This week’s Pipeliners Podcast episode features Ben Kauffmann discussing why improving control rooms is necessary and the importance of data governance.

In this episode, you will learn about what future control room renovations should include, why communication is important throughout the industry, and how the operations of a control center will transform.

The Control Room of the Future Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Ben Kauffmann is a Client Account Leadership & Go-to-Market Lead at Accenture. Connect with Ben on LinkedIn.
  • Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud, and security. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries, we offer Strategy and Consulting, Technology and Operations Services, and Accenture Song—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers.
• Control Room Management is regulated by PHMSA under 49 CFR Parts 192 and 195 for the transport of gas and hazardous liquid pipelines, respectively. PHMSA’s pipeline safety regulations prescribe safety requirements for controllers, control rooms, and SCADA systems used to remotely monitor and control pipeline operations.
• SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is a system of software and hardware elements that allows industrial organizations to control industrial processes locally or at remote locations, monitor, gather, and process real-time data, directly interact with devices such as sensors, valves, pumps, motors, and more through human-machine interface (HMI) software, and record events into a log file.
• User Interface (UI) is the point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device. This can include display screens, keyboards, a mouse and the appearance of a desktop.
• ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) refers to the sustainability movement in oil and gas to continue operating safely, in compliance, and in a responsible manner to do no harm while achieving business objectives.
• Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) is a pipeline-quality gas that is fully interchangeable with conventional natural gas. The quality of RNG is similar to fossil natural gas and has a methane concentration of 90% or greater.
• IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) of 2022 is a landmark United States federal law which aims to curb inflation by containing $500 billion in new spending and tax breaks that aim to boost clean energy, reduce healthcare costs, and increase tax revenues.
• HCA (High-Consequence Areas) are defined by PHMSA as a potential impact zone that contains 20 or more structures intended for human occupancy or an identified site. PHMSA identifies how pipeline operators must identify, prioritize, assess, evaluate, repair, and validate the integrity of gas transmission pipelines that could, in the event of a leak or failure, affect HCAs.
• Data governance means setting internal standards – data policies – that apply to how data is gathered, stored, processed, and disposed of. 

The Control Room of the Future Full Episode Transcript

Russel Treat: Welcome to “The Pipeliners Podcast,” episode 295, sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, providers of POEMS, the Pipeline Operations Excellence Management System, compliance and operations software for the pipeline control center to address control room management, SCADA, and audit readiness. Find out more about POEMS at EnersysCorp.com.

Announcer: The Pipeliners Podcast, where professionals, Bubba geeks, and industry insiders share their knowledge and experience about technology, projects, and pipeline operations. And now your host, Russel Treat.

Russel: Thanks for listening to the podcast. I appreciate you taking the time, and to show the appreciation, we give away a customized YETI tumbler to one listener every episode.

This week, our winner is Lily She with Shell Pipeline. Congratulations, Lily. Your YETI is on its way. To learn how you can win this prize, stick around to the end of the episode.

This week, we will speak to Ben Kaufman with Accenture, and we talk about the control room of the future. Hey, Ben, welcome to the Pipeliners Podcast.

Ben Kauffman: Thanks for having me, Russel. Much appreciated. Lovely seeing you again.

Russel: Yes. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. Before we dive in, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and your background?

Ben: Absolutely. Ben Kaufmann. 13 years working at Accenture, which is one of the big consulting houses that yourself and probably your listeners are aware of. My role within Accenture is I’m a client executive and kind of go to market lead for all things, gas at the moment, across North America. I’m based out in the West.

I’m originally a Dutchman with a German surname, so all kinds of mixtures. The work I do for our clients in this space is across gas, electricity, and water for network operators, mainly transmission, distribution, and storage operators. I’ve been working with them for the last 13 years on some of their biggest and most complex projects in transformation initiatives.

I’ve been fortunate enough that, Russel, I’ve worked around those organizations from asset management field, grid operations, regulatory strategy, and what needs to go into a rate case, to corporate services.

In those last 13 years, as it relates to what we’re going to talk about today, I’ve had the opportunity to work with…i did the count this morning.., and I was a bit shocked but over 12 engagements with different utilities in their control rooms, whether it’s a gas utility, or an electricity utility, or a water utility.

Each of them have nuances between them, and lessons that they can learn from one another. It’s a super hot topic that I’m looking forward to talking to you about today.

