Global Energy Company

The Challenge

Senior management recognised that there were single points of failure in the onshore and offshore ICT infrastructure and dependencies that could mean a loss of critical services for many weeks. It was appreciated that effective recovery strategies and plans needed to be developed, implemented and tested but first there was a requirement to understand the exposures and requirements of the business.

The client did not have the required specialist knowledge internally, so called upon Teed to undertake this important project as they recognised that Teed are the leading providers of business continuity and disaster recovery solutions to UK North Sea oil and gas operators.

The Solution

A detailed understanding of the existing IT and communications infrastructure was gained through discussion with IT representatives and suppliers. Risk assessments were undertaken to understand all potential single points of failure and to identify risk controls and solutions that would reduce the likelihood of disruption or minimize the impact. The current achievable Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) were identified for all services and consideration given to the information that would be required from the business to justify improving upon these.

Business impact analysis interviews were facilitated involving representatives from all business areas based onshore and offshore. Teed’s proven methods for oil and gas operators were utilised, thus ensuring all required information was obtained in a form that would add benefit during the recovery strategy development discussions. Recovery times were allocated to all critical activities, together with the identification of all resource requirements and minimum requirements. A comprehensive resource requirements matrix detailing the required RTO and RPOs for all services was obtained and matched against what was achievable. Over 80% of requirements could not be satisfied with the existing infrastructure set up and recovery strategies.

Through desktop exercises and discussions with IT technical staff, the recovery strategy options and related costs for satisfying the identified resource recovery requirements of the business were identified. There was a significant cost and resource implication, particularly in relation to improving the resilience of telemetry and offshore communications. Several presentations were made to the management team by Teed consultants to explain the current risk exposures and convince them that appropriate investment was required.

Once the decision was taken by the management team on which of the options to proceed with, our consultants helped draft the programme of activity that ensured all pre-incident actions were taken to implement effective solutions, as well as producing comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans detailing all post-incident actions and information to ensure response and recovery would be controlled.

The Result

Following this project, the management team and key business areas were confident that safe and effective operations would continue in the event of any incident disrupting their ICT or office capabilities in the North Sea region.