About Gas Field Specialists, Inc.

Gas Field Specialists, Inc. (GFS), provides a wide range of services and resources to the oil and gas industry, including well site construction, equipment rentals, transportation services, well maintenance, roustabout services, reclamation, and pipeline fabrication.

Owned and operated by the West family since 1965, GFS has undergone rapid growth with booming production on the Marcellus Shale, the second-largest natural gas reserve in the world. Forward-thinking management has enabled the company to thrive in this fast-paced industry.

In November 2007, another company, Energy Rentals, LLC, was formed to handle the growing need for specialized rental equipment in the industry.

Industry

Oil and gas

Headquarters

Shinglehouse, Pennsylvania, with multiple locations in New York and Pennsylvania

Founded

1965

Services

Roustabout, Shop Fabrication, Transportation, Well Site Construction, Equipment Rentals, Well Maintenance, On-Site Services, Pipelines, and Machine Shop

The challenge

GFS must keep all of its vehicles and equipment in optimum condition and remain fully compliant with government regulations, while also serving its clients. At any given time, GFS asset leaders must be able to show complete records of the safety inspections and corrective actions that have been performed on any given asset — down to the smallest nut and bolt. Further, leaders must ensure that all required certifications, registrations, and inspections are current. Part of that challenge includes tracking data on critical internal operations, such as preventive maintenance and inventory.

The solution

In order to better organize maintenance schedules, track task completion, and analyze their expanding operations, GFS partnered with ManagerPlus to achieve the following objectives.

Improved Scheduling

GFS must schedule and track thousands of maintenance services, inspections, registrations, and certifications, for a wide variety of assets, including dozers, wheelie tanks, trucks, cranes, air compressors, boilers, pumps, excavators, and more.

Technicians perform these maintenance tasks at yearly, bi-yearly, monthly, weekly, and “every time in” intervals, as well as on a use-basis, such as after a certain number of hours, readings, or progressions.

By creating dynamic maintenance schedules in the ManagerPlus platform, GFS’s asset leaders are able to customize work order lists and calendar views. Schedules can be prioritized with drag-and-drop ease, according to due dates and log values. Meanwhile, automatic alerts and notifications can trigger preventive maintenance work orders to ensure that crucial tasks aren’t deferred.

This way, the ManagerPlus asset management system is doing the work of tracking maintenance schedules, and work orders are centralized and standardized, ensuring that all required services and inspections are completed in a timely manner. Powerful automation helps leaders save time and helps technicians gain efficiencies.

According to Tim Haley, GFS Project Analyst, ManagerPlus’ scheduling module has turned scheduling into a streamlined, reliable process. “It is just an absolute beast as far as what it can keep track of,” he said. “We have 6,700 schedules in there, and it just purrs. It runs really, really well. It’s the life force of our entire maintenance company here.”

On the fleet side of operations, ManagerPlus has helped GFS improve its Inspection Selection System (ISS) rating, which is used by department of transportation officials to determine which commercial vehicles passing through a roadside scale require inspections. By targeting specific areas of its fleet maintenance operations for improvement, GFS has managed to cut this rating in half, helping operators avoid unplanned inspections and minimizing the risk of penalties for regulatory non-compliance.

Detailed Record Keeping

Liability is a major concern for GFS and their clients. Oil and gas companies must be certain that all equipment and services provided by GFS will be safe and reliable. This is why it is vital that GFS keeps detailed records on maintenance, inspections, services, registrations, and certifications in one centralized, easy-to-access platform. Prior to implementing ManagerPlus, asset managers had to dig through overflowing paper records in manila folders, sometimes spending hours trying to locate information requested by a client. And after all that work, they still couldn’t be completely sure that everything needed would be there.

With ManagerPlus, a complete database of information is now just a click away, serving as a single source of truth. Details are searchable and accessible. Maintenance actions can be organized in clear, easy-to-read reports that can be delivered directly to clients from the system.

“Our customers, if they don’t see evidence of the work they need done, they won’t do business with you,” said Kurt McDowell, GFS Safety Director. “It helps us dramatically when we can show all the work orders and the history.”

Calibration

Quality control is a critical process in the oil and gas industry. For example, gas companies must be able to accurately meter the amount of gas flowing through a pipeline in order to calculate proper quantities.

GFS is responsible for ensuring that its pipelines and equipment meet the exacting specifications of clients. Technicians must regularly calibrate some 140 pieces of measuring equipment, including torquing pressure gauges, ultrasonic thickness gauges, spring micrometers, hydro chart recorders, hydraulic torque wrenches, and more.

In addition, GFS must also maintain employee credentials for gas metal arc welding (GMAW), shielded metal arc welding (SMAW), submerged arc welding (SAW), and other certifications required by the industry.

To efficiently manage these demands, GFS created a separate entity in its ManagerPlus platform devoted entirely to quality control. Now managers can easily see the status of all equipment calibrations and technician certification renewals.

Organizing maintenance information in one centralized place also helped them identify bottlenecks in their calibration schedules that were causing tasks to pile up toward the end of the year. With ManagerPlus, they have been able to spread these calibrations and certification renewals more evenly throughout the year.

Creating a separate entity also made it easy for GFS to manage user permissions and document accountability. Audit trails in ManagerPlus document who is making changes in the asset database, what changes were made, and when they were made. This detailed information helps GFS comply with regulations that require precise recordkeeping.

Operational Insight

The oil and gas industry moves at a fast pace, and competition is substantial. Because of this, GFS must keep its operations efficient and focused on the bottom line.

With ManagerPlus inventory solutions, GFS was able to perform a full inventory audit of its 1,700-plus parts with simple bar code scanning — a chore that would have taken weeks if competed manually with paper or spreadsheets. The results were striking: previous valuation estimates had been undervalued by as much as 70%.

And with ManagerPlus mobile solutions for phones and tablets, GFS can now easily track usage hours on trucks, including idle time, and reconcile worker hours. Operators can collect and transmit data from the road, the job site, or anywhere.

Leaders at Gas Field Specialists are realizing results

We have 6,700 schedules in there, and it just purrs. It runs really, really well. It’s the life force of our entire maintenance company here.

Tim Haley

Project Analyst

It helps us dramatically when we can show all the work orders and the history.

Tim Haley

Project Analyst

It’s an excellent system, and it’s an easy system to use.

Tim Haley

Project Analyst

Next steps

If you’re looking for a proven solution to address your maintenance and inspections challenges, we’re here to help — every step of the way.

Our powerful cloud-based ManagerPlus Lightning software will:

  • Organize your asset data
  • Manage your inventory
  • Schedule preventive maintenance automatically
  • Provide insight into your business
  • Document compliance efforts
  • Track certifications and quality control

Results like those seen by Gas Field Specialists can be achieved by any organization across any industry — from transportation and facilities management to manufacturing and construction. So, whether your company is small, mid-sized, or enterprise-level, ManagerPlus Lightning can deliver the full power of an intelligent, highly customizable maintenance program that works as hard as you do. Schedule a personalized demo today.

Subscribe to the ManagerPlus blog

Stay up-to-date with ManagerPlus’ news, tips, and product updates by subscribing to our weekly email notifications.