Russel: I should just disclose to the listeners that you and I came together because I was brought in as a third party to a project that Accenture was doing, and that was really our first time getting to know each other.

Very quickly, we figured out that we’re like minded about the control room, and where the future is going to take us in the control room. That’s what I brought you on to talk about, is the control room of the future.

That’s really the first question I want to ask is, I know that there are some utilities out there and they’re spending a fairly good sum of money, just to do the analysis to look at what they think the control room of the future is going to be. I wonder, why is that so? Why is that question about the control room of the future, why is that so topical or important today?

Ben: It’s a great question to start off with, for your listeners. There are many drivers that kick off that control room of the future. You know this, Russel, and your listeners, especially those that work in the utility industry know this.

The phenomenon of a control room is nothing new. Control rooms have existed since…I think the first one in the US was with Baltimore Gas and Electric, sometime in 1816 or ’23, something around that time frame, Thomas Edison in New York, from an electricity perspective. Why now, your question?

Russel: Mm-hmm.

Ben: What I’m seeing across Europe and across North America is that the drivers for them are pretty much the same, and that is that control room transformations are an evolution. They’ve been evolving over the last number of years.

The phrase control room of the future has in the last 10 years, really taken a foothold in the market because of the drivers of regulation, the drivers of technology advancement, new sensors being deployed across the pipes.

Russel: I would say there’s also new expectations in the public about what utility operators ought to be able to do because of their experience with technology. If you think about control rooms 20 years ago, somebody would walk into a control room and they go, “Oh, my gosh. This is so state of the art. This is so awesome.”

Nowadays, you walk into a control room and you’re like, “Huh, this doesn’t look all that state of the art.” The only difference really is the individual’s experience with technology personally versus what they see in the controls. That’s another, to my mind, a big driver. We ought to be able to do more, what do you say…?

Ben: 100 percent spot on, and the whole value for money and equity, especially as we’re talking about energy transition and what it means for you and I as consumers and customers of those utilities. Utilities are having to do more for less.

The mission has always been to safely, reliably, and efficiently transport gas, elec water, whatever you have, whatever your utility is, from receipt to delivery point, at endpoint, where it comes to the customer’s home. The whole driver around control rooms, as you mentioned too, you go across many of them, many are still doing manual processes.

Many SCADA systems are potentially end of life and need to be replaced. That is then driving people to say, “Well, if I was to relook at my control room and what we do, how can we truly transform that as an organization?”

I would even argue that – we discussed this a while back, maybe 10 or 15 years ago – utilities would say asset management investment planning is the show in town around what assets need to be deployed, but you and I both discussed and said that actually the control rooms are the heart of the business.

Customers used to have a relationship with a utility where they would know them if there was a power outage. Success for a customer would be, “I don’t know my utility necessarily because I would only know them on those negative occasions or when there’s a digger on my road, doing some work.”

Now the relationship from a customer is, “I want my bills to be low. I want to make sure that I have power when I want it. I want to have gas when I want it. I want you guys now also to be green and sustainable.” All of these driver’s exactly to your point. Customer expectations and regulator expectations have changed.

Russel: No doubt. What are the elements of a control room of the future? As we were working together on the project, we were talking a lot about that. I would say that there’s some things that are aspirational in terms of capabilities.

Then there’s other things that are very fundamental to the future, and I really want to talk about what’s fundamental to the future. I’ll tee this up. I’ll give you my take, and then I’ll let you tell me where I’m on it or not. I would say that there’s a big convergence occurring. There’s a convergence in data.

It’s getting easier to take data from different sources and of different types and bring that together for a user to interact with. That’s one aspect that’s going on. There’s another aspect that’s process convergence.

In many places in the pipeline world, we’re very immature in this. You see it in other industries, where processes that used to be many steps, have now gotten dropped down and they’re very few steps.

Amazon is a great example of that, right? Because of all the things that Amazon… Think about what they used to do with the Sears catalog versus what they do now with Amazon, that’s what we’re talking about in process convergence.

Then the other thing, and I think that this is an interesting conversation as it relates to the fundamentals, and that’s UI or user interface convergence. We are at a precipice with HTML, basically web facing applications, and what can be done with those where things that we couldn’t even do five years ago are now getting easier to do.

We were trying to build maps into SCADA systems, and we were trying to build workflows into SCADA systems. SCADA systems don’t really do that well. Their inherent architecture doesn’t support it, but with web type applications, you can get a lot more ground covered.

