Key Takeaways from API Storage Tank Conference and Expo 2022

Takeaways from API Storage Tank Conference & Expo 2022 

Last week HUVR was an exhibitor at the API Storage Tank Conference and Expo in San Diego. As I have stated before, it is readily apparent that the industry is emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic and looking to discover and adopt new technologies and innovative solutions to address long standing industry challenges.

The locale was perfect too, and even though the weather was a little off, the outdoor receptions were great for networking and catching up—great seafood by the way! The keynote speakers and session presentations were excellent, and there were more submissions than speaker slots, which means we have to be proactive far earlier from now on.

There were approximately 350 attendees at the event—just shy of the pre-pandemic numbers in 2019. Next year’s conference in Denver is expected to match, if not beat, the record! We met a wide variety of owners, operators, service providers and subject matter experts, made some new friends and caught up with some old ones. I think it is safe to say that the industry is regaining the health and character that sets it apart.

What we encountered was very encouraging, being that very few of the many visitors to the booth asked us who we were and what we did. The majority of people we spoke to described their specific challenges and said that they had heard that we might be the solution—what more can one ask for?

Too many tools?

Time and time again we have heard that one of the primary challenges asset owners and technology providers face is that of aggregating, automating and analyzing the vast amounts of inspection data that is gathered today. Critical information and insights are often being delivered late, by way of PDF reports or in proprietary formats that don’t provide access to the actual data. This is far from conducive to efficient operations and compliance demands, let alone further evaluation and determining any actions required.

It is no surprise that leveraging the benefits of existing and new technologies can be compromised when each new tool added is simply that—another tool in the toolbox that doesn’t communicate with anything else. This is further complicated when software tools are tied to a single sign-on license and not cloud-based, making data sharing, and thereby knowledge sharing, very cumbersome. To make matters worse, it is sometimes not possible to upload the data and/or analytical results to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system of choice.

Get a better toolbox!

Owner/operators stressed that an appropriately designed inspection data management system (IDMS) specifically tailored to the application, asking the right questions and providing the right answers to the right people at the right time—with the ability to seamlessly integrate with existing ERP systems and agnostic to the inspection device and data format—would greatly alleviate the challenges that the industry has to overcome on a daily basis.

Not just another tool in the toolbox, but the toolbox.

This was no great surprise to us at HUVRdata, as our IDMS platform aggregates, automates and analyzes all inspection data seamlessly so asset owners can confidently leverage the unique and specialized inspection technologies that are advancing at an astonishing rate.

Furthermore, a simple-to-use platform for inspection providers to enter their detailed findings—both in the office and remotely on the jobsite regardless of WiFi connectivity. It links the inspection device, the technician, the integrity experts, and asset owners/operators by way of a single platform with a common interface.

Through our numerous discussions at the conference, it was quite clear that the word was spreading—HUVR is someone you need to talk to! If you’d like to know more about our plans for the future, or how we can help you today, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to talk it through with you, as the future is not on the horizon: it’s already here.