Digital Field Development

Field development involves many different parties, including the owner-operator, partners, the front-end engineering design (FEED) company, and the engineering procurement and construction (EPC) company, as well as the many contractors supplying materials and executing work. Digitization affects each of these parties in a different way.

Introducing digital transformation is therefore not just about technology. It’s about rethinking how field development is executed from start to finish. Here are the key questions currently under debate in the oil and gas ecosystem:

  • How can the changes be beneficial to all parties?
  • How can contracting models enable such changes?
  • Who owns the data—the digital twin created—and who has the right to use it under which conditions?

Case Study: Field Development

BCG helped a global oil-services provider develop a vision for its digital field development, enabling it to leverage its broad and deep expertise across the oil and gas value chain in order to reduce the total cost of ownership of developments.

BCG and the company worked together to design the concept for a digital offering made up of three building blocks: a digital collaboration platform, a digital design engine, and an advanced data-sourcing solution.

The concept will offer a number of benefits:

  • Reduced design cycle times through automation and reuse of proven concepts
  • Improved quality of early design decisions by incorporating historic project and operations data
  • Deep collaboration with critical OEMs, yards, and transportation and infrastructure contractors from the outset
  • Strong portfolio of digital engineering tools and interfaces, which feed a digital twin of the field

Ultimately, these benefits will reduce field development time and cost while improving quality.