Ecatenate Builds a Yard Management System for Vallourec
Before a string of drill pipe goes offshore it passes through a yard — inspected, treated, machined and dispatched — and when it comes back off a rig it goes through the same process in reverse. That work sits on the critical path of a drilling programme, and it has to be exact: pipe is identified by diameter, wall, grade and thread connection, and a tubular that doesn’t match the string it is destined for is no use to anyone offshore.
Ecatenate has built the Yard Management System (YMS) used by Vallourec’s service operations team to plan, schedule and control that work across multiple yards for major North Sea operators.
The job as the record
Everything is organised around the job: customer, contract manager, sales references, yard, well and rig, requested and scheduled dates, shipping and delivery, tracked through to completion and dispatch.
Held against it are the products, described to full specification rather than by shorthand; the requirements that emerge as work progresses, from ad-hoc transport to stockroom instructions; the people and products the job needs; and the shipping and road notes that would otherwise sit in an email chain.
A scheduler built for shared capacity
YMS schedules across multiple yards, each split into its own resource lines — yard and warehouse, inspection, machine shop — with AM, PM and overtime slots across the week.
That structure exists because the work is distributed. Some services are delivered in-house, others by third-party operators specialising in particular processes. Seeing every yard and resource line together lets operations place work where the capacity actually is, and know what is committed before promising a date.
Change control that keeps the yard honest
Job specifications change constantly — products substituted, dates moved, scope grown. On a job of any age it is normal to be many revisions in.
YMS versions every job and routes changes through structured approval, with separate sign-off for the contract manager and the logistics team and inspection status tracked alongside. Changes sit pending until resolved, and the dashboard surfaces those awaiting approval and the jobs still unscheduled, so operations start the day on exceptions rather than a full job list.
Nobody works from a superseded specification, and every amendment records who requested it, who approved it and when. Where the wrong pipe arriving is measured in offshore time, that trail is worth as much as the scheduling.
Why it matters
- One version of the job — yard, logistics and contract manager working from the same specification
- Capacity visible across yards — in-house and third-party commitments in a single view
- Precision where it counts — tubulars described to full specification
- Exception-driven operations — pending approvals and unscheduled jobs surfaced, not sought
- A complete history — changes, approvals, requirements and documents held against the job
About Vallourec
Vallourec is a world leader in premium tubular solutions for the energy sector and other demanding industrial applications, with service operations supporting drilling programmes through a network of yards.
Technology
ASP.NET · JavaScript · SQL Server
