How a Digital Permit to Work Can Help Oil & Gas Industry

The oil and gas industry is facing new challenges in the technological age. With more stringent regulations and higher standards expected from the government, companies need to improve their safety and environmental performance.

A decade or two earlier, an industry dealing with these issues would have been forced to use paper-based systems for managing work permits, documents and other information. But with the advent of digital solutions, oil and gas companies can now use technology to make their operations more efficient and secure.

In this blog post, we will look at how digital permit to work system can help oil and gas companies improve their operations.

Oil & Gas Safety: Overcoming the Challenges with Digitization

The oil and gas industry is a high-risk sector for managing employee safety. With 90% of the accidents in the oil and gas industry due to issues in the work environment, it’s clear that there is a lot that can be done to improve safety.

One of the biggest problems the industry faces is the difficulty of tracking the tasks going on and creating a safer working atmosphere from upstream to downstream. With the paper or excel based permit to work forms, it becomes difficult to keep track of the activities, follow up or to dig up and analyze. Employees end up spending considerable time filling out, carrying, submitting and getting approvals through manual forms.

This leads to three main challenges:

• Improper communication
• Hampered productivity
• Loss of valuable time in chasing people to get approvals
• Lost permits contributing to delayed jobs
• Security issues
• Safety risks due to miscommunicated jobs/multiple jobs happening at the same

In addition to these requirements, companies must also ensure that they have the right permits in place for their employees to carry out their work safely and legally. This means that they must ensure that all their staff has valid permits to work on-site, as well as ensure that they are up-to-date with any changes made by regulators or government agencies.

The good news is that most of these issues can be managed with a digital system that allows oil and gas companies to control their safety processes more effectively than ever before.

Introducing Electronic Permit to Work Systems

Electronic permit-to-work systems can be used by oil and gas companies as part of their overall safety management system. These systems provide real-time data that can be analyzed and used to improve performance across all business areas, including maintenance procedures and risk assessments.

The aim is not just to meet regulatory requirements but also to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs across your business.

The digital permit to work software allows companies to manage all this information to be always up-to-date and readily available when needed. It allows for real-time communication between all parties involved in all activities going on — from the oil rig workers down on the ground to the engineers and upper management overseeing the operations. The system provides them with the information they need at any given moment while also ensuring that they do not miss out on any critical messages or updates.

Related read: Our listing of the best Control of Work software.

How Do Digital Permit To Work Systems Work?

With a digital system, you can completely avoid the need for paper or spreadsheet based processes. All the permits will be stored in a centralized location and searching for any past permit is a breeze.

Safety managers get complete visibility of each permit and their status at any given time. Approving, revoking, extending or closing a permit is just a matter of couple of clicks.

The worker or contractor who is seeking permit can fill up the permit to work checklist form and submit for approval. If required, they can also send a draft for review to a colleague. Instant notifications via email and in-app are sent to the concerned people for approval.

Once the permit is approved, the system also provides an option to download the permit template as a PDF. The PDF also comes with a QR code embedded, which allows for quick retrieval of permit form.

Why Do You Need to Digitize the Permit to Work Systems in the Oil & Gas Industry?

In the oil and gas industry, there are thousands of permits that need approval from different departments. The approval process can be time-consuming and tedious. In addition, each department has its own set of rules and regulations for a permit to be approved.

A digital permit to work system can help reduce processing time and increase your company’s productivity. It improves efficiency by automating various tasks such as auto escalation of approvals, permit expiry and alerts and push notifications.

Improved Accountability

A common problem in a vast industry like an oil and gas plant is that there are so many different parties involved in any given project that it’s virtually impossible for everyone to know what everyone else is doing at any given time. This lack of accountability leads to mistakes that could result in injuries or even death.

A PTW software solution helps companies improve accountability by providing access to accurate information about current and upcoming tasks— without worrying about missing papers or manually searching through mounds of documents. This way, the involved parties can have real-time visibility into each other’s activities and identify risks early before they become problems.

Increased Efficiency

With the digital permit-to-work system, managers have access to detailed reports on status on every permit – be it requested, draft mode, approved, revoked, rejected, closed and overdue. This helps in quick delegation of work and follow-ups with the right team.

Better Traceability

For an organization to succeed in today’s competitive market environment, it needs to be able to track its progress and know where it stands at any given moment. This allows them to benchmark, learn and make adjustments accordingly.

With a digital permit system, users can quickly trace every task through its entire history — even down to individual components — to see what went wrong. This helps them to keep improving their safety practices and avoid previous mistakes.

Quick Approval Process

With the customizable approval workflow, every permit can have up to 5 levels of approvers and also and escalation point, just in case one of the team member is not available. Approvals can be done through the safetymint mobile app, which reduces the turnaround time to get approvals and start the task.

Types of Digital Work Permits in the Oil & Gas Industry

While there are numerous digital permit to work forms that professionals in the oil and gas industry use, here are some of the most common ones:

Cold Work Permit
Tasks that don’t require any flame or ignition come under cold work. These can be mechanical or civil tasks like equipment maintenance, cleaning, oil replacement, parts replacement, etc. You’ll need to get a cold work permit to perform such tasks.

Also see: Download free cold work permit template

Hot Work Permit
Hot work permits are issued for any type of work involving fire or molten materials that could cause an explosion or flash fire. This permit is required when workers enter or work in areas with a risk of burns or fires due to hot materials such as welding, cutting, soldering, etc.

Also see: Download free hot work permit template

Confined Space Work Permit
Confined space work permits are issued for any type of work that involves entering an enclosed space with limited means of entry or exit. Most often, confined spaces risk entrapment by fluids, gases, vapors or solids, which may cause death due to inadequate oxygen supply inside the confined space itself.

This permit aims to ensure that all precautions are taken before entering the confined space.

Also see: Download free confined space permit template

Excavation Work Permit
This work permit is required when one needs to dig up or remove soil from any area. Since excavation will be done using heavy machinery, high-pressure water jetting or explosives, you’ll need a proper excavation work permit before starting the digging.

Also see: Download free excavation work permit template

Chemical Work Permit
Whenever there’s any job involving hazardous or toxic chemicals, or working in an environment where there’s a risk of being exposed to chemicals, the involved workers need to get a chemical work permit. There are times when you need to transport such chemicals within or outside the plant, for which you need a chemical handling work permit.

Also see: Download free chemical work permit template

Improve Your Workplace Safety with Safetymint’s Digital Permit to Work System

A digital permit to work will help oil and gas companies in many ways. From enhanced security to streamlined processes, there are so many safety improvements you can achieve by using a digital permit to work system.

With Safetymint’s permit to work software you can:

• Use the pre-built permit templates to customize or create checklists
• Automate the approval workflow for the permits
• View the entire list of permits through a dashboard
• Download and share the permits in PDF
• Access the permits from any device — smartphones, laptops or tablets
• Easily add or modify the users as well as the permit workflow any time you need
• Develop trend analysis reports
• Manage contractors and their workers

Get started with a 14-day free trial

Also read: Our article on the meaning of PTW