Here’s some of the ways our software developers and Equinor IT responded to covid-19.

There’s no denying that the current situation is a new one for all of us. Software development is a craft, requiring time and skill to get it right, but when a pandemic strikes there are new needs appearing. In order to get an overview quickly, time is really of the essence. 

The Mobility team in Stavanger got a challenge handed to them mid-March, mere days after covid-19 lockdown safety measures were in place. Development and Production Norway (DPN) needed a status overview solution for offshore workers; where they were, if they were in quarantine and if they were able to work. The main idea is for personnel to go in and update their information themselves regularly.

The team gathered all relevant data in Sharepoint, which is accessed through an API, and when users complete the form an authentication process is triggered. Once that is completed, the information layer is updated and accessible to management.

“We have a template that we use for new builds. That lets us get started quickly, and then it’s the logic we place on top of if that’s unique to the project,” developer Peder Arne Godø says.

But software developers aren’t the only ones hard at work responding to the covid-19 situation in Equinor IT. Berit Reppen Lorentzen is a data visualization enthusiast and well-versed PowerBI-user. When she was contacted to help build dashboards for a covid-19 task force in need of updated data, it took her less than a week to get the first one ready. 

“Both Berit and the entire team have delivered beyond expectation,” project leader Dirk Hesse tells us.

By mid-april, the team - which grew into 8-10 people - had delivered 6 dashboards. One  displayed medical data sourced from WHO and one gave an overview of personnel status. Berit explains that the dashboards aren’t technical marvels, mostly operating on Office365, MS Forms and others.

“We’ve gone for a solution that requires different people updating different forms. And the interesting part has been seeing how they interpret and use these forms, and making sure they all fill in the same info,” she says.

Different levels of risks are displayed using the well-known red, green and yellow colors. While the dashboards are useful as singles, they’re even better coupled up. 

“One dashboard lets you see risks connected to different business areas. And when you’re looking at them all together managers can easily see if other areas are struggling with the same challenges as their own,” Berit says.

She had to figure out what data to gather and display but that wasn’t the only challenge.

“I also had to do it at the same time as the task force were deciding what they needed to see. There weren’t any older tools or solutions to build on,” Berit says.

“This combined with the short time limit made for a very interesting and rewarding project,” she adds.

But it’s not all software and code - our people are also creating physical objects. With the pandemic, the demand for protective equipment rose. In response to that, many initiatives to 3D-print this kind of gear sprung across the world. Equinor has 19 printers, both on- and offshore, and many of our employees have been taking part. 

“I figured I could do a test to see how it turned out, and it turned out great. Since my own printer is already in my home office it was easy to just turn it on and let it print while I’m working,” Jørn Ølmheim explains.

Since he started printing, he’s spent somewhere around 3 kilograms of filament creating a grand total of 140 protective visors. He’s kicked production up a notch and even has an assembly line.

“There was a local retirement home here in Trondheim that sent in an order and I saw I had that number of visors available. So I packed them and went for a run down to deliver them the same day. They were incredibly grateful for the gear,” Jørn says.

Equinor’s own printers are also part of our initiative to establish procedures to help us print spare parts, should the supply chain be disturbed by the pandemic. And the ones on land are, like Jørn’s, printing protective gear for local health care providers. Our printers offshore are hard at work printing the same gear for our sick bays on our platforms.