What I would say is there’s a convergence of data and process and UI that’s being enabled by technology, that’s making capabilities we couldn’t get to become attainable.

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. You talk about the capability piece, and what’s the minimum? Where do you start? Where do you not? You hit the point with just that word, right? There is absolutely convergence on ITOT and telecoms. It’s usually what’s sometimes forgotten about and data.

You know this when it comes to forecasting solutions, there’s third party data. It’s not just even internal data to the utility, but there’s third party data that is available and accessible. There’s a proliferation of startups that are looking to add value to utilities in the gas operation space, whether that’s control room or field.

I would even argue that there’s convergence in the roles and responsibilities within utilities. I’ll explain an example. A utility where I’m working with in the West of California, we’re discussing with them the importance around, it’s not just a control room. It’s an integrated operation center, and…

Russel: Wait. Stop. Say that again because I think this is really fundamental to this conversation. What do you mean by what you just said? I want you to unpack that a little bit. I apologize for interrupting you, but it’s such an important concept.

Ben: Number of years ago, people would argue utilities have their own silos organizationally. What we’re seeing, what I’m seeing day to day with the clients, I have the opportunity and the fortuitous opportunity to work with, is the importance of having an integrated operation center.

Integrated in the sense of, “Yes, you’ve got the control room at the heart, but you’ve got data that flows out to other parts of the business, value and outcomes that flow out to other parts of the business, but vice versa. Different parts of the business that are interested in the data of the control room, interested in the actions that take place.”

A simple example would be the gas controller today in an integrated operations center would have a lot more close working relationships with folks in the field and field operations. They would have a lot more closer proximity to people in the call centers.

When a customer calls in and says, “Hey, I’ve noticed something.” Usually data flows. Customer call center will potentially contact gas control and say, “Hey, we’ve got these, these, and these things coming up.”

Then flowing back to the call center to say, “OK, gas control, we’ve remediated this.” So that the customer call center is able to then effectively respond back to those customers. The flowing in and flowing out of information, it’s not just an island that gas control sits by themselves, and they don’t speak to anyone inside or outside.

It’s very much kind of the importance of that. Another example is gas scheduling or commercial and market operations. There’s a lot more closeness in day to day. Incident response and emergency operations. That’s an obvious one, right Russell? The importance of that.

The integrated operations center is, and this is why I start off always saying with control is at heart. Because it pushes the benefits value and information flows out as well as coming in from those different organizations.

Russel: What I would say, and I’m going to try and say the same thing, but using a different language. First off historically, you hear the conversation in the control room. We’re just monitoring. It’s about safety.

I would argue that the primary mission of the control room historically has been maintaining deliverability without incident. That’s been the context of the control room. I think that context is going to shift to, “We’re going to maintain deliverability without incident while optimizing our assets.”

Ben: A hundred percent.

Russel: That additional while optimizing the assets, that’s where the transformation’s at, right? Because now it’s things like, “OK. I’m running a pipeline. I need to understand that how I pressure cycle this pipeline has an impact for pipeline integrity and what they do to manage the asset.

“I need to understand that weather impacts deliverability and demand, but it also impacts my marketing and supply guys.” All of these communication paths need to be integrated and optimized. That’s the process of integration, right?

Then I need a UI that takes that information and contextualizes it appropriately for every operating type.

Ben: You hit the nail on the head. The only addition I would add to that is with the whole sustainability agenda, that optimization piece. I wonder in 5 to 10 years’ time if there are going to be, “Reliability and safety will be number one always.”

Will sustainability around renewable natural gas, how much are you flowing of that to customers? 

Russel: Yeah, if you reframe that conversation from sustainability, from ESG, or from…If you take those words out and you just talked about optimization, that’s all that sustainability is, it’s optimization. It’s I want to vent less gas. When I do need to vent to perform maintenance, I’m going to capture it and reinject it.

Then, I’m going to have more renewable natural gas. When I have new kinds of instrumentation and new kinds of processes in order to be able to take that gas and deliver it to customers. All of those things, that’s just optimization. We can call it sustainability, or being green, or whatever. It’s just optimization.

Ben: It’s interesting, and you’ve done the same thing. When you speak to controllers, some are very much kind of like, yep, they can see that piece. Others are a little bit more like, “Is it going to turn out that way?”

Optimization, I even call it closing the loop sometimes and continuous improvement. It’s going to drive a whole new skill set in the control room of people that…You mention around situational awareness and having that unified experience.

