Client

Our client provides oil and gas companies with consulting services and specialized software for artificial lift projects. Their solutions improve the efficiency of electrical submersible pumps (ESP), predict ESP failures, minimize their downtime, and extend service life. The client owns and maintains several oil wells and relies on its solutions for internal operations.

The company’s key offering is an application that facilitates the Dismantle, Inspection, and Failure Analysis (DIFA) for ESP systems. In the energy industry, DIFA helps companies investigate equipment failures, analyze their root causes, and estimate each component's mean time to failure (MTTF). Our client’s web portal streamlines DIFA documentation, reporting, and analytics, acting as the central database for each ESP incident.

Challenge

The company’s ESP failure analysis app met the needs of both internal teams and other oil well operators for many years. Over time, however, the solution declined in performance and response times, largely because of an outdated technology stack and lack of updates. App modernization was high on the agenda.

Our client was disappointed with previous IT vendors, whose quick results came at the expense of code quality. Moreover, they had no in-house development team of their own.

This time, the company sought a Managed IT Services provider to oversee all aspects of app modernization, web development, and general maintenance. They were looking for someone who would get the job done on time and to a high standard. Exoft met all quality criteria and started working on the ESP failure diagnosis app.

Our cooperation

We launched the project in 2023 and are the primary software development team. As requested by the client, the work on the custom ESP monitoring application is phase-based and on-demand. Each phase lasts about 4-5 months, followed by a gap to develop and estimate the next scope.

The team includes front-end and back-end engineers, a team lead, and a DevOps specialist. The team collaborates in Jira and holds meetings with the company’s product owner twice a week. During these meetings, we demonstrate interim results, fix any roadblocks, collect feedback, and suggest ways to improve the ESP failure diagnosis app.

So far, we have completed two phases and are preparing for the third one. We usually run three activities simultaneously: technology modernization, ESP failure analysis app optimization, and feature development.

Legacy Technology Modernization

The first challenge was the modernization of the ESP failure analysis app. Earlier versions relied on deprecated libraries and tools, so we had to upgrade or replace them.

  • LoopBack 3 to LoopBack 4 migration allowed us to use TypeScript and improve data transmission, information retrieval, and workflow synchronization between the client and server sides.
  • Angular 8 to Angular 14 migration required rewriting the entire code structure and let us access many new ready-made Aglular functions and built-in improvements.
  • AWS SDK 2 to AWS SDK 3 migration helped us boost app performance and TypeScript compatibility.

Performance Improvements

We needed to optimize the overall performance of a custom ESP monitoring application.

As part of code-level optimization, the team divided the code into smaller units, improved its hierarchy, and removed non-required functions. We standardized everything, from naming conventions and indentation to the overall code structure. Such refactoring simplifies new feature development and accelerates developer onboarding.

On the server side, our DevOps specialist arranged the back-end and front-end into separate production instances, reducing performance limitations. Plus, we automated the process of updating the production environment.

The team optimized database relationships, restructuring the tables and speeding up data retrieval. We also adopted AWS as a resource-efficient platform for storage management and set up secure access controls for confidential files.

Finally, our team optimized the responsive design for mobile browsers by adding new component styles. Now, the client’s employees and partners can access the ESP failure diagnosis application remotely while enjoying great UX.

Custom Web Development

Our client wanted to ramp up the app's capabilities, enabling faster and more accurate electrical submersible pump monitoring.

We developed new features, added in-demand integrations, and updated existing functionality. Our key achievements are:

  • Created advanced reports in PDF, Excel tables, and other in-demand formats
  • Optimized photo processing, enabling users to add multiple images per report
  • Improved report filtering by date, location, operator, ESP component, failure type, root cause
  • Improved distinction between upper, lower, and dismantled sections of equipment
  • Enabled faster approval workflows by expanding user roles
  • Developed custom image- and tag-based search engine
  • Integrated graphs (including three-dimensional ones) to visualize incident information
  • Automated incident reporting with embedded email campaigns

Solution

Key users of the custom ESP monitoring app are the client’s internal staff and partners. Our task was to scale the app for new oil well operators and third-party equipment suppliers. They use an app to document electrical submersible pump failures in a central knowledge database, accessible via web and mobile.

In the embedded forms, users upload photos of affected components and specify electrical submersible pump failure, its root cause, date, and location. They can provide extra records of ESP’s life cycle: its age, past failures, recent repairs, and scheduled replacements.

Oil well operators can easily filter out reports and generate 3D graphs to show the most common defects, average time to failures, and affected components.

Thanks to an embedded text editor, DIFA teams and inspectors can fill out their forms with greater precision. Photo editor lets them crop, annotate, and partially delete image contents to pinpoint the exact problem area. Finally, with our image- and tag-based search engine, managers quickly access reports for monitoring electrical pumps associated with a particular oil well, component, or defect type.

Results

Exoft has become the company's Managed IT Services provider, handling the whole app modernization and optimization process. We are the only software development team to work on their ESP failure analysis application.

The client trusts our recommendations on how to scale the solution or improve development processes. Even when the scope is over, we find time to address some user requests and system glitches.

Our efforts have resulted in a 50% increase in load speed, better response times, and higher reliability for an ESP failure diagnosis app. Monitoring electrical pumps is easier now thanks to the solution's new features and integrations: 2x more than before, with more on the way.