Fueling Efficiency
Fast-Tracking Linear Assets Operations While Maintaining Trust
Abstract
By adopting Borealis, Trans Mountain reduced the time needed to contact stakeholders by up to 70%, cut reporting times by 80%, and tripled its data management capacity. These improvements not only streamlined workflows and accelerated project timelines but also strengthened trust with stakeholders.
Company overview
Trans Mountain operates the only pipeline system transporting crude and refined petroleum products from Canada’s oil sands (Edmonton, Alberta) to the west coast (Burnaby, British Columbia). Originally constructed in 1952, the pipeline crosses some of the most rugged, mountainous terrain in the world, as well as environmentally sensitive parklands, wetlands, and waterways.
In 2019, the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP) was approved to boost Canada’s economy, increase access to international markets, and improve energy security. The organization needed to coordinate the construction of a second pipeline which would increase the system’s capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of oil products per day.
Teams using Borealis:
- Land & ROW
- External Relations
- Indigenous Relations
- Emergency Management
- Community Investment
- Pipeline Integrity
- Public Awareness
- Damage Prevention
- Environment
- Regulatory
Users: 125 regular users + 20 read-only users
Using Borealis since: 2022
“An oil pipeline line doesn't have laterals or meter stations. We were able to manage the existing asset well, but our systems were not scalable for what was coming.”
Requirements
To create the new pipeline, Trans Mountain needed a comprehensive data management solution that would allow users to manage land and stakeholders in one place, and also optimize processes between different teams working independently.
“Our business, like many others, has become more and more integrated. Land is no longer ‘just land,’ environment is no longer ‘just environment’ and engineering is no longer ‘just engineering;’ they all overlap. We were looking at systems that would help bring information together across departments to break down silos.”
Trans Mountain set up a steering committee to define the scope of their current and future needs, then assess and rank different systems.
“In that exercise we looked at not just our land needs but everything: people, processes, technology. What we needed wasn’t just a stakeholder engagement tool, but a system that could manage everything related to land as well – and it had to be able to link to GIS data.”
They recruited Beniva Consulting Group to identify a system that would meet their requirements while offering a comfortable experience for the people who would be using the software.
Main Challenges
Efficiently manage a large volume of data
While Trans Mountain is a mid-size company, this project tripled the load of data they had to manage. Teams needed the right tools to take on the millions of data points that would be coming in, and manage the work in a safe, compliant way.
Fast-track engagement to shorten the time to get teams into the field
The new pipeline needed to be completed and put into service swiftly. Teams needed a way to quickly identify stakeholders along the relevant section of pipeline, engage to secure the necessary access, and document conditions that must be respected when accessing properties.
Collaborate between departments efficiently
Trans Mountain needed to centralize and standardize massive volumes of data in a single system to break down information silos and efficiently coordinate efforts across project teams.
Always see the big picture
Users needed the tools to systematically manage land parcel data, communications, agreements, conditions for access, community investments, leasing and payments, package deliveries, and emergency management programs, without ever losing sight of the big picture.
Demonstrate compliance
Throughout the expansion project, Trans Mountain needed to comply with 156 conditions enforced by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) to ensure risk mitigation, respect for affected stakeholders’ rights, and safe operation. Beyond collecting and documenting this information, they needed a way to efficiently compile evidence of consultation to generate detailed reports.
Solution
After a thorough review, Trans Mountain chose Borealis software.
“I needed a system that could give me landowner data, last record of contact, and damage releases signed, show me where activities related to outreach efforts and integrity work were going on, and also track regulatory commitments and emergency contacts. Companies choose systems to try to focus on different aspects of a project, but usually can't find one solution that works for all their needs. We worked with Borealis to make sure the software would let us do everything we needed to do with a single tool.”
Key Results
Since implementing Borealis, Trans Mountain has achieved significant improvements in efficiency and data management, transforming their approach to land access and stakeholder engagement.
From hours to minutes
Line list preparation now takes just 15-30 minutes, compared to 4-6 hours previously, saving thousands of hours annually across 300-400 projects.
