Delivering the benefits of IT and OT convergence


As operational and IT environments are digitally transformed, they become more connected – providing the potential for efficiencies such as greater visibility, reduced costs, improved uptimes and access to real time operational data for faster, better-informed decision-making opportunities.

With more connections, business risk increases. In the resources and oil and gas industries, OT downtime or outages affects supply chains. The challenge of achieving security and interoperability without disrupting critical services are major concerns for mining and oil and gas organisations.

Challenges we see

 

Industrial networks were not originally designed to be connected to the internet and security was often not considered during development and design. The disparate worlds of IT and OT means technical compatibility, security, team skills and culture are very different, making convergence of the two silos difficult.

 

Strategy to Execution
Mining and Oil & Gas sectors are primed to take advantage of efficiency gains that come from integration between OT and IT systems and automation but want to ensure a safe, secure and compliant approach when executing on strategy.

Cyber-security
Safeguarding environments is paramount to mining and oil and gas companies; their people, infrastructure, operations, the environment, and their reputation depend on it so securing integrated IT and OT environments from both inside and outside (intentional or non intentional) threats is a key challenge.

Team Skills
Many organisations and their IT and OT teams are at the beginning of their journey and often seek the services of an outside provider to bring the two worlds together.

Governance
Companies need to ensure that processes and technology implemation are not only compliant but go beyond the safety standards laid out by regulatory authorities.

Business Risk

  • Knowing the risks
  • Gaining total visibility of assets to know exactly what needs protecting and why
  • Establishing security policies, standards and governance specific to their business and industry needs
  • Defining and creating appropriate response plans in the event of a cyber-attack or network compromise
  • Ensuring there is no loss of control in automated process environments

Integration
Organisations are seeking to integrate systems across all their operations to support growth and future relevance across their value chain. The strategy is often set, but executing on the transformation and delivering rapid results is challenging.

Asset Visibility
Understanding the current state of disparate assets across an organisation is often difficult with no overarching process or roadmap. This makes visibility and future planning for maintenance or end of life devices difficult as asset registers give little insight into redundancy and forecasting requirements.

How we can help

 

Consulting
Knowing where to start and where to invest time and resources is a common issue. We help organisations address these issues so that they can take advantage of digital opportunities — optimising what they already have or initiating new programs to create value for their business.

Some of our consulting offerings include:

  • Business Analysis and Change Consulting
  • OT Network Architecture Consulting
  • OT Cyber Security Consulting
  • OT Cyber Security Strategy and Risk Assessments
  • OT CISO – Management & Board OT Cyber Security Advisor
  • Technology Asset Lifecycle Management
  • Enterprise Asset Review

Integration
Integrating systems and applications ties everything together so companies can take advantage of existing data and assets and drive efficiencies.

We know from experience that Operational and IT integration works for those companies that are up for it — those that look to the desired outcome, embrace organisational and technology approaches and options are fully commit to execution. We have been delivering rapid outcomes and efficiencies in mining and oil and gas for 30 years and have integrated all kinds of data and systems from ERP, Asset Management, TAR planning, scheduling, PPM etc.

Our Approach
When our clients engage with us, they benefit from our collective experience — in both a technical and business context. We know how to talk to everyone in our client’s organisation — Maintenance Managers, the CIO, an operator, a scaffolder, the CFO, the superintendent — and our ability to communicate up and down in the organisation gives us the ability to navigate to the true problem, to engage and deliver results quickly.

View how Denver approached New Ways of Working with our clients.

“Denver helped us to identify the IT and OT opportunities with the greatest business impact. They are easy to work with, flexible and approachable and have brought great value to enabling our business.”

Rhys Long
IT Manager
ATOM

 

 

 

“We need to be in a position where we can take fast, decisive action to respond to market changes and business needs. Technology is central to increasing operational efficiency while maintaining safe work practices and reducing cost and Denver has worked with us to ensure IT and the business were in sync to take us to where we want to be.”

John Bolton
IT Manager
Sandfire Resources

“In the mining world, processing and corporate IT infrastructures rarely merge effectively, so this represents an extraordinarily strategic and smart move to integrate the two together to not only reduce costs but also complexity.”

Thierry Chabanne
Manager Technology Operations & Governance
RoyHill

Business areas we support

 

Implementing Technology to enable strategy

We understand the role data and technology plays in optimising the delivery strategies from pit to port — utilising mine, rail, and port systems (inclusive of operations command) to efficiently mine and transport minerals/ores.

Maintenance & Shutdowns/Turnarounds

Our skills in maintenance and shutdown span mobility, enterprise asset management, maintenance scheduling, task, and team tracking and completions.

Cybersecurity

Identifying and addressing Safety and Cyber Security concerns of connected operations. We can identify the risks, issues and areas of improvement for converged IT & OT environments and pull all stakeholders together to execute on the strategy.

Asset Management & Infrastructure

We help optimise what you already have to increase asset productivity, efficiency, responsiveness through better understanding of organisational assets and better control including management, maintenance, spend, informed decision making and future planning.

PCN/PCS

We have extensive experience in PCS and understand the commercial and business sensitivity of the essential requirement for a highly available Tier 1 PCS environment.

Our People

 

Since we’ve worked in Mining and Oil and Gas for over 30 years, our team knows these environments and the intricacies of manufacturing operations. We know what to look for and how to engage with teams in our client’s organisation – Maintenance Managers, the CIO, an operator, a scaffolder, the CFO, the superintendent –our ability to communicate up and down in the organisation lets us navigate to the true problem, to engage and deliver results quickly.

Our team are specialists in project management, industrial environments, assets architecture and technical solutions.

We are experienced in delivering projects globally: North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia and are comfortable blending on-ground and remote resourcing/delivery models.

We have delivered 1000’s of business projects into mining and refining environments.

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