In this episode of the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, Weldon Wright talks with Chris Viator from EnerSys Corporation about field measurement software and the implementation of Muddy Boots Online. The discussion covers how the software supports measurement technicians and operations teams, and explores what a typical implementation process looks like — from initial data collection to field-level deployment. The episode offers insights into both the benefits and challenges of transitioning from legacy systems to a modern, cloud-based field operations tool.

Muddy Boots Implementation Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Chris Viator is the Muddy Boots Support Lead at EnerSys Corporation. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.
  • EnerSys Corporation is a frequent sponsor of the Pipeliners Podcast. Find out more about how EnerSys supports the pipeline control room through compliance, audit readiness, and control room management through the POEMS Control Room Management (CRM Suite) software suite.
• Muddy Boots provides field operations software for pipeline operators to manage critical areas such as measurement, maintenance, work orders, site diagrams, shift logs, and well lists.
• EFM (Electronic Flow Measurement) has become a preferred method of natural gas measurement.
• Cloud-Based Solutions: A system where hardware and software are centralized and accessed via the Internet, eliminating the need for on-site installations. Examples include web apps accessible on various devices like tablets or laptops.
• Field Operations: Activities carried out by technicians or analysts in locations such as well sites, pipelines, or measurement stations. These often involve environmental challenges like heat, cold, or remote access.
• Read the White Paper about XTO’s Muddy Boots Pilot
• Automatic Tank Gauge (ATG) is an electronic device that measures levels of liquid in a tank. By monitoring the level of the liquid the ATG can perform leak tests of the underground tank and with some additional accessories can also monitor underground pressurized piping for leaks.
• Measurement Analyst: A professional responsible for managing and analyzing data from field measurement equipment to ensure accuracy and compliance.
• Multivariable Meter Calibration: The process of verifying and adjusting meters that measure multiple variables (e.g., flow, pressure) to ensure accurate readings.
• As-Found, As-Left: A term used in measurement to describe the state of an instrument before and after calibration or maintenance, ensuring any discrepancies are documented.
• Back Office: Refers to administrative and analytical operations, such as data review, quality assurance, and compliance checks, typically conducted away from the field.
• Cybersecurity: Protective measures and protocols to secure data and systems from unauthorized access, breaches, and threats. Key for both cloud and on-premises solutions in critical infrastructure.
• GIS Chip: A component in devices like smartphones or tablets that enables geographic information system functions, such as location tracking.
• SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition): A system used in industrial operations, like pipeline control, to monitor and control equipment and processes remotely.
• On-Prem Cloud: A cloud environment hosted on a company’s premises but managed using cloud principles, combining local control with modern infrastructure benefits.
• Web-Based Apps: Applications accessible through a browser, often requiring Internet connectivity but increasingly designed with offline functionality, such as data caching.
• Native Applications: Software specifically designed to run on particular hardware or operating systems, often used for field-specific tasks requiring robust performance.
• Opportunity Cost: The potential value lost when resources (time, money, etc.) are spent on one activity instead of another, relevant in evaluating operational efficiency improvements.
• Regulatory Compliance: Adherence to industry standards and regulations governing operations, data accuracy, and safety, a key concern for pipeline and measurement systems.
• Data Caching: Temporarily storing data locally to enable functionality when Internet connectivity is unavailable, critical for remote field operations.
• Orifice Plate is a type of primary flow measurement device that creates a measurable pressure drop across a known restriction. 
• A Coriolis flow meter is a single instrument that provides an accurate mass flow measurement while density, viscosity and specific heat of the liquid or gas may change. As a result, Coriolis mass flow measurement is immune to fluid property variations.

Muddy Boots Implementation Full Episode Transcript

Weldon Wright: Welcome to episode 44 of the “Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast,” sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, provider of Muddy Boots Field Operations software, assisting oil and gas operators to implement accurate and repeatable measurement activities across their entire operation, while also simplifying data collection from the field.

Find out more about Muddy Boots at enersyscorp.com/software/muddyboots.

[background music]

Announcer: Welcome to the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, where measurement professionals, bubba geeks, and gurus share their knowledge, experience, and likely a tall tale or two on measurement topics for the oil and gas industry. Now your host, Weldon Wright.

Weldon: Hello, I’m Weldon Wright with FpvPrime Measurement Consulting. Today I have with me Chris Viator, and I hope I didn’t butcher that again, with EnerSys Corporation.

We’re going to talk about field measurement tools, software that’s used out in the field by measurement techs, by operations, and that software specifically is Muddy Boots Online, who’s been a sponsor of our podcast for quite a while. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what EnerSys Corporation does.

