Case Studies

One of the largest energy companies in North America transports more than 25 percent of daily natural gas production across more than 50,000 miles of pipeline to key markets across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. For more than 50 years, the organization’s over 7,000 employees have operated pipelines, storage facilities and power-generation plants with enough capacity to provide power to more than five million homes. In order to manage its growing pipeline portfolio across North America, the company is responsible for completing tens of thousands of pipeline agreements, commitments and tasks to comply with industry regulations.

The Workflow Challenge

To obtain government permits and approvals for its network of pipelines across North America, the company enters into legal agreements with landowners, indigenous communities and other infrastructure owners. Each agreement contains a significant number of commitments, which require internal staff or external service providers to complete one-time projects or many recurring tasks throughout the pipeline lifecycle. In order to successfully manage and report the completion of each agreement, commitment and task to all stakeholders, the organization began searching for an enterprise-grade workflow automation solution.

The HighGear Solution

HighGear’s no-code workflow automation platform was selected to manage the company’s pipeline agreements, commitments and tasks. The system automatically captured all task-related e-mails, conversations, photos, file attachments and digital sign-offs to show proof of completion. HighGear allowed project managers to identify non-performing service providers, manage commitment risk and analyze resource allocation. HighGear also provided executives with real-time visibility into the status of commitment achievement targets and required regulatory, environmental, indigenous community, construction and land reporting.

The Results of Automation

HighGear enabled the company to improve operational performance by tracking the status of thousands of assigned tasks and increase efficiency by reducing time spent collaborating on commitments. HighGear allowed the organization to automatically generate real-time commitment status updates for internal and external stakeholders and increase the accuracy of compliance reports for regulatory agencies. HighGear helped the company manage higher commitment volumes, while reducing its risk of commitment default, as well as the growth rate of its labor force, even as its pipeline portfolio expanded across North America.