Perhaps, the most visually impactful representation of the Digital Oil Field is the North Kuwait Collaboration Center, with its’ futuristic rooms that are reminiscent of both: NASA’s Houston Control Center and the Star Trek’s Enterprise Bridge.
The word “collaboration” reflects the collaborative nature between all stages of the upstream process and the word “center” implies the central point where information from physically separated locations, such as the Center, located in the KOC Ahmadi offices, and Field Collaboration room in North Kuwait.
Constructed within existing building of the main KOC campus site at Ahmadi the Center represents a fully integrated, technologically advanced and fully collaborative workspace at the heart of the Kuwait Integrated Digital Field (KwIDF) project. The design and operations approach to this facility is unique. This unique approach to the Sabriyah Collaboration Center is to layer architecture, technical infrastructure, technical capability and workflows into one well defined, organized and flexible space.
The combination of the Fluid Dynamics design language and the deployment of the latest digital collaborative technologies create an inspirational workspace for the right time decision making. The Sabriyah Collaboration Center is configured to support collaboration within the facility and remote collaboration with external facilities including the Field Operations room. This facility is being designed with the future in mind; providing technical and physical infrastructure to support the changing nature of technology and the addition of future and temporary technologies as required.
The Center is designed to support the information flow across KOC and intended to encourage more communicative team environment, where people with different skills and experience work together for developing optimal solutions. In addition, team members can learn from each other on a daily basis, thereby increasing the skill set of each individual employee as information and knowledge is quickly shared.
The core space is divided into three main work areas, namely: Collaboration A, Collaboration B and Strategy. Each area has a dedicated ‘Collaborative Display Wall’ and furniture designed to enable flexibility of use. A sliding partition wall separates Collaboration area A from Collaboration B. This can be closed for discrete workflow activities or be opened to create a space for larger group collaborative working.
Some of the new technology in the Center includes: the state-of-the-art workstations; “pilot-in-command” seating system with a built-in voice and HD video capabilities, “one-touch” control to engage “information wall” (or defined partition), the 360 degree rotation for rapid clustering, fully mobile utilizing a “plug-and-play” connectivity and dual high definition monitors. Other features of the Center are: the high-definition “touch-screen” information wall, micro-tile high definition monitor technology, allowing curvature within the wall for enhanced visibility, high-definition integrated audio and visual communication system, and touch-pad smart boards embedded into the information wall.