Chris Viator: Yes, sir. Thank you for having me today. A little bit about me. I’ve been now working in measurement for just over 10 years. I was a measurement analyst both at CenterPoint and Energy Transfer. I came to EnerSys late last year around September, so I’m still a little bit of a youngin over here.

I’ve been here about eight months now. EnerSys Corporation is a software services company that includes a control room management software. My specialty is working with the Muddy Boots software, which as an overview, is a all-in-one field operation software that includes software for shift logs, preventative maintenance.

Primarily, we’ve been working a lot lately with the measure module of the software, which includes all of your meter proving, meter calibrations, gas samples, and so on.

Weldon: Great. Chris and I have a background that has almost crossed paths a number of times. We were both at Energy Transfer. He came in there a little bit after I left. We’ve both have done some work related to CenterPoint, but I can guarantee you that where he started his career is a place I have never been and really don’t want to do.

Chris tells me he started his career in the Navy. I asked him earlier, “How did you get from submarines to measurement?” You want to tell us that again, Chris, because I think it’s interesting.

Chris: Sure, Weldon. I joined the Navy out of South Louisiana, which is where I call home, back in 2003. This was back in the early days of computing. I’m fresh out of high school, and I think computers are sounding pretty cool.

Next thing I know, I got roped into what they call the submarine electronics computer field. Ended up as a sonar technician on a fast-attack nuclear sub for about four years.

I got out in ’08 and came to Houston to attend school. Got a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Houston in 2013. As a veteran, found myself at a veteran’s job fair. Next thing I know, I’m getting hired at CenterPoint as a measurement analyst. That started my career that put me where I am now.

Weldon: I ask that question a lot, Chris, because I don’t know anyone that I’ve talked to that ever said, “I went to college to be a measurement technician.” We all got there from some crazy path. I never dreamed I’d be…Didn’t know what gas management was when I was in college.

Back to our point in hand. Muddy Boots, a powerful tool. Predominantly a field data entry and organization tool, the kind of field data entry tool that guides the guy in the field through his job, helps him through his job, does a lot of the documentation ahead beforehand.

Folks out there have seen and heard a lot about Muddy Boots in the last couple of years. Muddy Boots has started up in Canada. It has some big implementations here in the US now.

One thing I’ve run into a couple of times in the last, let’s say, six months, is people have asked me about, “We’ve seen Muddy Boots. We like what we see, but it’s too complicated to do a changeover from an existing system.”

That’s what got me badgering you to do an episode with me, is to, let’s talk about what an implementation looks like. How painless, how painful, how long does it take to do an implementation?

Could you talk us through? I know previously you said you’ve done several implementations recently, but talk us through what that might look like. Once a customer’s decided, “We want Muddy Boots,” how do they get there, Chris?

Chris: Yes, sir. I do want to back up, though, to say that, if Muddy Boots has a thesis statement as a piece of software, as a product, it’s to make the field technician’s life as easy as possible. It’s a cloud-based software. It can be accessed through a browser on any device, such as a tablet or smartphone.

A lot of the forms and everything are built out with dropdowns to make everything as easy as possible, facilitate ease of use for the field technician. We try to bring a lot of that to the implementation process as well.

Implementations and changeovers can be very painful, very clunky, and difficult under pretty much any circumstance. The way we have it set up is primarily through bulk loading of data. We’ve built out several templates.

Usually, the way we start with a customer, and this is either both for building pilot and production spaces, the first thing we do is we request an equipment load. That equipment load can be 5 Coriolis meters, it can be 5,000 orifice meters. It can be any number of equipment, tank gauges, anything like that.

What we do is, we send over that template and we ask with some pretty detailed instructions for it to be filled out. That can be a challenge, understandably, for some companies. It could be that they don’t have all their data stored in one place. It may take some time to track down, but the better the data we receive, the much more quickly we can move forward with implementation.

I can give you examples of sending an equipment load to one client and another one to another client. One customer taking the time to fill that out and follow the instructions. I have that done the same day.

Whereas another customer, maybe they’re missing some data, maybe there’s some stuff in the wrong columns, that’s OK. We work with what we’ve got. We can massage that data and make it work, but it might take a week, it may take two weeks to get that loaded in. Our implementation process is built entirely around formalized data.

After we do equipment loads, typically, what we do is we request with another template the kind of activities you want to record in Muddy Boots.

