Successful Transition from a Legacy Well Integrity Management System to an Integrated, Expandable Platform
Authors: Al Sawadi Obadah , Kedia Rachit , Moselhy Mohamed , Abd-Elnasser Gamal , Mohamed Fahd , Tammam Mohamed , Korosh Wael , Sadoun Amar 
Published: October 2022

This paper presents the success of an end-to-end implementation of a Well Integrity Management (WIM) solution that replaced a legacy system, which is no more accessible. This successful implementation involved comprehensive data mapping and migration (direct and/or reverse engineered), roll-out of the well integrity standards, configuration of the well failure model, integration of the standard well integrity workflows and business process management as per the company structure and RACI chart.

The overall solution implementation was split into three critical tasks covering data management, solution design & configuration and testing & fixes to deliver faster sprints in a readily usable solution. Issues encountered were related to the lack of legacy system documentation, understanding the data model interrelation, well failure model (WFM) configuration, and the absence of a representative equipment inventory.

The lack of legacy system documentation dictated the need to reverse engineer the legacy system data model to carry out a proper data mapping & migration. The WFM is usually based on a representative equipment inventory, and due to its unavailability, a generic but standard equipment inventory was curated to populate all the well barriers in accordance with the well types and other criteria. The WFM rules themselves needed validation and rigorous testing on both the ends, data input & assessment output, in addition to the WFM logic and conditions to assess each well barrier elements. The new solution also needed to reflect current organization layout and approval levels to properly manage the ticket submissions, approvals, and alert notifications.

Extensive and constant collaboration of different stakeholders was key to the success of this implementation, ensuring an effective and timely transition from an inactive legacy system to a readily usable comprehensive solution that covers key WIM workflows and more.

The WIM Solution was fully & successfully deployed and legacy data was preserved & migrated. The following results were achieved: 1 - Establishment of an industry standard production data model (PDM) to host all WIM related data (legacy & new), 2 - Rollout and automation of integrity assessment workflows (WFM) using business process management tools, 3 - Deployment of an analytics tool, 4 - Interactive dashboards and visualization tools with alerts and notifications to ensure integrity compliance, awareness, and timely response.

The ability to rescue, map and migrate a legacy data model with no inherited documentation and little to no guidance was crucial for the success of this implementation. The new solution, built on an open & scalable architecture, opened the pathways to accommodate additional workflows, business rules, dashboards and new data sources without costly workarounds associated with closed and proprietary systems. As a result, it has proved to be an important cogwheel in the organization's digital transformation journey.