The Journey to Best Practice Management
Rich Gillis, Amor’s Technical Director within Energy, highlights the importance of adopting a best-of-breed approach for the full operation of people, processes and plant within the oil, gas and utilities industries. Only by taking good care of the key components of their operation can a business really continue to deliver, especially where their assets continue to increase in age.
There are various accreditations, guidance notes and recommendations that organisations use to shape best practice asset management. But what is each one specifically attempting to do and which is best for each company?
In actual fact, what PAS-55, HSG254, RR509 and all the others are saying is that in order to run an asset rich organisation it’s about understanding what you have, how is it operated and for the individuals involved in its operation to have a consistent, reliable view of any failures in the defined process.
Of course, the most prevalent cause of failure of process is with people. Without the full involvement of all staff delivering asset management, any investment in the definition, measurement or analysis of process safety indicators is essentially worthless and the overall message is unlikely to succeed in the long term. A continuous staff education and awareness programme is essential – potentially lead by the staff themselves!
No matter which core accreditation, guidance or recommendation is used, best practice asset management is key to the profitability of a successful, long term business. It helps an organisation where individual staff know they are contributing both to the continued success of their company, and are working in a safe environment where processes are defined, measured and followed by everyone.
Amor assists organisations to identify key accreditation’s that will help in best practice management. It defines individual key performance indicators through the delivery of a central point of information via our ProcessSafety+ KPI Dashboard, to the successful involvement of all core members of staff through a staff awareness process. Amor’s ability to aid customers on their journey to best business practice is apparent throughout our partnership and success with ScottishPower. If you would like to hear more from Rich Gillis, please contact us at info@amorgroup.com.
£15M IS Managed Service Contract with ASCO
Amor has been awarded one of its largest ever information system managed service contracts with global oil and gas logistics firm, ASCO Group – now that is a great way to start the year!
Under the £15 million contract, Amor will ensure ASCO’s IT is a key enabler in its global expansion plans. Amor will offer a fully out-sourced service for the management of ASCO’s information systems, delivering a robust and flexible service that supports and reduces risk to their global logistics operation.
The five year contract will see Amor offering a range of flexible IT support services, including IT infrastructure, business systems and communications support and the management of all third party IT contracts on a 24/7 basis. This will bring in new ways of working, reduce cost and optimise processes and systems.
Billy Allan, Group Chief Executive of ASCO added: “We are pleased to award this contract to Amor. They beat off stiff competition to secure the contract by demonstrating best value for money, a proven track record in oil and gas and a clear development path for the evolution of our information systems”. Information systems and technology are critical to our business and the way we respond to customer needs. We are confident that Amor will manage the service transition seamlessly, and provide a service that fully supports our ambitious global expansion plans.”
Trends in Passenger Tracking
Airports across the globe are continually trying to achieve an efficient approach to the strategic and tactical management of key terminal operations. A key consideration is to better understand the efficiency of the entire passenger facilitation process. With 13 Bluetooth-based passenger tracking systems installed at airports in across the globe tracking over 290 million passengers a year, Amor has witnessed a diverse range of key strategic benefits realised as a result of passenger tracking systems such as PAXPath+.
Service Level Agreement (SLA) Monitoring: Many operators are subject to strict queue time SLAs implemented by local civil aviation regulators to ensure efficient passenger process. By utilising a 3rd party system to provide accurate, impartial measurement statistics, operators can engage in strategic operational management to ensure resources are optimally deployed, minimising queue times and any potential regulatory fines.
Supplier Management: Private firms employed by airports are tasked with meeting tight KPIs on queue times in order to maintain service quality. These KPIs are often measured via highly subjective manual surveys, which are open to misinterpretation and require a disproportionate level of resourcing to achieve when compared with the sample rate. Utilising a Bluetooth passenger tracking system has enabled efficient supplier management and improved performance.
Increased Non-Aviation Revenue: Long queues at security can have a detrimental impact on passengers' spending habits. Evidence suggests that the cost of queuing can be quantified as approximately $1 per passenger, per minute spent waiting to clear security. Reducing queue time by 1 minute through effective strategic and tactical passenger management, enabled by passenger tracking and dwell time monitoring systems, can deliver a clear and demonstrable return on investment.
Passenger Perception Management: Passengers tend to have an inaccurate perception of the time spent queuing in airports. This results in a much less positive passenger experience, having a knock on effect in terms of future use of the airport and buying behaviour airside. Passenger tracking systems enable airports such as OSL to display the current queue time on FIDS in the security area and on their website, keeping passengers informed and allowing for a more positive experience.
Driving Savings at World's Busiest Airport
Passenger Terminal Expo is the world’s premier aviation-focused conference and exhibition.
Of primary interest to the 3,500 industry attendees is the programme of senior-level conference speakers, discussing their experience and views in critical terminal operational areas such as Customer Service & Passenger Experience, Passenger Processing and Systems Integration. The conference provides an ideal platform for airports and airlines to showcase the benefits realised through innovative solutions, process and approaches to terminal operations.
Amongst the leading speakers in Copenhagen will be Andy Garner, Director of Operational Planning at BAA for London Heathrow Airport. Andy is responsible for operations resource planning at LHR, the world’s busiest airport, and will be outlining how Amor’s ResourcePlan+ solution - a powerful forecasting, planning and resource management solution - has allowed BAA to realise cost savings across its operations, achieved through improved processes, reduced administration, more efficient staff resourcing and reduced overtime.
