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A process email is like regular email but provides all process content and audit trail.

The oil and gas industry operates in a very complex environment — a highly distributed workforce, stringent regulatory overhead, and an on-going need for operational excellence. health, safety, and environment (HSE) compliance is an example of a set of business processes which are made up mostly of ad-hoc, unstructured human processes requiring people to rely on their knowledge, experience, and skills to solve the issue at hand. Even though the “office-work” involved in executing these HSE related human processes are company specific, there is a framework of standard components part of most HSE programs:
• Best practices creation and training;
• Handling HSE incidents;
• Incident reporting and analysis; and
• HSE audits.

A process document generates process emails for particpants and tracks their progress.

In most companies IT systems really only support incident reporting and analysis — providing a mechanism to report on HSE incidents after the fact, and to analyze and create management reports based on that data. The other components (best-practice creation, incident handling and audits) are ad-hoc, unstructured human centric processes — which are typically executed via meetings, documents, spreadsheets, and email. Using these tools (email, documents) for critical human processes is expedient but also at odds with the needs of the head office — which is a consistent view across the organization of the status of these business critical processes, while still enabling a collaborative approach to corporate accountability.

Since the company’s HSE system of record only stores information related to the final report and has no access to information on how an incident was actually handled, management lacks critical information for process visibility, process optimization, and process compliance. In essence, current tools for HSE management don’t manage the complete lifecycle of an HSE program, and don’t provide visibility into how HSE processes actually work. Not managing these human processes, especially processes related to compliance, can cost a company both in terms of operational excellence and actual fees and fines.

So what can be done? It is impossible to model and rigorously define every single ad-hoc unstructured process, or to think through every conceivable action ahead of time. Rather, the goal should be to allow processes to continue as usual, providing just enough structure to monitor and manage them, but making sure not to overdo it and strangle them. By managing human processes this way you can achieve visibility where none existed before and discover the invisible processes that make the business run.

HPM systems enable full lifecycle reporting for HSE incidents and incident handling.

Human Process Management Systems (HPM) are IT tools to manage exactly these types of ad-hoc, unstructured human processes. HPM systems provide a layer on top of plain old email and documents that allows participants to remain in their standard email and documents environment, but provide process email and process document capability. Process email acts like standard email, but is a type of shared, managed email which provides participants with all of the process content and context within the email itself and a complete audit trail.

Oil and gas organizations can use these systems as follows:

1. While doing audits, various types of findings are generated — items missing or misplaced and procedures not being followed. These audits were previously followed up by emails used to track progress on solving issues raised in the audit. This flurry of emails and manual follow-up included no centralized documentation of the corrective actions being taken. An HPM system instantly knows the status of all of the actions taken as a result of the audits and can generate management reports of the standing of ongoing audits.

2. When a possible fraud issue is discovered it is sent to a special investigation team. They start sending emails and collecting information from many different parties, possibly including experts outside the organization. Previously, companies used email and documents as the mechanism for managing these cases. Even though they had a central store for all the documents involved, they had no way to track and manage all of the email correspondence that took place as a result of each fraud escalation instance, and lost the organizational learning that was possible from the handling of these events. By using HPM systems, companies can now have a complete record of how the fraud event was handled to completion, which could be later analyzed to discern trends and best practices.

3. Quality issues that pop up are usually handled outside the standard process management systems, since they involve many people that do not use the process management systems and in many cases tend to be ad-hoc problem solving exercises, rather than rigorous pre-defined processes. Even though many process management systems have implemented rudimentary quality control capabilities, most quality issues usually end up being handled via email and documents, with the last chain in the process being updating the management system. However, the process of solving the issue is lost to the organization and with it any possibility of organizational learning. By using HPM systems, the organization has a complete record of how each quality issue was handled, and assurance that the issue was followed up to completion. Also, management has complete visibility of quality issues and how they are handled.

4. HSE incident tracking is another area where HPM is used. Once an incident is discovered, in most cases the handling of the incident is through ad-hoc, unstructured human processes. Because of this, in most companies, management has no visibility into the actual handling of the incident, and receives reports only after the fact. Using an HPM system for incident tracking provides visibility into the process as itself, and the ability to use that information for more detailed reporting and process optimization.

HPM systems provide enough structure to standard email and documents such that these human processes to be managed, but not so much as to strangle them. They allow users to remain in their familiar document and email environments, but provide robust tracking, follow-up, and reporting capabilities. This enables complete life-cycle management of the HSE program components — best practices and guidelines can be used to launch and manage the actual incident handling processes, which can feed the reporting and analysis tools. Audits can be defined based on actual process execution data and findings can be used to create new, improved best practices and guideline process documents.

Such “human process management systems” are just now starting to emerge. They let people continue to work as flexibly as with email and documents but with the added benefit of enabling them to control and track their processes, and providing the organization with the ability manage and gain insight into these human processes.