For instance, maybe we’ve got, again, 5,000 electronic orifice meters. You want to do multi-variable meter calibrations, meter proving, gas sample analysis. Maybe they’re all on different recurrences. Maybe some are semi-annual, quarterly, annually. We have templates and dropdowns to fill all that information in.

Likewise, it’s the same thing. I do have a process with those scheduled activities where I change the formatting a little bit for it to work on the backend, but it’s the same thought process that’s able to get loaded. The cleaner that data, the quicker that can go as well.

Then typically after that, we just need to get technicians access, administrator access, who’s going to be using the software. We typically ask for a list of names and email addresses to get that set up.

At the same time, we’ll be looking to get calibration equipment information, which is going to allow multi-variable meter calibration forms to work. Then typically, we have a kickoff at that point and we’re good to go.

Weldon: Chris, you let a lot of stuff up there, but the pain from these implementations, as you mentioned earlier, if a customer had the data already nice and neat, it could go extremely fast, a matter of a day or a couple of days.

My experience over the years doing field tool implementations, doing measurement systems, PGAS, FlowCal implementations, is we get back to that old adage. You said, the cleaner the data, the better the process works. That can’t be more true. I’d like to go back to the old adage. You talked about computers being new in 2000.

I thought they were new in 1980, I guess. Any rate, the old phrase, garbage in, garbage out applies in so many ways to so many things in their lives. It sounds easy. “We’ve got a running measurement system, we just need to move it to another one.”

Typically, people have not looked at their data, they’ve not looked at their configurations in bulk. They only look at the one problem I have with one meter today. When people start extracting that information, getting it into spreadsheet format, or whatever the format to do an implementation like Muddy Boots, if they’re smart, they look at that. They scrub and they clean that data.

Many times, they find that there’s big problems. I was doing some work with a customer late last year that had an engineering group, proud of their engineering group. Everything’s going great. They were doing a measurement system implementation.

We look into their data, and they have atmospheric pressures that are over 15 PSI. Some of them significantly over 15 PSI. We had to have a discussion. “Is your meter located in a hole, below sea level?” Cleaning that data up and getting in a good shape really is the bulk of the project, isn’t it?

Chris: Yes. To add to that, since we brought up some military stuff earlier, is I like to use the phrase too we used to joke around and say, “Semper Gumby,” or “always flexible.” My role in that is also to assist and be flexible. Work with the data we’re provided, and provide that feedback, and to stay as available for that customer as possible.

The implementation process is typically a back-and-forth relationship as we continue to communicate those things. We at Muddy Boots are more than happy to help manage that data because we understand that it can be a challenge to get it all housed in one document or one spreadsheet, or how you might be missing large gaps of data.

Maybe some of your meters I’ve already done a pilot implementation where the challenge they were dealing with, some of their equipment was older than me out there in the field, and they may not have serial numbers available. That’s where we stay flexible and make sure that we can fill those gaps as best we can.

We see that as part of the implementation process. It’s understood that that data may be fragmented, fractured across multiple systems. That’s part of our job, is to make that process easy.

We don’t request that the templates we’ve provided with the instructions we’ve provided be followed to a T. If anything, we try to keep it to where we only need really three or four columns that are absolutely required.

The rest are just better data. We have a lot of optional, “But if you can provide this, it’ll make a lot of things a lot more easy.” We can work with just about anything. I’ve gone so far as I’ve gotten PDF documents of meter tolerances or calibration equipment certifications, and that’s something we can still work with.

Weldon: A lot of the early implementation process is not going to involve the folks in the field. You’re working with measurement analyst with an IT guy or two, or gal. You’re extracting data from some other system, usually, or from other lists, and getting ready. You’re making that initial load, you’re helping review that.

That review, a lot of times, is happening with the analyst. Reaching out to talk about calibration equipment being used, that’s the first time some of the field folks get involved in a Muddy Boots implementation, isn’t it?

Chris: Yes, sir.

Weldon: What does it look like for that person out in the field? I have seen implementations of the brand X field tools and brand Y field tools, that pretty much didn’t show the tech in the field anything until they were thrown the software and told to go out and use it and be productive.

They didn’t get a chance to look at data ahead of time, and they, of course, could make changes on their own. Talk us through, once you’ve got this load and you start getting ready to go out to the field, talk to us about the training and what a rollout looks like to the tech of the field.

Chris: Yes, sir. Typically, ahead of time, what we’re going to do is we get a list of the technicians and we make sure they’re set up. Some guys, the way we build Muddy Boots, which is really useful for the field technician is, let’s say I’ve got a guy who’s just assigned gas samples, or just a guy who’s assigned meter calibrations, and he is just assigned meter calibrations in a certain area.