Amor will be at Passenger Terminal Expo on stand 2065 showcasing our fully integrated terminal operations suite of solutions that are geared towards facilitating efficient processing of passengers through optimised resource planning and an in-depth understanding of queue and dwell time at key pinch points throughout the terminal. If you would like to arrange a consultation with one of our industry experts, please contact us at info@amorgroup.com
Making Shared Services a Reality: A Battle for Power
Is it possible for shared services to be implemented into public sector organisations? We talk to Jimmy Lumsden, Amor Group’s Head of Consultancy within the Public Sector, who believes there is a range of difficulty when implementing shared services in order to make them a successful reality.
Jimmy Lumsden highlights that “A successful shared service comes from a strong management team who embrace the change and communicate this through the organisation. Shared services offer a number of benefits to organisations including economies of scale, greater efficiencies, improved quality of service and the re-focusing of staff to added value activities.”
Shared services can fall on to the easy part of the spectrum, where services are shared between two government bodies who both agree that these services are required. An example of this would be two neighbouring council’s sharing payroll responsibilities who are willing to see this through.
The shared services spectrum begins to get more complex when more parties are involved and when the services are shared between different kinds of public bodies. This was evident when we worked with Orkney Islands Council and Orkney NHS, two different public bodies with five different services involved. The issues arose due to difference in the terms and conditions for employees, the complexity of the services and an insufficient willingness between both parties to implement the shared services.
In the majority of cases, it is apparent that neither government body wants to relinquish power when entering into shared services. However, to simplify the implementation of shared services organisations need to create a correct organisational structure and ensure that there is a management buy in.
The current market is showing an increase in shared services from local authority to education. The government are showing that significant initiatives are taking place to ensure shared services become a successful reality. If you would like to speak to Jimmy Lumsden, please contact us at info@amorgroup.com
New Clinical System to Deliver Efficiency
Cardiac, Thoracic and Cardiology – you don’t want to have to say that in quick succession! We have been practising and fine tuning our pronunciations following our contract win with The Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank.
Amor has been awarded a contract to design a new single records system for cardiac, thoracic and cardiology patients at Golden Jubilee National Hospital – Scotland’s flagship hospital for reducing waiting times. The NHS is a long-established client of Amor and the deal signals an expansion into clinical work which is expected to pave the way for additional work in the medical field.
The new cardiac, thoracic and cardiology (eCTC) system will help to deliver efficiencies and cost savings for the NHS by streamlining the way information, such as letters to GPs, are recorded, stored, shared and documented. By reducing duplication and making more efficient use of existing data and technology, the new system will save both time and money. The aim is to ensure that the full patient journey is accurately recorded, providing consistent data for auditing.
Amor will replace the existing two systems with a new consolidated system that is securely accessible via the internet and is fully integrated with eReferrals, currently being rolled out by NHS Scotland to meet targets for electronic referrals by clinicians.
Alastair O’Brien, Public Sector Business Unit Director said:“We have vast experience in healthcare IT solutions and this move into clinical systems is a natural progression, so we were delighted to be awarded the contract after a successful tendering process. We will be building a new system that provides accuracy and consistency.”
Realising 70% Electricity Savings
According to a recent Gartner survey, 65% of senior executives said that electricity savings are key when making their IT infrastructure more efficient and agile. In particular the greatest power savings can be achieved by making servers and desktops more effective and by increasing utilisation. Combining the reduction of running costs with corporate environmental strategies will allow organisations to kill two birds with the one stone.
Organisations that have incorporated VMware to reduce the number of physical servers or are considering desktop virtualisation will realise 40 - 70% savings in their electricity costs alone. So how can organisations achieve these savings?
The traditional method of running 1 application on 1 server is inefficient. Analysis has shown that average server utilisation is between 3 - 8%. On this basis, organisations could have 8 servers running at 8% utilisation or 1 server running at 64%, which is more efficient and simpler to manage. By using VMware Virtualisation it is possible to run 8 or more virtual servers on a single physical server. At a basic level this equates to saving 8 x the electricity for power and air-conditioning and 8 x the Hardware and maintenance costs resulting in potential savings of over £30K across the life time of the servers.
Desktops are a similar story, deploying Desktop Virtualisation moves all of the necessary processing power onto central energy efficient main servers for day-to-day office applications. On average desktops use 70 watts but this can be reduced to 5 watts per desktop by using energy efficient thin client devices producing cost savings of approximately 90%.
On this basis it is possible to be a green organisation with low carbon emission that makes significant savings on power consumption and running costs.
Amor Group provides a range of virtualisation advisory services including quality assurance of existing VMware environment, virtualisation assessments of servers and desktop through to designing a virtual server and desktop strategy, implementation and support of the VMware environment. Disaster recovery and continuity of business can also be addressed-but that’s a topic for another time. For more information please contact us at info@amorgroup.com.
In March Amor Assist goes global! It will provide Amor's international customers with a single point of contact for all IT/IS issues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, no matter where in the world they are. This will enable Amor to enhance the level of service provided to our current customer base.