From weeks to days
Stakeholder contact and compliance have been reduced from 1-2 weeks to 2-3 days for major projects, and from a few days to just a few hours for smaller projects.
80% faster reporting
Generating compliance reports on an ongoing basis for the CER is now 50-80% faster. It now takes 1-2 hours instead of 2-3 days, with improved accuracy and fewer errors. These efficiencies have earned positive feedback from the regulator.
Operational cost savings
Improved data accuracy and real-time access to agreements have minimized field team delays, reducing stoppages of heavy equipment and avoiding downtime during major excavation and ROW maintenance projects.
Commitments are kept
Borealis tools help track communications, stakeholder preferences, and commitments, ensuring agreements are honored, such as notifying landowners before accessing their land.
Indigenous relations
Borealis supports Trans Mountain’s commitment to working with Indigenous communities, managing relationships, and respecting strict archaeological and cultural heritage procedures.
Centralized data
Trans Mountain now has a single source of truth for all stakeholder and land management data, accessible from any location, enabling faster response times and informed decision-making.
Streamlined workflows
Tasks can be created, managed, and completed in the system, simplifying project planning and ensuring critical actions are done on time.
Quickly generate line lists
With Borealis, teams can instantly identify stakeholders and generate line lists in a number of convenient ways. Users can select affected parcels by drawing points on the map, entering a list of coordinates provided by the engineering team, specifying a certain section of the pipeline, or defining a buffer zone around an asset to identify all affected parcels based on geospatial overlap. After selecting the relevant parcels, users can extract the list of related titleholders, occupants, organizations, regulators, government officials, and other key stakeholders and immediately begin planning outreach activities.
This makes it easy to coordinate regular package deliveries, manage asset integrity checks, and coordinate construction and maintenance activities.
“Before adopting Borealis, generating a line list for a project was a time-intensive task due to fragmented data across legacy systems and spreadsheets. For major projects, this process could take 4-6 hours, depending on the size and complexity. Since implementing Borealis, the same task now takes only 15-30 minutes, thanks to centralized and authoritative data. With Trans Mountain executing approximately 300-400 projects annually, ranging from small maintenance tasks to large-scale operations, these time savings add up to a substantial impact on overall efficiency.”
Fast-track stakeholder outreach
Once the line list is generated, a project manager can quickly filter stakeholders by their preferred contact method (in person, by phone, text, email or postal mail).
From there, they can create tasks, enter due dates, and assign the different outreach activities to members of their team.
Borealis includes a number of tools to simplify data entry. The Outlook add-in allows users to quickly document email communications and calendar items. The Mobile application lets users enter communications or upload photos and other evidence from the field. It even offers the ability to specify the GPS coordinates where a meeting took place or a photo was taken.
Users can also create personalized dashboards to see where they have engaged so far, track property tenure or easement status, assess stakeholder sentiment, and monitor progress as the project unfolds.
“Streamlining stakeholder outreach and ensuring compliance timelines have seen remarkable improvements with Borealis. Previously, completing stakeholder contact and compliance for a major project could take 1-2 weeks, while smaller projects required a few days. Borealis’ integrated workflows and centralized communications have reduced these timelines to 2-3 days for major projects and just a few hours for smaller ones, significantly accelerating project readiness.”
Simplify reporting
The built-in reporting tools in Borealis make it easy to generate detailed reports in just a few clicks. Since all communications and interactions are documented in a single location, it’s efficient and convenient to create a thorough Record of Consultation, report to the Canadian Energy Regulator, or generate reports for internal management. Data can be filtered for a specific location or chainage range.
“The time savings for generating ROC (Reports on Compliance) for the CER have been transformative. Before Borealis, creating these reports required 2-3 days of manual data gathering and verification. With centralized, up-to-date data in Borealis, the same reports can now be generated in 1-2 hours, with improved accuracy and reduced errors. This enhanced reporting quality has earned positive feedback from the Canada Energy Regulator. Trans Mountain has also observed a 50-80% time savings in compliance reporting workflows, allowing resources to focus on higher-value tasks.”
