Make Love, Not War. How Geoforce Service Verification Prevents “He Said / She Said” Disputes

Many oil & gas exploration & production (E&P) companies call upon service companies to “verify” the activities of their vehicles when performing service. Typically, E&P companies want to identify activities around specific locations, dates, and times. How can this be accommodated? The standard low-­‐tech procedure might be to launch an inquiry.

Interviewing drivers and asking them to retrace their activity days, weeks or even months after service completion involves outrageous man-­‐hours, volumes of paperwork, and diverted company resources. With time and resources at a premium, these are diversions a service company cannot afford. It’s no wonder most avoid running investigations concerning fleet activities. The end result is usually forgoing thousands of dollars in disputed tickets even though service was performed.

With Geoforce’s award winning Service Verification module, there is a better, more efficient, way to verify service activity. Through Service Verification, companies can confirm where vehicles have traveled via collection of GPS tracking data like breadcrumbs, vehicle movement, stops, and time stamps.

With Service Verification, an operations manager can “verify” a vehicle’s activity history for a selected time frame in a few short minutes. The module also provides an elapsed time of the activity by the vehicle at the site.

Information provided includes individual starts / stops, distance traveled, transit time, and dwell time for an entire 24-­‐hour period. Because Geoforce was born out of requirements unique to the Oil and Gas industry, we also provide context like well/rig data.

Numerous E&P companies use Service Verification to audit tickets for services like sand or water hauling, roustabout jobs or even whether pumpers are servicing every well site on their route.

Many E&Ps are tightening their criteria for confirming service activity. A vehicle showing on a rig/well site is not the only important factor in the approval process. Questions asked to approve payment include:

• Was the service performed on the right location?
• Was the employee there long enough to perform the job?
• Were they there too long?

These can all be answered through Service Verification.

Because of Geoforce’s unique Asset Share platform, access to vehicle activity in Service Verification can be shared between E&P and service companies. Once in Service Verification, users from the E&P or the service company can search for the vehicle by name. They can filter their view even further by choosing a particular stop. This becomes ideal if the dispute is for a specific well ticket.

As highlighted below, this truck stopped at MADERA 17 FEDERAL 1 for 19 minutes:

History says it takes approximately 18 to 29 minutes for a driver to roll out hoses, make proper connections and pump 120 to 130 barrels of brine. In the case captioned above this driver was on site for 19 minutes. Any auditor with experience is not going to question this ticket. The driver is on the correct location and performed duties in the expected time frame.

Of course, it’s not always about refuting claims. Sometimes an employee has caused an accident or done something against company policy. With Service Verification, you’ll have an objective, verifiable view of the situation to help you make the right call without taking sides or getting caught up in a ‘he said, she said’ disagreement.

Companies are discovering other uses for Service Verification because the tool is so quick, simple and accurate. For example, one Geoforce customer started using Service Verification to determine if personnel were double dipping. Drivers were suspected of using the company’s vehicles and performing tasks for other companies on nearby rig/well sites. The fleet manager was able to run a daily activity query to view the route of the vehicle and determine questionable stops at rig/well sites.

As more and more companies use the module, additional ways of utilizing Service Verification will be discovered to clarify ‘what happened’ on site. This visibility and transparency will allow service companies to negotiate higher rates because E&P companies will be confident in the accuracy of service tickets. They will also benefit as payment for services are streamlined.

Contact Geoforce today to learn how we can help you verify service delivery and end needless billing disputes!

Nathan Harkey serves as Geoforce’s Regional Sales Manager for West Texas. A native of the area, Nathan has spent the last ten years serving the oil patch.