"I first met DrillScan back in 2004 while taking new drilling engineering responsibilities within TOTAL and returning from Iran from a drilling superintendent position. DrillScan was at the final stage of a directional BHA software co-development with TOTAL. When I first came across BHA Management, I was a bit skeptical. First because of my strong directional drilling background acquired as directional driller for 9 years from 1982 to 1991 with at the time one of the big three DD service companies and thinking that field experience could never be replaced by software. Second because of the strong development of Rotary Steerable Systems that could be observed on the market over the first half of the current decade and believing that these machines would make conventional directional drilling techniques obsolete in rather short term. Taking over new responsibilities as Directional Drilling Champion in 2004 within TOTAL Head Quarters Scientific and Technology centre in Pau South France the overall Group DD operations worldwide opened to my eyes with numerous issues related to RSS reliability as well as significant amount of RSS and conventional Steerable Motor BHAs featuring poor directional performances. Affiliates were asking for advice in BHA directional performances failure analysis as well as expertise in Complex BHA directional design coupled to drill bit selection (recurrent questions about bit steerability capabilities for RSS & Motor BHAs applications had to be dealt with). BHA Management became therefore and naturally the ideal tool for quick post run analysis of poor BHA directional performances and precise diagnosis of the BHA design changes that were necessary to restore good directional performances (long and reliable directional BHA runs) in given areas. Without BHA Management a long process of data collection and cross analysis would have been required to address each case as a particular application and without access to the directional driller's tally book precious notes. Instead BHA Management allowed easy capturing of every single BHA run geometry and drilling parameters such as mud logging drilling engineering data, sliding sheets, LWD logs, geology, and MWD surveys, all being automatically and easily organized by the software along depth and/or time scale. Post Analysis processes were then launched on a mouse click to produce build & turn trends as a function of hole over-gauge, geology and/or steering parameters intervals. It was then easy to solve BHA directional design issues, by single step changes iterations to find out the BHA / Bit design being less sensitive to hole over-gauge or to other parameters such as Bit Steerability, formation changes, etc... BHA Management proved to be extremely valuable for highly exposed jobs in Deep Water, ERD and HPHT drilling applications (daily rates up to the M$) almost always associated to complex and costly Bit and BHAs.
The added value for a given application being gained from BHA Management is through optimum Bent Housing selection and BHA Stabilization for Steerable motor BHAs or Steering Parameters for RSS BHAs (TF/Deflection % - TF/Time Steering%), allowing longer BHA runs, reduced overall DLS, reduced tortuosity, reduced back reaming time and overall better hole conditions and faster casing and cement jobs operations conditions. The cost benefits have been evidenced many times.
Today as a drilling manager I would not run in hole any directional BHA (Rotary, Steerable Motor, RSS) without asking my team to perform a quick check with BHA Management to make sure that the required directional performances for a given application is well within the directional service company BHA proposal and associated spectrum capabilities predicted by the software. This modern advanced directional drilling solution is by far much more valuable and reliable then the traditional directional drilling ways, it is as well as at the finger tip reach of any experienced or inexperienced drilling engineer. This is what makes BHA Management so attractive, it is a powerful substitute to experience, readily available.
At last and not least, BHA Management started with rotary BHAs, its original predilection domain. A genius automatic design module “Skeleton BHA” allows on a mouse click to set the scene and required directional performances, to produce a fit for purpose rotary BHA (Build-up, Packed hole, Drop-off) to match your rig equipment inventory. Directional drillers newer generations have little rotary BHA experience while rotary BHAs offer today obvious economics potential owing to the current and medium term market conditions."

"How did I get to meet DrillScan? In fact, I didn’t meet Drillscan at all, because DrillScan didn’t exist at the time! Sorry... I met Christophe Simon instead, the young engineer and now young entrepreneur who later founded DrillScan. In Total, at that time, I was working as a drilling engineer in a little R&D entity called "Techniques nouvelles" (new techniques). The aim there was to help in the creation and development of the tools that drilling & wells operations definitively needed; it was all small projects with a pragmatic approach towards R&D. My boss at the time, Philippe Charlez, was in close contact with Armines and definitely wanted to cooperate with them on projects. One of these projects materialized in the shape of the qualification of the Armines model built to design and prognose BHAs' behaviour. I personally knew, inside out, a simple static 2 D model developed internally in the 80s so called "BHA2". I had used it extensively and I had developed a methodology around the software. The Company Total had a lot of success with it. Although BHA2 had been ported onto PCs, the interface was not adapted to the young ''Nintendo'' engineers (DOS application) and the functionalities had been frozen in the "ice age": you almost had to pedal to get the results from it (LOL). This is to say that the Software was not in use anymore and that all the methodology built around it was about to die with it... The validation of the Armines model itself, in direct comparison with BHA2 results, was conducted to full success. The idea slowly germinated to develop a new Software with a modern interface with Christophe Simon and other resources within Armines: "BHA Management". Total participated in the effort and I acted in the project as an expert in the technical matters, helping to develop the software mainly on Rotary BHAs Design, methodology and Post Run Analysis. Thank goodness, others were looking at the software encoding and the computer side of this. That was when DrillScan really started. What I can say today is that I am proud, when I start the Software from my laptop and when I use the built in expert system, which proposes to the user, in a split second, a fully adapted BHA design to the context, whereas it took us hours in my day with our limited calculators. However, I cannot figure out why they called it: JMG expert.
I do not know everybody in DrillScan. But the ones I know are giving me a big impression. They are well selected, motivated and full of energy. They belong to a light structure and are very reactive in essence. It is a pleasure for me to continue with them what we have started with Christophe. When the Software was further developed for Steerable Motors and Rotary Steerable Systems, with the help of Regis Studer, who had replaced me in the Job and when we received all together, from the hands of Christophe De Margerie, the trophy for the Innovation Prize in 2007, I thought :"The Job is done...". I discovered later that it was not completely done. Today I am head of project in Total for the creation of a e learning session around the subject of BHA design and of course DrillScan is a key player in the project and "BHA Management" is the reference when it comes to demo and exercises. Maybe, if we are successful in this project (in April) we will be able to say: "Now we have done it". Today for sure I am glad to be supported by the staff of DrillScan in this huge task to develop a complete e-learning session on this very subject of "BHA Design"."

"DrillScan was part of the team from the beginning of the project in order to provide real time wellbore positioning, real time sag management and anti-collision risk assessment. They turned out to be a real asset to the project and were involved in all decision taking from the directional drilling issue to the survey data integration and analysis ; I was impressed by their scientific understanding of the drilling and their reactivity, their engagement, commitment and involvement in the project. They didn't hesitate a second to develop new methodologies and new software such as a milling modeling application to solve problems in a record period of time."