Russel: It’s not just the control room, though, right? It’s the entirety of operations that we’re talking about. We have historically, in the pipeline space…We’ve operated as silos around various, very technical, very specific competencies. Pipeline integrity. Instrumentation. Communications. Scheduling, and on and on.

These are all very specific operational disciplines. The level of orchestration…It’s akin to having a lot of great musicians versus having a great orchestra.

Ben: That’s exactly it.

Russel: We’re moving from being a bunch of great musicians to being an orchestra. That’s another way to frame it.

Ben: That’s a really great way of framing it because I’m working with a couple of clients right now. Then, the change management of going, “You’ve been a great guitarist, but I need you to just play bass whilst this person…” You know what I mean? There are going to be some shifting of responsibilities.

Russel: I’ve actually played in bands. One of the most important things to know when you play in a band is when not to play and let others play. It’s a different way of thinking, is what you’re driving at. Let’s shift a little bit.

I want to talk about what kinds of capabilities you need in order to get to this control room of the future? What are the things that are going to enable this different way of working? Before I go there, I want to talk about what I call skinny SCADA.

Ben: Yeah.

Russel: SCADA is a 40 year old technology. In the last 15 years or so, particularly if you go back 10 years ago, there were a lot of people trying to add capabilities into SCADA.

I came to the conclusion very quickly that that was not sustainable, because you were building capabilities into the platform that the platform didn’t really want to have in it. This was the nature of the legacy tech.

One of the capabilities is I got to think about SCADA as being skinny. That opens up, what are all the things I need to bolt onto or around SCADA? That’s the tee up for the question of what are those things?

Ben: Let’s differentiate between the tech enabler piece, which you mentioned here and we’ll deep dive into that, what are the core ingredients for the control room of the future versus business capabilities from a tech space perspective.

I see it day in, day out where the SCADA systems have been so heavily customized over the years, especially when customers are a legacy solution perspective. I’ve had customers with over thousands of screens for SCADA screens that I just know there’s no way as a controller you’re going to look at a thousand screens in SCADA.

Each one of them is being developed by a different developer. They may have a slightly different look and feel to them per the standards, because people bring in their “this is how I want my car to look” piece.

What you’re also seeing now in the industry, which is very interesting, is you’ve got startups or other organizations that give a very bespoke solution, whether it’s North America focused or not, as vendors that are in the control room space or going into it.

You’re seeing Microsoft and AWS and Google and others go into the operational technology space that was never there. There is a race by the SCADA vendors and there’s a race by these other technology platforms to say, there are alternative solutions.

Now SCADA will be SCADA, but as we had discussed, SCADA, if you customize it so much, then the benefit and the value that you get out of the SCADA starts to, in my opinion, diminish. SCADA is there to provide the…

Russel: Absolutely. Customizing SCADA works against you in terms of value proposition.

Ben: Value proposition, and what you’re seeing also now the SCADA provider is actually seeing the market as they go, “OK, there’s a SCADA solution, but they’re now building all of these other, outside of SCADA, platform solutions and modules,” because they recognize customers may want forecasting, but should forecasting sit in SCADA? I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that.

Russel: The Purdue model drives some of this too because a lot of that data doesn’t exist in the right place in the Purdue model to even be in SCADA.

Ben: Then you’ve got the Purdue model, the common information model, where are you going to be pushing data from external third parties back into SCADA? To go back to your question, yes.

I’m seeing customers now basically go, “I need a SCADA solution, but what are the boundaries of what I want performed in the SCADA solution versus what I call in the modular gas control application suite or almost a layer in between?” If the foundation is SCADA and you’ve got a data historian to capture your time in SCADA…

Russel: I actually have a different take on the way I would describe that. I’d say that the control room of the future is a three legged stool. One of those legs is SCADA, one of those legs is control room management, and the other leg is decision support. That’s the way I would frame it.

You could argue about decision support, and that’s very much a North American answer because control room management is such a big deal in North America because of the regulatory environment. If you think about that, that starts to make sense.

I still gotta have SCADA because I gotta have live pressures and I’ve got to send updated set points and do all the things you do in SCADA. That’s still going to be, for the guy on the console, 80 percent of what they do.

Then I have control room management, which is my logbooks and my work order systems, and my regulatory compliance, and blah, blah, blah. Then there’s all these other things I need to do to enable this transition from control center to operation center.