Simplify reporting
The built-in reporting tools in Borealis make it easy to generate detailed reports in just a few clicks. Since all communications and interactions are documented in a single location, it’s efficient and convenient to create a thorough Record of Consultation, report to the Canadian Energy Regulator, or generate reports for internal management. Data can be filtered for a specific location or chainage range.
“The time savings for generating ROC (Reports on Compliance) for the CER have been transformative. Before Borealis, creating these reports required 2-3 days of manual data gathering and verification. With centralized, up-to-date data in Borealis, the same reports can now be generated in 1-2 hours, with improved accuracy and reduced errors. This enhanced reporting quality has earned positive feedback from the Canada Energy Regulator. Trans Mountain has also observed a 50-80% time savings in compliance reporting workflows, allowing resources to focus on higher-value tasks.”
Benefits of working with Borealis experts
Data migration
Trans Mountain recognized that a critical component for risk management was to ensure that they moved high-quality data into the new platform. For this initiative, they needed to transition information from 115 million fields and 70 repositories, coming from many different sources: paper files, catalogs, spreadsheets, shared drives, stakeholder records, operations land, project land, and geographic data.
Before migration, they worked with the Borealis team to identify discrepancies, eliminate duplicate records, and standardize variations in terminology (for example, the City of Edmonton was referenced in more than 20 ways, such as Edmonton, Edmonton City, etc.). They also used this opportunity to establish data dictionaries that would make it easy for users to populate fields in the new system consistently and correctly.
“The process Borealis provided has been valuable. It allowed us to assist Trans Mountain with high confidence in the data that will be used for everyday decisions and enabled us to produce effective training and support materials to ensure effortless adoption of the software.”
Managing change
“Throughout this process, Borealis worked with us to identify functionalities that were immediately useful for Trans Mountain. They've been instrumental in helping us minimize critical risks with modifications to the product configuration. Borealis software has provided the necessary agility to address our priorities. It’s a stable product that is very easy to use for everyone who has daily activities in the platform.”
Beniva led the implementation of Borealis software and introduced an effective change management program to help ensure user adoption, mitigate risks, and bring value to Trans Mountain as quickly as possible.
To help users connect with the new platform during the onboarding process they diligently communicated with users and centered training around workflows and individuals’ specific needs that would make the tools immediately relevant in each of their situations.
Managing change
“Throughout this process, Borealis worked with us to identify functionalities that were immediately useful for Trans Mountain. They've been instrumental in helping us minimize critical risks with modifications to the product configuration. Borealis software has provided the necessary agility to address our priorities. It’s a stable product that is very easy to use for everyone who has daily activities in the platform.”
Beniva led the implementation of Borealis software and introduced an effective change management program to help ensure user adoption, mitigate risks, and bring value to Trans Mountain as quickly as possible.
To help users connect with the new platform during the onboarding process they diligently communicated with users and centered training around workflows and individuals’ specific needs that would make the tools immediately relevant in each of their situations.
Summary
Trans Mountain’s effective planning, hard work, and dedication allowed them to quickly construct and successfully implement a complex pipeline project.
Their foresight in implementing a comprehensive, integrated data management solution helped project teams effectively manage a huge volume of data, ensure pipeline integrity and regulatory compliance, streamline their internal processes, and build positive, trusted relationships with stakeholders and communities.
The Trans Mountain Expansion Project was recognized with a 2024 global pipeline award.
“Borealis has proven to be a transformative tool for us. It exceeded our expectations, providing the flexibility and functionality to handle the volume and complexity of our data and integrate our processes across departments. With its task assignment and reporting capabilities, we can confidently manage land and stakeholder activities while ensuring compliance and maintaining strong relationships with stakeholders and communities.”
“This was the most successful software implementation in Trans Mountain’s history. Borealis worked with us to address our needs as a partner while keeping costs manageable, with no scope creep. We’ve already seen a return on our investment thanks to improvements in our processes, use of resources, and increased efficiency.”
