Pioneering the First Immersive Virtual Reality Solution for Onshore Oil & Gas Facility and Beyond with Sustainable Operations Ecosystem from 100% Development by In-House Talents
Authors: Latif Danial Shaffiq Abdul 
Published: October 2023

Immersive virtual reality of our asset provides the avenue to optimize operations cost, enhance project and asset management with occupational safety risks reduction to our frontline operations. However, high development and deployment cost with solution unfamiliarity hinders asset owner's adoption. This paper discusses the strategic approach of embracing innovation culture to develop a sustainable immersive virtual reality platform by capitalizing in-house talents for generating early solution adoption at minimum risks and costs towards the business. Three prongs approach was executed to maximise value returns with the least investment cost by focusing on customer centricity, agile MVP solution development and fit-for-purpose investments. Customer centricity allows the team understanding on the customer wants and needs to craft a bespoke solution that effectively address the customer pain points and harmonizing with the existing organization digital ecosystem and governances. Agile MVP solution developments at specific stages enhances the team's understanding of the solution development based on Technology Readiness Level (TRL) by low resources utilisation, fit-for-purpose investments and faster deployment to further minimize business risks and accelerate operationalisation. The three-prong approach has managed to achieve proof of concept in just weeks and achieved final MVP pilot deployment in a few months for an onshore facility in the region with bare minimum investment resources and minimum risks to the business. Leveraging on the knowledge and invested resources, three replications of onshore facilities in the neighboring vicinity was achieved at accelerated pace utilizing the existing resources and upskilling the new teams on the development methodology by capitalizing in-house talents with plans for replication in offshore facilities in 2023 onwards in Malaysia and international operations in 2024. The solution has also managed to achieve TRL 6 with copyrighted intellectual property to further accelerate the adoption of solution across the businesses to achieve the growth plans of the solution. Acknowledging continuous improvement and sustainable operations, strategic alliances are ongoing within the organization to develop the ecosystem for effective management of the solution; and knowledge transfer programs are also designed to upskill identified personnel with minimum business impact to existing operations. In addition, the knowledge gained from developing the solution and insights to the customer needs; new features can be easily designed into the system to ensure relevancy to the customers. Adopting digital solutions is a daunting task with unfamiliarity of the solution and the high threshold of initial investment. By embracing culture of innovation and capitalizing on existing talents with minimum resource investments, organizations can overcome these thresholds to achieve faster value returns, early solution adoption and bespoke features catered towards customer centricity without major impacts towards the business and lower risks.