Not only do we have a hierarchy for those things, but we can also set permissions so that the guy who’s just doing gas samples, when he goes into Muddy Boots, that’s all he sees. He just sees his meters that need gas samples pulled, and he sees his schedule.

We typically set up user permissions. What we always want to do first, is we want to do typically a one-and-a-half to two-hour block of user group training for our field technicians.

That typically is going to be a run-through of how to use the tool. Everything from, how do I log in to how do I get to my run sheet? What is a run sheet? How do I use MBO Go? Muddy Boots is a piece of software that can work offline, so we walk through that process and we make sure that there’s an understanding of how the offline process works.

From there, we’ll go through run sheets, show them how to use the forms and fill out the forms, and typically try to do a pretty detailed Q&A.

Weldon: Let me back up a minute, Chris. I’ve worked with implementation of other field tools quite a bit. You mean one and a half to two days’ worth of training, right?

Chris: One to two hours. Now, there can always be follow-up training. That is something we do because we do understand there can be specific questions. To add to that, though, after that training, we do try to do a support thing where we might have guys go out for one or two or three days, and maybe we have a helpline set up.

If those guys get stuck or they’ve got a question, they’ve got somebody that can immediately call up for support and get that figured out. I was not involved in this implementation, but there was one in particular where they set up like an HQ.

They had like three Muddy Boots guys ready to answer all these questions, and they were able to change forms, make fixes in real time since it’s a cloud-based software. Let’s say a field technician is trying to do a meter calibration and something’s not working, or it’s missing a field, the developers can change that in real time and be updated within minutes of finding the problem.

Weldon: I think, though, the key, the point I was trying to make earlier, is that Muddy Boots is really intuitive enough. You can get that guy up and running in an hour and a half or two hours’ worth of training. Some of the other tools out there get to be so complex that you need a full-day just to learn the navigation.

The concept that you all have with Muddy Boots, of getting them up, getting them using the basics out there quickly and then supporting the product, I think that that’s something that lets the guy in the field get in a better place quicker, I should say, as opposed to being dumped on and being overwhelmed with a super complex tool that needs hours and hours just to understand the navigation.

Chris: Right. I would attest to that as well. Again, as you were saying, the intuitive use of the tool, the way we have it set up too to reemphasize about those permissions we have set up, that’s another good thing.

The interface is going to look the same for just about every field technician, but he’s not going to be overwhelmed or bogged down with a ton of extraneous information that he doesn’t need to see.

If he’s just going out there to do gas samples, that’s what he’s set up for access for, and he’s only set up to see his meters. He can go out there, he can learn the tool pretty quickly, and he is not being overwhelmed with a schematic, or all this other stuff that Muddy Boots can do as a tool, but that he doesn’t necessarily need to see. That can keep the information really simple.

Weldon: You alluded to this earlier about getting their calibration device information so it can be loaded into Muddy Boots. You alluded to these multi-variable forms. Talk to us a little bit about how the information from their individual calibration devices and the data on a specific meter, how does that mesh, and what does it do to have all that in one system?

Chris: Two components to that are, we can load calibration equipment as a separate piece of equipment, and then it can be populated in that multi-variable meter calibration form. To describe that, we have built in dropdown menus that will access all of the calibration equipment that’s set up in the system.

That calibration equipment, if we have the information available, we don’t always need it. We do for BLM meters. If we have meter tolerances already saved in there, specifically what we need is a meter calibration certification date. It can pull all that information up.

The idea is, I’m a field technician, I’ve got my specific piece of cal equipment. I can go and select it, and I can see that it’s still within certification. If it’s required, I’ll have all my tolerances and everything already saved, and I can access all that data while I’m doing my multi-variable meter calibration.

I don’t have to sit there and try to hand-key all that stuff in or have it on a sheet of paper ready to enter in each tolerance. That’s purpose-built in the system.

The way we also have the multi-variable meter calibration form built is all the logic and all the math that’s required for trying to measure a tolerance within inches of water column, things like that, for your differential and static pressures, is that’s all auto-populated as you fill out the form. The form is doing all the math itself as well.

Weldon: Doing the calculation on those tolerances, that’s a big deal these days, right?

Chris: Right.

Weldon: Because we now have in our standards. Our standards are telling us, “Hey, we don’t touch that, the calibration of that meter, unless it’s outside of the standards.”

I think knowing how to do that — the calculation itself isn’t super complex — but knowing how to do it, knowing all the input that needs to go into it from the calibration device, from the device in the field, all of that is something that the tech in the field is really not going to do unless he’s got software to do it for him.

