Customer Story
SubseaPartner gained unified project management and clearer role expectations
Business Online provides SubseaPartner with a management platform that ensures the company is process-driven, maintains control over large volumes of documentation, and can execute projects more quickly—with high quality and full regulatory compliance.
About
SubseaPartner is a process-driven company that provides professional diving and subsea services to the energy industry. Their specialized underwater solutions for inspection, maintenance, and repair help extend the operational life and production time of their clients’ assets.
Challenge
SubseaPartner was using the quality management system iQS, but needed a more customized and unified system that everyone would use in a consistent way.
Solution
SubseaPartner transitioned to the Business Online management system, which ensures the company remains process-driven and maintains control over large volumes of documentation. This enables them to plan and execute their projects more quickly and with high quality, while ensuring regulatory compliance.
Result
Business Online has given SubseaPartner a much more unified approach to process management. The company now has a clear overview of individual responsibilities in different processes, along with a platform that makes it easy to locate and accurately share critical information and documentation.
The challenge
International standards and strict documentation requirements
With clients like Equinor, Vår Energi, Shell, and Subsea7, SubseaPartner must maintain a strong focus on HSE, quality, cost efficiency, and risk management in their diving intervention services.
Their project deliveries and management must comply with both stringent customer requirements and international regulations and standards. Robust document control is essential in this regard. Ida M. Steffensen, QHSE Director at SubseaPartner, explains that this is especially true when it comes to regulations for diving operations:
“Diving standards impose many requirements that go beyond the actual diving activities—for example, which documents are required and what procedures must be in place.”
Folder structure and inadequate version control
When Steffensen joined SubseaPartner (then Fugro RUE) in 2012, the company was using a system that lacked full document management functionality. As a result, project management took place outside the system, relying on a basic folder structure. This created some very specific challenges.
“There was a much greater risk of having multiple versions of the same document, sometimes saved in a different folder. And when the document was circulated within the organization, it might not even be the latest version that was shared.”
Document management became disorganized, which in turn increased the risk of errors:
“You didn’t really have control over which version was in use—whether it was the latest one, or if someone had saved another version elsewhere.”
In 2016, SubseaPartner adopted the iQS quality system, delivered by what was then iQubes (now Business Online).
The Solution
From iQS to Business Online—bringing all data and employees into one unified system
SubseaPartner used iQS until February 2024, when they transitioned to Business Online.
“After many years with iQS, we wanted an even more user-friendly and customized system,” says Steffensen. “We wanted to make sure that everyone used it—and used it in more or less the same way.”
Business Online is fully integrated with Microsoft 365, which means SubseaPartner still has access to familiar tools like Outlook, Teams, various document types, and Planner. But now, the company has a platform that enables them to work more efficiently in a way that meets different role-based and compliance requirements—through a more user-friendly experience. Not least, users now have much more freedom to shape and edit the system themselves.
“We’ve tailored Business Online extensively to our own needs. And we’re no longer dependent on submitting requests to make changes to the system. Now, we have far greater flexibility to make adjustments ourselves—in a more up-to-date system.”
Smooth implementation with continuous follow-up and support
Both the initial implementation of iQS in 2016 and the transition to Business Online in 2024 went smoothly and efficiently, according to Steffensen.
“We’ve had a very good working relationship with the team at Business Online the whole way through. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to looking into and finding solutions for the suggestions we bring to the table.”
The Results
A fully cleaned-up document library and revised processes
The transition from iQS to Business Online gave SubseaPartner the opportunity to clean up its document management and make significant changes to its processes—allowing the system to better reflect how the company operates today.
“We decided to do a thorough cleanup—not just of the documents we had, but also of where those documents belong.”
The entire library of governing documents was manually migrated into Business Online. At the same time, new processes were set up, based on the company’s highest risk factors.
“We created processes under each department, placing them where they belong in the company’s risk landscape—so that the processes are designed to mitigate the specific hazard and incident scenarios identified in our risk assessments.”
Steffensen and her team spent a lot of time configuring the system to make it more visible and understandable to everyone in the organization.
“It needs to be clearly visible to everyone, and everyone should be practically ‘forced’ to use the system in the same way. No more different departments using it differently. Everyone should log in, follow the processes, and use what’s there.”