What I view is a three legged stool. Again, you said this yourself is you have to be clear about what SCADA does, and more importantly, what it doesn’t do.

Ben: The only thing I would add is the extra one leg, which is alongside the CRM, and you can call that layer whatever you want. I’m seeing a lot more data science folks come in to help with creating forecasting solutions.

That middle layer of the cake, if you will, is super important, or you can call it control room management, the wrapper around it because, to your point, in North America, fatigue is probably, from a regulatory perspective, further ahead than in Europe, for sure, from an importance perspective.

We are just scratching the surface of fatigue management. Outside of me and you looking at our controller next to us, really, how do you track, monitor, report, and effectively do that consistently? Shift logbooks, all of that stuff is super critical, but that middle layer, the plug and play, whatever you may call it, is critical. Situational awareness, to your point…

Russel: Situational awareness is going to be broader than what’s coming to you out of SCADA. In the utility environment, situational awareness is going to include things like current demand, future demand. It’s going to include things like weather, and it could include things like traffic, particularly in gas utilities.

Traffic, not like gas utility is directly impacted, but if I know where the traffic is, and are people coming home or not, that kind of thing, that impacts load. That’s a real very obtuse subtlety. I could see where that thing starts factoring into this overall.

Ben: If you take it a step back now because we talked about the integrated operations center. There may be from an awareness and decision support, other stakeholders that are interested in seeing some of those different data points.

From a controller perspective, you know this, Russel, they just want to have one solution or a single pane of glass ideally to look through.

Russel: They want to have a unified user experience. They don’t really care what’s behind the curtain, but they do want it to be intuitive, straightforward, as simple as possible, and easy to navigate.

Ben: Take out as much of the noise that distracts them. That then goes well, if there’s a methane…Methane emissions is a big topic in the US and across Europe as well around the reduction, and there was the Inflation Reduction Act and things like that.

I asked the question and went, “OK, in the future control room, is there going to be a methane emissions desk that’s going to look at high consequence areas, and what that potentially means? Are they going to look through that in the decision support tool piece, or are you expecting them to look at that in SCADA?”

That is just one example of transformation regulatory driver that’s impacting the control room. I believe that they will have an emissions desk in the control room of some sorts, and they’ll work closely with pipeline integrity, and so forth.

Russel: In the operations center.

Ben: Yeah, in the integrated operations.

Russel: Maybe not in the control room. Again, another subtle distinction, but that’s equivalent to…In a utility, I have the control center and the dispatch center. They’re generally adjacent. If I take control dispatch, I add emissions monitoring, I add security monitoring. I put them all in the same general area. Then that becomes an operation center.

If then I add to that analytics and optimization, and all of that’s working together as a team. I want to transition again because you and I both know we could talk about this for a long time. We should talk about what are the success ingredients.

I want to underline, underscore, surrounded by exclamation points, data governance. You got to get control over your data governance. That’s not just the data in your SCADA system, but the entirety of the data that’s going to be used to run the business, and that is non-trivial.

Ben: It’s very tough to get it right. That is because, again, as we were mentioning around the integrated operation center, there are going to be different groups that may be responsible for those different datasets.

Making sure that someone has true accountability of improving the quality of the data as being a data custodian, avoiding multiple sources of truth because, as you mentioned previously, it’s all silos, and now we’re adding to that, integrated operations piece. You want to be able to get rid of the offline Excel sheets, the offline data manipulation.

Russel: It’s even more. That, to me, is like a first step. There’s another more important step. I started out myself in measurement, and what I will say is even something as simple as what was my hourly volume at this point? That is not as simple as what you think it is because there’s the number that first comes in from SCADA.

There’s the number after it goes through any measurement adjustment in real time. Then there’s the number once you’ve completed the period, the month, and you’ve settled. That’s all the same metered volume. It’s metered volumes of different qualities or types or whatever.

Data governance is not just knowing what data, but it’s also knowing where is that data in its lifecycle. Just getting control over the tag naming in the SCADA system, make sure that’s consistent and correct. That, by itself, is hard enough.

Ben: My feedback on this piece is it is a journey to get that data piece right for governance. I will be so bold to say that you’ll never get it 100 percent correct all the time.

Russel: You have to build it as a capability, so that you quantify something that’s wrong, you have a way to correct it and you have mechanisms for identifying things that are wrong because if you don’t…

Ben: You’re in trouble.

