Paul Cantwell - Strathclyde University

Paul Cantwell- Knowledge exchange fellow from the advanced forming research centre at Strathclyde University

Can you tell us a little bit about the text session that you’re going to be involved with this afternoon?

We have designed a speaking session where we’re going to be bringing two SMEs who are developing digital transformational technologies, they’ve launched these technologies in different sectors but we believe there’s actually some transfer ability into the oil and gas sector. We’re also covering some programmes that we’ve been engaged with as the advanced forming research centre to help commercialise technology to a mature state of implementation and again in other sectors. However, we still feel those transferability and lessons to be learned by the oil and gas sector to adopt these digital transformational programmes.

Digital transformation is the key theme of this conference, looking at ways to drive change within the upstream sector, what sort of themes or trends are you taking away so far, what discussions are we picking up on?

What were picking up on is the message is still the same, the sector is very engaged; they’re still trying to determine a return of investment, they’re still trying to identify technologies that are transferable into this sector. I feel there has been some progression made with the oil and gas technology centre launching their technology road map in the past month where that specifically points out some of the interest points in the digital area. However, I feel there is more need for programmes to demonstrate implementation and impact and there’s still that bottleneck, the barrier where the oil and gas sector is still one of the slower sectors to adopt digital transformational technologies. We saw in one of the presentations earlier that the drone was quite heavily implemented within oil and gas in asset management maintenance and inspection. However, that was a market pull from a health and safety perspective. Now what we’re looking to identify is other market polls of the other technologies in regards to virtual reality, data management and augmented reality where industries start to see the benefits whether it’s a health and safety, return of investment or a better asset management application to help drive that technology into implementation and adoption by the main players.

How are you finding the Future Oil and Gas Event so far?

Its great in comparison to last year. It’s built on the breadth of companies that have actually attended, they’re up in numbers, there’s lots of discussion around innovation, there’s lots of discussions about what could be the next revolution in the oil and gas what is the next digital transformational technology to be watching but more importantly, we want to hear from the operators and the OEMs, what are their points of interest? what are they looking to achieve? So that we can then start to set up the supply chain the innovators, the technology producers to start addressing those challenges and those issues to help with that digital transformational progress in the supply chain.