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When you turn to DataSafe Recovery Services Ltd.(DataSafe), you can slash from hours to minutes the time it takes to create your Emergency Response Plan. “It’s a tool that will increase your accuracy and decrease the time and manpower it take to deliver it,” says Ken Clarkson, who handles business development for DataSafe.
A leader in emergency response planning, DataSafe offers a complete package of services related t all aspects of emergency response planning, providing both corporate and site-specific emergency response plans to oil and gas firms across Western Canada. “What we have is available to anybody,” says DataSafe’s President and co-founder, Cyril Cox, noting that DataSafe deals as easily with a start-up, single field operator as it does with major firms with more than 3, 000 employees. “We keep clients compliant – that’s the key.”
DataSafe has a solid track record of providing comprehensive solutions for industry’s Emergency Response Plan needs. The Calgary-based company, which opened its doors in 1989, now operates with four partners – Cyril Cox, Ken Clarkson, Bill Dowell and Don Ross – and a staff of six, producing anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 emergency response plans per year. “We are very much a publishing house,” Cox says.
It is thanks to DataSafe’s online software management tool, the OPERA system (Online Preparation of Emergency Response Actions), that allows DataSafe to expedite companies’ requirements. Developed in-house, OPERA is a Web-based replica of the system used internally by DataSafe. OPERA is an efficient method to develop and manage plans online, enabling companies to take raw emergency response information and blend it with DataSafe’s extensive bank of public domain and site-specific information – a combination that has created one of the most comprehensive ERP packages on the market.
“It allows the development of customized ERP’s online, reducing hours of research to minutes of execution,” Clarkson says.
When it comes to emergency response planning, he adds, document preparation and generation is key. But the creation, printing, distribution and management of your documentation is always the most time-intensive component. This is where OPERA shines. With OPERA, DataSafe is able to manage in excess of 1,000 properties and produce over 2,000 manuals a year – all with a staff of just four account managers. “Our system merges everything together. It’s a tool that will expand your operational capability with less manpower,” Clarkson says. OPERA is an integrated system that includes every kind of information required, from pipelines, well lists, assets, policies and procedures, to people, roles and responsibilities, emergency contact information and response methodology. “It’s a single repository of all your ERP information, as opposed to multiple sources of the information.”
What OPERA does, is take all of the data components associated with an ERP and convert them into information that is usable. Core data components that go into an ERP, such as contact numbers and site-specific information, can be entered into the system, which will place that data into a database environment to generate your document. As a result, the next time you need to update your document, all you need to do is change a contact telephone number once – and that number will be changed automatically, throughout the document.
OPERA allows clients who wish to prepare and manage their own ERP process, to maintain and modify their plan as they see fit, rather than having to wait for their annual update. “For those companies going through a lot of change, this helps them keep current,” says Cox, noting this can be particularly helpful for companies going through major change as a result of acquisition, buyouts, mergers or other reasons.
Designed using an open architecture system that can support clients’ documentation structures, OPERA provides an online interface into DataSafe’s system, with a secure environment that allows clients to define their own levels of authority and the number of users with access to the system. “You can customize it to meet your individual corporate culture and methodology,” Clarkson says. The flexibility it offers, is unique – in that clients can in mere minutes, redefine the structure of their document, print off the document and create a fully bookmarked PDF of their Emergency Response Plan, fully updated with all current information. OPERA is not an interactive ERP system, Clarkson adds, noting there are other systems on the market that are geared to being real time during an emergency. “Ours is strictly designed for the preparation of the information.”
What DataSafe’s OPERA system offers, is more relevant than ever as the Alberta Energy Regulator moves toward electronic submissions of ERP’s. It’s also significant in light of the skilled labor shortage facing the energy industry as a whole. “This allows you to do more with less,” Clarkson says.
About DataSafe Recovery Services Ltd.
DataSafe is committed to ensuring your ERP compliance requirements and corporate objectives. If you’re a Western Canadian oil and gas producer/explorer of any size, you will benefit from our decades of contingency planning experience, robust information technology and empowered staff.
For more information, please visit our website at www.datasafe.ca
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