This cleanup effort has also made onboarding new employees much easier, Steffensen emphasizes:
“We’re seeing that onboarding new hires is much easier now—including the entire process around it. Here’s what you need to follow. The processes are linked to documents and any necessary external links. They can just get started and find everything they need to comply with the process.”
Easier documentation, sharing, and retrieval of business-critical information
The add-on Document Management Premium (also known as DMS) includes advanced tools for creating, numbering, and approving project-specific documents. The feature is based on the NORSOK standard, providing extra control over documentation.
“With DMS, all employees can access the latest approved version, complete with revision history and everything that goes with it,” says Steffensen.
The DMS feature has given SubseaPartner full control over project documentation, with a clear and structured layout in the project workspaces. Each DMS project workspace provides easy access to Document Profile and Published Documents right from the start
In Document Profile users create new documents and send them through a workflow. Published Documents contains all the documents that have been through an approval workflow.
“In our projects, we have full control over everything that needs to be sent to clients. Everyone who joins and works in the system knows that the document profiles they should work in are in Document Profile. The approved documents they need to retrieve are in Published Documents. Very clear and straightforward—and no more multiple copies of the same document floating around.”
Faster project planning and execution—with fewer errors
SubseaPartner works with a number of project-based employees who come in to support project planning, such as project engineers and superintendents.
“They’re not permanently employed, so they’re given an introduction to the system,” says Steffensen. “How it’s used, and how we want things done. Back when it was just a folder structure and more or less up to each person, that led to mistakes.”
Today, when external project personnel join, they encounter a unified system:
“You go in, edit the document, and notify the team—it then goes through an approval process. It’s much easier to relate to. There are far fewer errors.”
The Document Management Premium feature includes a three-step approval workflow that ensures quality and accuracy. Project documents are reviewed and approved by several predefined stakeholders before receiving final approval and being published in a dedicated library of approved documents.
Steffensen explains how this improves document control and reduces the risk of errors:
“DMS makes sure documents MUST go through an approval process, and what ends up in Published Documents is always the approved version. There aren’t a bunch of uncontrolled versions floating around.”
Before Business Online (and previously iQS), when documents were stored in folders, there was always a risk that the wrong version might be used or sent to the client.
“Now it’s simple and organized—and you can still access the Version History to find an older version of a document, if needed.”
Much more consistent project management and clearer role-based responsibilities in processes
SubseaPartner has established a wide range of processes and subprocesses for project management in Business Online. This helps break down large, complex workflows into smaller, more manageable processes tied to specific sub-roles.
“There’s one process for Tenders—what you need to remember—and it has its own DMS with documents that need to be submitted. If we win the job, it moves on to Project Management. That has its own process the project manager needs to follow, but we’ve also broken it down into several subprocesses.”
In other words, multiple project stakeholders have their own subprocesses linked to the main process. All project documentation that needs to be submitted to the client is stored in the main project.
“The subprocesses allow each role to check off when they’ve completed their steps, while still feeding into the main project.”
According to Steffensen, this approach ensures that responsibilities are distributed appropriately—without project managers feeling overwhelmed or disorganized.
“We’ve solved it quite well by avoiding one giant process that everyone has to dive into. That quickly becomes hard to manage, so we’ve divided responsibilities. The subprocesses are delegated to dedicated project roles, who are responsible for following their own process. Then they update the project manager, who has checkpoints in the main process to verify that everything is on track.”
This also provides better visibility into project progress.
“You can easily see in the system, for example, that a process is 80% complete. That makes it much easier for the project manager—and for the sub-roles to stay in control.”
What’s the best thing about Business Online for SubseaPartner? The flexibility!
When asked what SubseaPartner appreciates most about Business Online, Steffensen has a clear answer:
“That we can largely customize the layout and setup the way we want it—while still having a solid foundation of core functions like processes, project management, document control, observation cards, customer records, and so on.”
Because it’s so easy to add or modify elements in the system, it’s much simpler for SubseaPartner to establish processes that help them comply with the strict regulations for diving operations. It also gives them strong control and confidence when facing regulatory requirements and audits.
“Now we have a place where we can easily set up, add, and change processes—without having to submit requests to someone who might not fully understand what we mean,” Steffensen summarizes.
“So we’re constantly improving the system based on how we want it. It’s not necessarily about big changes, but it’s consistently spot-on for us.”