Hydrocarbon+ on one of the World’s First Floating Storage Regasification Unit
Amor has been awarded a contract by OLT to supply its hydrocarbon management solution, Hydrocarbon+, for a floating Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Regasification Terminal offshore Italy.The five year deal sees Amor provide support, maintenance and high availability hosting of the IT solution. OLT, along with Iren Mercato S.p.A., E.ON Ruhrgas AG, Golar S.p.A. Energy and OLT Energy Toscana S.p.A. is currently developing the new terminal offshore Tuscany in Italy. The converted vessel, Golar Frost, will become a FSRU. Once regasified, the gas will be transported onshore Tuscany by a pipeline part of the national pipeline grid System.
Dr Michael Mertl, Project Manager at OLT said “We required an Electronic Communications System (ECS) to manage the commercial services offered to a number of shippers. There is limited storage capacity available on the FSRU and gas demand will vary. As such, offering necessary flexibility and optimising nomination and inventory management is key to maintaining the best plant utilisation possible.”
Hydrocarbon+ will provide a basis for the delivery of the ECS. It will enable OLT to schedule and optimise LNG shipments, drive maximum plant utilisation through control of cargo schedules and inventory management, provide a seamless commercial service to the shippers and effective communications between Terminal, Terminal Users and the Transmission System Operator.
Robert McSaveney, Amor, added “We are delighted to be awarded this contract from OLT as it’s an exciting project, being one of the first FSRU’s, and builds on our previous successful deliveries at Isle of Grain and Dragon LNG terminals. This further enhances our position as the leading hydrocarbon management solution provider in LNG and Storage markets.”
Protecting Your Business from The Dragon
You’ve probably heard about Stuxnet. You may have heard about Night Dragon. Therefore you might not be surprised that Gartner has predicted a G20 country’s critical infrastructures will be disrupted or damaged by online sabotage by 2015. You could be the target.
Stuxnet has been reverse engineered with the source code available on the Internet. It’s just a matter of when, not if, the next “Stuxnet” is released - will you be its victim?
Andrew Wadsworth, Head of Amor’s Process Control Security Practice highlights the dangers of ignoring this. The evidence is that the threat of disruption to safe, continuous production operations through security breaches of process control systems is real and growing. Organisations are at different levels of maturity in addressing the threats and many are struggling to get to grips with the problem. There are a variety of reasons for this, but a common factor is an assumption that because all but the oldest control systems use commodity computers and network communications, that securing them is the same as securing the corporate IT systems. It isn’t. Most IT departments do not have the necessary knowledge and understanding of production operations to address the problem.
Andrew continues, “Like safety, process control security is a journey, not a destination. In my opinion, security is where safety was in the oil & gas industry 10 or even 15 years ago and there is a lot of work ahead to build a security culture in the same way that the safety culture has been developed.”
Amor can help you start your journey by providing a half day security workshop. It is free of charge and will aid your understanding of your current position, CPNI guidelines, the threat to your business and develop the business case to invest in securing your process control systems. To register your interest in our workshop, please email info@amorgroup.com.
Information Management (IM) in Context
Research undertaken by the IM Energy Forum, run by Amor and the Robert Gordon University, outlines what information professionals in Energy provide and what they consider to be part of Information Management. These research findings are in support of the movement towards service improvement that Amor facilitates through provision of Managed Services in Information Management and through the IM Energy Forum.
Springing into New Contract with PAXPath+
Amor has had a spring in its step following the recent success with PAXPath+, securing a new contract with Finavia, operator of 25 airports within Finland.
PAXPath+, a Bluetooth queue measurement solution powered by BlipTrack, will help Helsinki-Vantaa (part of the Finavia group) measure passenger queue and total processing time.
Helsinki-Vantaa (HEL) manages over 13 million passengers a year. With a combination of the latest technology, innovative design and best-practice in customer service, Finavia has ensured that HEL airport has remained one of the top European airports for the last 15 years. Finavia selected Amor’s passenger tracking solution, PAXPath+, to facilitate effective queue measurement, enabling process optimisation throughout the terminal even in the face of this increased demand.
Pirjo Lähteelä, Head of Passengers & Airlines at Finavia, said: “Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our passenger process is a key priority for Finavia at Helsinki-Vantaa, ensuring we continue to offer excellent customer service across our terminal operations.”
Alaistair Deacon, Transport Solutions Director at Amor, added: “Finavia joins a number of airport operators in North America, Europe and Australasia who have selected PAXPath+ over the last 6 months. Without doubt this refines PAXPath+ as the industry’s leading passenger tracking solution.”
Delivering ISO 20000-1:2005 Accredited Service for NATS
The multi-million pound contract will provide NATS with round the clock support for an expanded set of key business applications, ensuring service continuity through an experienced team of highly-skilled support specialists and robust processes to deliver the accredited service.
The service is designed to enhance the business value of NATS’ IT investment, through improved operational efficiency and measured service levels. Amor has worked with NATS for over 20 years and has developed a deep understanding of NATS’ business – this has been key in helping them to achieve year on year cost reductions since the initial service began. Amor provides NATS with service levels that are flexible and in line with their evolving business requirements.