Russel: It will get worse and worse and worse over time until the product is unmanageable.

Ben: Data governance is that piece that goes across all of any initiative you were to propose for control center transformation, whatever that scope is. It’s a continuum, if that makes sense.

Russel: It’s a predicate as well before you can really get to the value proposition.

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. To go to your point around lessons learned, I probably have 10. I’ll try to keep it concise. One, I truly believe it has to be business lead versus IT lead. It seems like an obvious statement, but if the control room doesn’t feel like they’re in the driving seat, if they don’t feel like this is going to improve the way that I work and operate, it won’t land.

You mentioned safety. The value and outcome piece is super important, and it needs to be broader than just the safety element. Safety is critical to the foundation stone, but, you know this, Russel, it’s very difficult unless you’ve had lots of incidents.

Convince your C suite to say “Hey, I need to do a control center transformation piece because of safety.” and they’ll go, “Well, you’ve had no real incidents that have been pipeline safety.” That doesn’t then mean that the initiative isn’t important. It’s just maybe the plasters have lasted enough to this point. I don’t know what you think about that, but…

Russel: Past performance is no indication of future performance.

Ben: As a customer, because you mentioned this at the start, many utilities are spending quite a sizable amount on control centers. How are you improving service? Having a clear picture of where we are today versus where we are after to go, “I spent X and we moved the needle a couple of notches forward.” I think that’s important for any transformation project.

Capabilities, I’m talking specifically around business capabilities. I think you need to have a clear picture around…It’s not just a one year transformation, but what are the business capabilities that I want to be able to have?

Like for forecasting, do I want to factor in own used gas or unaccounted for gas in my forecast moving forward? Real time monitoring and control, do I want to be able to have…You mentioned remote control capabilities in field devices and assets.

What do you want to be able to transform? Every time I support clients on a strategy and the implementation, we always anchor it on the business capability piece. The dimensions you need to think about, you mentioned around the devices out in the field.

When you do a control center piece, you need to think about all the components from what’s in the field, to what’s going to go into SCADA, to what goes into that CRMS layer, you know, the control room management.

You need to look up and down the stack. My other advice would be, from an integrated operations center perspective, you need to think about what we talked about, the roles and responsibilities of who does what. You need to think about communication and access to data. Who has access from a data governance perspective, as well as the physical space.

Ultimately, the most important thing, in my opinion, is control center transformation isn’t just about putting sexy video walls on the wall. It’s about actually allowing the controller to have a better experience that allows them to make better decisions, quicker decisions, or more insight around the components you mention around reliability and safety.

Russel: That’s a really important point, Ben, because there are the things that we do in control centers because they’re sexy and add pizazz and are actually a distraction or a resource strain to the actual controller. What the controller needs to operate well is often something quite different.

Ben: A couple other snippets, which I think is important to share, is the roadmap. Consultants can come in or external parties and say, “Here’s your schedule. Here’s your roadmap.”

You really need to, during that initial strategy phase, and the roadmaps will change and evolve, go, “What can we, from an organization, deliver?” whether that’s us doing everything internally, or I’m going to use some third party support.

What’s a realistic plan? I’ve seen many clients sprint off the start line versus starting with fewer initiatives. Getting those done, and then next. You know what I mean?

Russel: Yeah.

Ben: What you can sometimes see is lots of initiatives. You think, “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.” Sometimes, the expression is the tortoise sometimes wins the race versus the hare is a better way to go. This isn’t just a one time project, it’s going to continually evolve, right?

Russel: Yeah. You’re not putting in place new tech. What you’re doing is you’re building and sustaining new capabilities. Not only are you building and sustaining, but you’re building, sustaining, and modifying capability.

That’s a different way of thinking about this. I think that’s one of the things in working with yourself and the rest of the Accenture team that I was that I thought you guys did extremely well. You really had an eye to what are the human resource requirements to execute on this vision, and holistically.

How much of this is the project and how much of this is the aftercare. That is huge if you’re trying to do this kind of transformation.

Ben: To add to what you said, because we’re really thinking about an integrated operations center. You’re going to be pulling all resources, not just in the control room. You’re going to be speaking to other parts of the business, too, like pipeline integrity.

That is sometimes forgotten about because some people may say, “Actually, we’re doing this initiative just for gas control,” but you’ll soon find out that, “Oh, I’ve got to speak to the field engineers. I’ve got to speak to the construction folks.” 