A tech is not going to go out there and do that research in the field and figure out, “What is my accuracy of the device?” He probably has the sheet on his calibrator.

But the individual transmitters, they’re not going to do that. They’re going to do the old style, “Oh, that’s close enough. I’m not going to cal it.” “Oh, I don’t like it,” and hit the cal button. Muddy Boots actually does that calculation form and tells them right there beside every test point, “Hey, are you good, or you need to calibrate it?”

Chris: Yes, sir.

Weldon: That’s a big piece because our standards bodies that are testing our research has told us when we’ve looked at years’ worth of data, that a lot of the calibrations we were doing were causing more harm than good, right?

Chris: Right. To add to what you were saying, as long as a company standard can meet or exceed API 21.1 standard, we can use a company standard or we can default to an API 21.1 standard. That’s all also built into the form as a calculation. That’s not something that needs to be set up or anything.

Like you alluded to, Muddy Boots will do a pass/fail for each tolerance. It’s a huge, very important form. It’s been designed from the top down to be as useful and informative as possible, and to save the technician as much time as can be saved.

Weldon: A lot of information there. Wrapping back around to our earlier part of the discussion, you had mentioned prior to us starting the recording that you’d done a couple of 500-ish meter migrations into existing systems.

A company that was already using Muddy Boots, they did acquisitions, and bought some more meters. Once the data was cleaned up — and I don’t mean to put you on the spot here if you don’t have the numbers at the tip of your tongue — but once the data was cleaned up, what was the time period to get those 500 meters in the software and get it rolled out to techs?

Chris: Sure can do. The data management is going to be the biggest component at that point. Once that’s complete, we typically do a test load, make sure there’s no problems with that data. Once we verified that, we can load it into production. After that, we’ll do scheduled activities. That’s currently a deliberate bottleneck right now.

We hand that over to the Canada team, and that’s to make sure nobody runs rampant in the back end of the system like a bull in a China shop and breaking things. Once that’s handled, we typically, within…Let’s say that’s a two-to-three-day process.

I’ve actually done some just this week, where a day of cleanup, a day of testing and loading, and then usually we look to schedule user training, make sure we’ve got the calibration equipment. Some of the little more nitty gritty details. Who’s going to be using what? Who’s working out where? Since we can develop hierarchies. It can be a matter of days.

Once that data’s good, I’d say three days to test it. That’s for 500-ish meters. I wasn’t involved in this implementation, but I do know of one that they did up in Canada where they were able to do thousands, if not tens of thousands of meters in bulk over a period of about a week.

Weldon: That’s pretty impressive to be able to turn something around that fast. I think that’s one of the great things that Muddy Boots brings to the table. Anything you want to talk about? We’re getting to a good point to wrap up, probably. Anything else you want to talk about or any other points you want to make?

Chris: I would say every implementation is different, though. I don’t want to paint a broad brush to make it sound like it’s straightforward and simple and super easy. They all have their own unique challenges, and we also understand that a customer’s going to have a lot of unique challenges.

Change is difficult. It can be really hard to migrate from one system that you’ve been using for years to uncharted waters with another one. We do try to make sure that the process, the implementation process, is as simplistic as possible and not too much of a burden on the customer. That would be the last thing I would add there.

Weldon: You’re right. Change is scary. I think there are a lot of companies that resist change, even if they’re unhappy with their existing systems, or their existing systems are just flat out outdated.

I think that there’s a lot of resistance because we’re afraid of where that might lead us. After all, our measurement data, that’s the cash register of our company. Anything that touches that gets to be a delicate process, doesn’t it?

Chris: Right. It’s the devil you know.

Weldon: I appreciate your time, Chris. Thanks for talking to us about this process. Hopefully, we’ve given some people a little less to worry about and make them a little more inclined to look at new pieces and new tools.

Chris: Yes, sir, Weldon.

Weldon: Thanks a lot, Chris.

Chris: Yes, sir. Thanks for having me. I promise, next time, I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t take two months again.

[background music]

Weldon: Chris and I played tag for quite a while getting this episode scheduled. Thanks a lot, Chris. Have a great day.

Chris: You too, Weldon. Thank you.

Weldon: I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as I’ve enjoyed doing it. We’ll have Chris’s contact information along with the full transcript of this episode in the show notes on our website, pipelinepodcastnetwork.com. You can also go to enersyscorp.com for more information.

If you have comments or questions about this episode, maybe some suggestions for future topics, or if you yourself would like to be a guest on our show, send me a message on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at weldon.wright@fpvprime.com.