Owners, Operators, and Engineers Get on the ‘SAIM’ Page With New Asset Management Platform for Oil & Gas Infrastructure

We are excited to bring owners, operators, and engineers a new technology that will revolutionize the fuel storage industry. After a successful two-year pilot program, SAIM™, a digital engineering asset management solution is ready for market. Oil and gas facilities, such as fuel systems and tank farms, will benefit from the smarter engineering, efficient operations, and improved maintenance that SAIM provides. It gets all the stakeholders—owners, operators, and engineers—on the “SAIM” page through a cloud-based, secure, always-on platform.

The launch of SAIM is the result of a dozen years of exploration and research into how facility management could be transformed to provide stakeholders with increased transparency, resulting in more informed decision making. It’s been a companywide quest for Argus Consulting, SAIM’s parent company, because its engineers understand the incredible value it can bring to their customers. But it's also been a personal journey for SAIM’s co-founder, Dr. Meraj Mohebi, who grew up having conversations with his father about the types of technology that might one day transform industry.

SAIM--Dr. Meraj Mohebi

For me, it all started during the last two summers of college when I was a mechanical engineering intern at an industrial wastewater treatment plant. My father was the lead operator, and he managed a hardworking team. As an intern, my duties spanned from routine checks over the water treatment units, including reporting alarms to the remote office, to sorting paperwork and storing important documents in the warehouse file cabinet.

The morning drive to work was quality time with my dad. I would ask lots of questions on how to operate the facility, but it was the “what if” conversations that got us the most fired up. “What if” we had such and such technology to do a tedious task faster or schedule maintenance proactively? “What if” we had technology that helped our business to operate more efficiently, ultimately generating more profit and saving avoidable costs? Without knowing anything about future advancements in technology and while working off limited dial-up internet connection, my father and I envisioned a digital network that could store all our data and documents automatically and securely. We’d even imagine the benefits of remotely monitoring the facility from home. These car-ride conversations are some of my most treasured memories with my dad.

“Without knowing anything about future advancements in technology and while working off limited dial-up internet connection, my father and I envisioned a digital network that could store all our data and documents automatically and securely.”

My father passed away a few years after I graduated from college, but the possibility of our shared vision of the future kept me going. I continued my education in post-secondary schools while working in the oil and gas industry as a mechanical designer and later a project manager in Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) and Owner/Operator companies.

Twenty-first century advancements in the fields of IT and data science have brought us to today’s world of cloud-computing, internet of things, digital twins, machine learning and artificial intelligence. However, throughout the many facets of the petroleum industry, you continue to see outdated technologies, pen and paper record-keeping, shelves of cutsheets and binders, and few effective task-specific software programs that try to meet the complex needs of fuel and wastewater management.

That’s why SAIM was made – because it is needed. Without it, the critical industries that oil and gas systems power cannot thrive; economies cannot move. With five years of careful industry analysis and research and development, SAIM has been pilot tested at three of the United States’ largest airports and has proven successful at proactively managing fuel systems and tank farms to reduce investment vulnerability and maximize asset reliability.

The SAIM network of tools informs better decision-making for engineering, inspection, operation and maintenance practices and processes in fuel facilities. This cloud-based asset management platform gets all your stakeholders on the “SAIM Page” with your facility’s asset and operations performance. Teams can now collaboratively and individually track asset integrity, monitor easy-to-read alerts and notifications, access up-to-date documents and drawings, and gather valuable insights from data trends and reports.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, operators, owners, and engineers using SAIM were able to quickly address critical issues remotely. At the SAIM pilot facilities, operators have centralized information and intelligent dashboards to access O&M manuals, 3D as-builts, compliance records, operating trends and maintenance tracking, to make better decisions that keep them in compliance, make them more profitable, and keep them operating safely. Just as my father and I eagerly dreamed of in those car rides to work.

I’m proud of the ability of our entire team and the many clients who have helped us refine this platform to be both incredibly innovative and absurdly practical. It has resulted in a product that will reward the good work that owners and operators do at fuel facilities across the nation by giving them more transparency to do their jobs even better.

I look forward to being a regular contributor to the SAIM Page blog. In my next update, I’ll share more about the portfolio of in-house and third-party digital capabilities available for our modular SAIM platform. It serves a single source of truth for all stakeholders to set clear expectations, share important information, streamline operations, make informed business decisions, and reduce overall operating costs.

We’re excited to leverage the latest technology for smarter management of the critical component to connect people and propel our economies – fuel.

Let’s discuss what the vision of SAIM can do for you.

Meraj Mohebi, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Director of Engineering Innovation

Houston-based Smart Asset Integrity Management LLC (SAIM™) benefits from the experience and knowledge of the facility design engineers and specialists at its mother company, Argus Consulting, Inc., a leader in the fuels systems infrastructure engineering industry. For more than 25 years, employee-owned Argus Consulting has focused solely on program management, design, construction administration, and asset integrity management of fuel receiving, storage and distribution facilities and systems.