’ is shown in Figure 6. Here the user has selected ‘ISO’ and has entered the word ‘petroleum’. The database will find all committees in ISO with ‘petroleum’ in the title.

Figure 6. Committee Database ‘Find’ Form

The database will display all committees matching the description, in a summary style. Any one can be selected, to view the details that are shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Committee database details

Standards Database

The Standards Database is the principle element of the AG3 Database. The Main Menu is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8. Standards database main menu

Figure 9 is an extract from the simple summary display, where the ISO/TC 67 standards published (at end 1994) have been found.

Figure 9. Standards database simple summary

The Standards Database provides a variety of options for sorting and printing. One of the print layouts provides the data for each standard in a condensed landscape format to minimise the number of pages needed to print out comprehensive information. For more extended individual information, the detailed summary illustrated in Figure 10 is available.

Figure 10. Standards database — details of a standard

The data for each Standard includes ‘Related Standards (Documents used as a Basis or Derived from)’. The ISO Standards show the original API Standard and the data sheet (DS) reference for the intended future CEN Standard. The responsible committee is also shown.

Dates and Performance

AG3 intends to make good use of the ‘Dates and Months Delay’ data, see Figure 10. When work items are initiated, target dates are set for the ISO Stages 2.8, 3.8 and 5.3 that correspond to completion of working draft, completion of committee draft, and final publication. Any changes to the Original Target Dates are then recorded as the ‘Latest’ Target Dates and the difference, or delay, is calculated.

When the above milestones are achieved, the actual dates are recorded. The times between actual and target dates are calculated. The database allows work items to be sorted in order of maximum to minimum delay therefore non-conformances are easily spotted.

Also calculated are the actual times from Start to Stage 3.8, and from Start to Publication. This will allow performance to be measured over time, and statistics to be collated. In particular, the recent ISO Technical Management Board target of three years from ‘Conception to DIS’ will aim to be bettered by ISO/TC 67 in the measurement of ‘Start to Stage 3.8’.

Delegates Database

In addition to allowing individual delegates to be found, the Delegates database allows all delegates to be found for a specified committee or work group, for a particular company, or a particular country. Delegates are also classified as ‘Oil/Gas company’, ‘Vendor/Supplier’ or ‘Other’.

The Delegates database allows address labels to be printed on A4 or US-sized label paper with either 8 or 18 labels per page. This is intended to help the secretaries and convenors to rapidly circulate their papers; and therefore to encourage them to feed back changes for the next update.

Feedback

Users are invited to submit suggestions for improving both the form and the content of the database. However the essential feedback is from the subcommittees and work groups, to provide up-to-date information so that the data adapts to be credible and useful for everyone.

Conclusion

The oil industry representatives working in ISO/TC 67 and the associated organisations, recognise that a culture change is necessary in ISO, if the standards are to be delivered and used. The ISO culture is voluntary and introverted. There needs to be customer focus, improved management information, and more help for working groups to deliver to time targets.

It is intended that the initiatives described in this paper will help the industry to achieve the goal of a single set of standards for use worldwide.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the resources provided by their organisations to prepare and present this paper, and for their permission to publish.

The authors also wish to acknowledge the many participants in the internationalisation process, and in particular the members of ISO/TC 67/AG 3 who have encouraged and supported the initiatives described in this paper.

References

Reeve, P.T.N, Johansen, A.R. and Lautier, J.: ‘International Standards for the Oil and Natural Gas Industries: A Review Paper’, Offshore Technology Conference, OTC 7554, Houston 1994
Thorp, G. et al. ‘The Development and Use of International Standards for the Oil and Gas Industries. The International Oil Industry’s Exploration and Production Forum’s Position’, Offshore Technology Conference, OTC 7759, Houston 1995.
ISO/TC 67/AG 3 ‘Database User Guide and Operating Instructions’, ISO/TC 67/AG 3 Document N 46, October 1994.