Russel: If you’re going to add outage management to the operation center, if you’re going to add dispatch oversight or dispatch optimization to the operation center, now all of a sudden you’re having a whole lot of conversations and touching a whole lot of types of data and systems that you previously weren’t contemplating.

If you’re just looking at a control center revision, that is not a control room of the future.

Ben: No.

Russel: That is addressing technical debt. That is not a control room of the future. That’s a different thing, not that there’s a problem with that. That’s appropriate in some situations, but it’s just different.

Ben: Yeah. I agree with you. The final thing is there are going to be, in the control center of the future, initiatives that are multi-year. You can call them the strategic. There may be some tactical initiatives, but it is also to factor in some importance around quick wins.

If you do all of your work, which is under the hood of the car, but you’re not actually getting some quick wins in the appropriate stages, that helps give relief.

Russel: I frame that a little differently. Quick wins is fine, but I tend to think of it as incremental valuable deliverables. You’re doing something early that’s of value to the operation, then you’re doing something a little later that’s of value to the operation that builds on what you did before. That sort of thing.

Ben: Otherwise, trust me, these transformations, they can take a lot out of you, from a fatigue perspective. It’s important to get some of those incremental value pieces on the door, A, because it gives relief at an immediate point.

It’s important to look at the appropriate composition of both, Russel. That helps, and that also helps internally to be able to say to the board, and to your customers, and your external stakeholders, “We’re in this for you and the value that we deliver for you guys.”

Russel: Also a good point. Also important if a project like this is going to be successful.

Ben: Yeah.

Russel: To wrap this up, let me share what my key takeaways are. First off, the control room of the future is coming. The nature of what’s going to be asked of operators and what’s going to be expected out of the control center is going to transform. It’s happening already.

The pressures are building. They’re not going to back off. That’s one thing that I would take away from this conversation. The other thing is that you need to start getting a handle on your data governance, even if you just pick, “I’m going to get data governance under control in this small domain, whatever that is.”

The third bit is, you need to start looking at what my strategy is going to be. Guys like us are typically 5 to 15 years in front of the market. We have to be because of the nature of our job, right?

Ben: Yeah.

Russel: Where the market is, at least in North America, at least what we’re seeing is there’s a lot of effort being spent to improve control room measurement regulatory compliance.

Ben: 100 percent.

Russel: We’re about a little more than 10 years into the control room management rule since it became part of themes as governance.

People now they have systems they put in, they’ve matured, and they’re saying, “OK. What are we going to do next?” Once that is done, the next thing they’re going to be asking is, “OK, how do we do all these other things we’re being asked to do around managing emissions, identifying and repairing leaks,” these other kinds of things that we’re being asked to do. That’s what’s coming right behind it.

Ben: I agree with all of those things, and the technology is only going to get better or more enhanced. What you said at the beginning of the podcast, it allows things that were previously not as easy to do.

Russel: If you get the right foundation and pick the right tools, things become easy. If you don’t, you get the opposite. 

Ben: You said the straight thing. I’m about to start doing some build work on my house. If I get the foundations wrong, I’m going to be paying two or three times for it.

Russel: Right. You won’t get the house you wanted.

Ben: No. Exactly.

Russel: I think it will be of benefit to the listeners. We’ll spend a little extra time on this episode. I’m sure Ben has some PowerPoints and stuff that he can share and we can link up, that would be of value to people.

Of course, you can always look him up on the website and find his contact information if you’d like to talk to him in more detail. I’d recommend it. He’s a cool hang.

Ben: It’s been an absolute pleasure, Russel. Thank you. Thank your listeners for joining us today. Like you said, we could talk about this til the cows come home. I’m sure we’re going to.

Russel: And we will.

Ben: And we will.

Russel: And we will. That’s exactly right. Every opportunity we get.

Ben: Exactly.

Russel: All right. Thanks so much, Ben, I appreciate you.

Ben: Anytime. You, too. Russel. Take care.

Russel: I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of The Pipeliners Podcast and our conversation with Ben. Just a reminder, before you go, you should register to win our customized Pipeliners Podcast YETI tumbler. Simply visit PipelinePodcastNetwork.com/Win and enter yourself in the drawing.

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If you have ideas, questions, or topics you’d be interested in, please let me know either on the Contact Us page at PipelinePodcastNetwork.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you next week.

Transcription by CastingWords