eDROPS: Five years of digital DROPS management
From concept to development
The initiative stemmed from the growing challenges asset owners and operators faced with traditional, manual reporting methods. The ambition was clear: to digitalise DROPS inspections, improve efficiency, ensure consistent and high-quality reporting, and ultimately enhance safety outcomes. eDROPS was developed through extensive workshops, user interviews, and real-world testing.
Systematic approach to DROPS management
eDROPS is designed to provide a systematic approach to dropped object management, enabling asset owners, operators, and inspection companies to manage inspection tasks within the same application. In line with guidelines from DROPS and Samarbeid for Sikkerhet, eDROPS streamlines key processes such as risk evaluation, checklists and inspection routines, reporting and follow-up of inspection findings, and the implementation of safety barriers.
By implementing the application, asset owners and operators can ensure compliance with laws, regulations, and industry best practices, fostering a safer working environment.
Integrated, data-driven inspection management
With eDROPS, asset owners and operators gain real-time visibility into inspection data through intuitive dashboards that display live KPIs at both asset and fleet levels. This allows them to quickly identify trends and effectively monitor safety performance. Reporting is seamless and user-friendly. Inspection findings can be enriched with descriptive text and images and are easily retrievable or exportable to Microsoft Excel. They can also be imported into Power BI for advanced analysis and visualisation.
(Figure: (a) Dashboard on eDROPS application; (b) Power BI dashboard showing multiple assets.)
Every interaction within the system is traceable, ensuring full transparency and accountability. To further enhance operational efficiency, Axess Digital built an integration platform that facilitates seamless data sharing between eDROPS and existing maintenance management systems. This supports both one-way data transfer from eDROPS and two-way data exchange, reducing redundant work, aligning equipment status across systems, and easing administrative burdens.
Enhancing safety performance
A key benefit of eDROPS is its role in minimising both the likelihood and consequences of dropped objects. Through regular, systematic inspections, guided by best practice recommendations and tailored checklists, eDROPS ensures that essential countermeasures and implemented, significantly reducing the risks of incidents.
Beyond mitigating risks, eDROPS enables proactive actions to secure, replace, or remove high-risk items, helping to reduce negative outcomes such as injuries, fatalities, equipment damage, production downtime, financial losses, reputational damage, and regulatory penalties.
Additionally, eDROPS serves as a tool that enhances the crew’s awareness and understanding dropped object risks, enabling them to make more informed decisions and reduce dynamic dropped objects, which account for the majority of dropped object incidents in the oil and gas industry.
Moving forward
Axess Digital is committed to continue enhancing the eDROPS application, which is already being used by major players in various industries worldwide. With its user-friendly design and integration capabilities, eDROPS is setting the standard for next-generation DROPS management.
eDROPS is part of the Bridge inspection software suite, an all-in-one solution for comprehensive asset integrity management. The Bridge suite also includes other applications, such as EQUIP, NDT, 3DView, EX, PSV&IC, Pipe, and more, offering a fully integrated approach to asset integrity management.