Gavin Walker, Head of Information Solutions at NATS said: “The service, technical experience and guidance provided by Amor has surpassed expectations and this long-term extension underlines our commitment to continue working closely with Amor to deliver great results for our business. Availability and continuity of key applications are critical to the success of our day-to-day business and we are confident that Amor will continue to provide NATS with the highest levels of service for years to come.”
Improving Service for over Twenty Three Thousand Charities
Enhancing its track record with regulators, Amor has secured a new two year contract with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR), a non-ministerial department which forms part of the Scottish Administration, an arm’s length regulator of charities in Scotland.
There are over twenty three thousand charities on the Scottish Charity Register who are required to submit hard copy multiple-page monitoring documents and accounts each year. OSCR’s current operating system involves manually processing and checking the returns and accounts submitted. Amor will design, develop and support a new online integrated system (“OSCR Online”) to enhance and streamline OSCR’s existing and future processes. The new system will introduce efficiencies to its processes, streamline reporting for charities, and provide more detailed information about charities to the public.
Alastair O’Brien, Public Sector Business Unit Director at Amor said: “We’re delighted to have been appointed by OSCR to create a system that will deliver efficiencies in their operating system and enhance information. The ‘OSCR Online’ project builds on our strong track record delivering solutions to regulators.”
Providing Newest University Consultancy Support
In addition to the contract win with OSCR, Amor has been adding to its portfolio within the Education sector with a new contract win with the University of the Highland & Islands (UHI). UHI’s mission is to be a distinctive and innovative regional university of national and international significance. As the newest university in the UK UHI is undergoing rapid change and requires the development of a full suite of policies and procedures supporting security and compliance issues. To aid UHI in achieving its mission, Amor is developing and documenting UHI’s IT security policies and procedures.
Alun Hughes, Director of Learning and Information Services at UHI, said “UHI’s unique federal distributed model means that this has to be reflected in our policies and procedures. Amor is providing vital support in helping us to identify and develop this challenging model through developing UHI’s IT Security Policies and Procedures.”
Smartphones Improve Efficiency and Reduce Cost
Do you own a Smartphone? 1 in 4 of us does. In Local Authorities alone, Kable predicts that the number of mobile workers will rise from 265,000 to 700,000 in the next three years. GHCQ recently stated that teachers, council workers and NHS staff will all soon be using smartphones to improve effectiveness and efficiencies.
Amor has a long standing track record in the development of mobile applications, with expertise in systems integration, data management, reporting, hosting and support to the Public Sector. As well as developing applications for its customers, Amor has developed iPhone applications to further enhance its products, including IMViewer - an application that delivers full-functional remote access to IP devices, including video surveillance cameras, temperature and humidity sensors.
Amor provides a suite of frontline worker mobile enterprise applications that mobilises workers and leverages existing investments to deliver savings. Cordia (an arm’s length external organisation of Glasgow City Council) has achieved real cost savings of £825k year-on-year.
In addition to this, Amor are developing an occasionally connected smart client application on the Android platform for Transport Scotland that facilitates the regular inspection of every train and station in the country. Utilising the very latest Tablet technology the development of this new application will help Transport Scotland realise over 50% savings in hardware costs, ensuring it continues to deliver maximum value for money.
Neil Logan, Principal Consultant at Amor, comments “Along with cloud and social computing, Smartphone technology is one of the biggest technology advances of the last 20 years. Smartphones are changing the way we think about mobile phones and computing devices in general. They are directly responsible for the re-emergence of the tablet PC. However the Smartphone market is diverse and this makes it difficult for organisations to make the right choice s. We’re working with our customers to ensure they get the right software, on the right platform, on the right device for their needs. Importantly, we’re also working on multi-platform solutions enabling us to “write once deploy anywhere”. In a fast evolving market this helps eliminate the cost of choosing the wrong platform or device.”
Cost Pressures Driving need for Managed Services
Historically, Public Sector organisations outsourced primarily in ICT infrastructure services. However, current trends show that the cost pressures have driven public sector organisations to look at alternative modes of supply such as shared services, co-location, infrastructure as a service and cloud as well as other services.
With over 20 years’ experience in managed services, Amor is ideally placed to react to the evolving requirements of the Public Sector in ICT service delivery.
David Morton, Public Sector Sales Director at Amor, says “The recent drive within the Public Sector is ultimately to reduce budgets and spending. There is a requirement to sustain front-line services and a need to operate in a commercially aware environment with many organisations completely rationalising their business. We see managed services as an area of growth within the public sector allowing public sector organisations to add value to the customer with new and improved ways to deliver a service.”
Building on its track record and experience in managed services, Amor has provided round the clock support for an expanded set of key business applications to the UK’s leading air navigation service provider NATS. As well as this, Amor provides a nationwide fully managed service to one of the UK’s largest IT hardware and database organisations, Sun Oracle.
Amor has been awarded a place on a national IT managed services framework, placed on behalf of the Scottish Public Sector by Scottish Procurement.
