Seismic Drilling Australia is a West Australian owned exploration and geotechnical drilling services provider. The Seismic team have established themselves as leaders in highly technical drilling projects that are difficult to access, have a small footprint and/or have highly individualised requirements.

^{Seismic Drilling Australia is Nationally Accredited to ISO 9001:2015 QMS, ISO 45001 OHS and Supply Nation Certified for providing quality service in: Exploration Diamond Drilling, Aircore Drilling, Shallow Angle Drilling and Geotechnical Drilling.}

Seismic Drilling's challenge

Seismic’s new Drilling Manager, Paul Allen, had just come on board to assist Managing Director, Dwayne Reynolds, in growing the business. As the business grew, the team discovered a series of problems:

1. Paper-based processes were burning through time at every stage of the workflow, from capturing information in the field to manually invoicing their clients.
2. With communication spread across paperwork and email threads, the team were experiencing delays in receiving critical data and responding to issues in the field.
3. Important data was stuck on paper, making it resource intensive to compile meaningful reports or set and track performance goals.

The Seismic team knew efficiencies could be gained using technology, particularly in digitising Seismic’s plod data capture process. Paul started to explore the options available on the market online and he came across CorePlan.

A new digital workspace for Seismic

Paul and Dwayne worked closely with the CorePlan team to get to the root of the business problems they needed to solve. By listening carefully to Seismic’s needs, CorePlan created a three-step plan for the Seismic team to get them up and running as soon as possible.

1. Digitise Seismic’s plod data capture process

The first step toward success was to retire the existing pen and paper plod workflow by digitising the field team’s data collection processes.

Using the CorePlan mobile app, Seismic’s drillers are now able to quickly and easily enter all of their drilling data throughout a shift, dramatically cutting down on time spent filling out paperwork after hours.

All of this data is seamlessly pushed straight into the web portal, helping Paul and Dwayne keep in touch with what’s happening in the field in real-time.

2. Centralise communication

With the team working across a mixture of paper, emails, spreadsheets and other data sources, it was difficult for the field and office teams to follow communication chains and action requests.

Now that the team were onboarded to the mobile app and web portal, the entire team were now able to work from a single space. This made it much clearer to see who needed to be doing what and when.

Seismic also chose to add CorePlan Forms to their CorePlan subscription to enhance the team’s communication. Using CorePlan Forms, the Seismic team can:

• Address the needs of the field team faster: by creating automatic email notifications using CorePlan Forms, the office team receive alerts in real-time when inspection forms, hazard logs or incident reports are submitted and are mobilising faster.
• Bring safety into the spotlight: using the CorePlan Forms safety dashboard, the team can quickly access their lead and lag   indicators, view incident and inspection reports, and track the   number of incident-free days across projects or the whole company.
• Communicate more effectively within the team: now that everyone  is working from the same digital space, time spent going back and forth has reduced and accountability has increased

3. Leverage digitised data

A key organisational performance goal that Paul and Dwayne were wanting to focus on was total rig utilisation, ie increasing the percentage of time spent drilling as a proportion of total time worked..

Before CorePlan, the information needed to track this metric was captured and stored on paper plod forms. This meant that someone would have had to manually copy this information into a separate excel spreadsheet - a time expense that wasn’t feasible for a small team.

Now that all of the plod data is digitised in the first instance and stored in one location, Seismic have complete control over their data and can export it for further analysis at the touch of a button. It’s easy to see how much time has been spent drilling versus other time activities in just a few moments. Where performance targets aren’t being met, all of the information needed to understand why. Eg. servicing and repairs, weather delays or client wait time, can be found using CorePlan.

"It's now very easy to extract data to quickly compile reports or view our safety, performance and cost data as we need it."

Ross Warren, Director of Maintenance & Safety

The result

Life post-onboarding is looking up for the Seismic team. “CorePlan has definitely increased efficiency within the business,” says Paul, “We have received great support. (Our) inquiries or any issues are addressed very quickly.”

With the Seismic team quickly and easily capturing data at scale, Paul has the extra time he needed to identify and improve inefficiencies in their business. Now, Seismic are closer than ever to reaching their rig utilisation goals; goals that they were able to set and track using these newly-acquired insights. The team at Seismic are one of CorePlan’s greatest advocates, referring multiple drilling companies to the platform and providing valuable product feedback and suggestions.

"Any issues or suggestions I have addressed have been resolved and I have seen many of our ideas implemented, which has been fantastic."

Ross Warren, Director of Maintenance & Safety