Process technician with a tablet at a gas processing unit at dusk

Inspection and Audits for Oil and Gas

In oil and gas, every barrier has to be checked before work starts: the pressure vessel with its safety valve up to date, the LPG installation with distances and extinguisher checked, the tank truck with documents and coupling verified, the permit to work signed only after the gas test. At the process unit or the tank farm, none of these checks can be left for later.

From pressure vessel to tank truck, all in a single app

In oil and gas, every barrier has to be checked before work starts: the pressure vessel with its safety valve up to date, the LPG installation with distances and extinguisher checked, the tank truck with documents and coupling verified, the permit to work signed only after the gas test. At the process unit or the tank farm, none of these checks can be left for later.

01

Process and management system

  • Process safety audits by unit
  • Risk analysis and management of change
  • Internal management system audits
  • Contractor evaluation and safety talks

02

Pressure, tanks and piping

  • External and internal vessel inspection
  • Safety valves, gauges and calibration
  • Tanks: shell, roof and bund
  • Piping, supports and corrosion

03

LPG, loading and filling

  • LPG installation and vessels before filling
  • Safety distances, extinguisher and signage
  • Tank truck and driver documents
  • Loading, unloading, coupling and earthing

04

High-risk work

  • Permit to work and isolation
  • Explosive atmospheres and gas testing
  • Hot work and fire watch
  • Confined space: entry, attendant and rescue

In oil and gas, every barrier needs evidence

If the regulator asked right now for the unit's latest hot work permit, with its gas test, how long would your team take to find it? With Smart apps, the check behind every permit is recorded on site, with the gas reading, photos, time and who signed.

Far from the office

Production fields, tank farms outside town, LPG installations at every customer. Without signal, the check has to be recorded next to the equipment.

One spark is enough

An overdue valve, a loose coupling, a gas test nobody repeated. The failure shows up at the worst moment, and only the evidence shows what was checked.

Many hands on one valve

Operations, maintenance, inspectors and LPG carriers pass through the same installation on the same day. They all have to record in one place, in view of the next shift.

Deadlines do not forgive

Every vessel has its inspection date, every valve its calibration, every truck its documents. When the regulator or the customer arrives, dates and evidence have to come from the same record.

Inspector checks the safety valve of a pressure vessel
Inspector checks the safety valve of a pressure vessel
Operator checks the coupling before filling an LPG tank
Operator checks the coupling before filling an LPG tank

What happens after the finding is written down

Recording the issue is the easy part and almost everyone already does it. What fails is what comes next: who handles it, by when, with what evidence, and how anyone knows it will not come back.

The record arrives late

The permit to work is filled in on paper, clipped to a board next to the gas detector, and filed at the end of the shift. Nobody sees the ten o'clock reading again.

The action has no owner

Corrosion found on the piping stays in the inspector's report or in a maintenance notice. With no owner and no deadline, the wall keeps losing thickness.

Nobody chases the deadline

Chasing depends on someone remembering to go and check. Usually they remember the day the client asks.

The close has no evidence

Saying it was resolved is easy. Showing the state before, the action taken and the state after is another matter.

Nobody knows what repeats

With no cause on record, the same flange leak repeats at three units and counts as three unrelated events.

Management asks and waits

How many permits closed with open items, at which unit and for how many days. The answer is scattered across each shift's folders.

Paper work permit on a clipboard, next to a gas detector
Paper work permit on a clipboard, next to a gas detector

What the law requires from well to pump

In Brazil, pressure vessels keep a Safety Register of every inspection, flammables facilities keep a file and documented inspections, and confined space permits are kept 5 years. ANP’s SGSO is under review.

Process safety

  • Offshore units under ANP SGSO, under review (CP/AP 21/2026) (Res. ANP 43/2007)
  • Facility file «organizado, mantido e atualizado pelo empregador» (NR-20, 20.6.1)
  • File available to authorities and workers, with no retention period (NR-20, 20.6.3)
  • Offshore: risk analysis reviewed or revalidated at least every 5 years (NR-37, 37.5.8.2)

Pressure and tanks

  • Portaria 1.846/2022 wording: Safety Register in a book, folder or «sistema informatizado» (NR-13)
  • Initial, periodic and extraordinary inspections recorded and signed by the qualified engineer (NR-13)
  • Inspection report within 60 days, or 90 days during a general shutdown (NR-13)
  • Safety valves dismantled, inspected and tested within the vessel’s interval (NR-13)

LPG and fuelling

  • Inspection and maintenance plan on its own form or in a computer system (NR-20, 20.10.1)
  • «As inspeções devem ser documentadas e as respectivas recomendações implementadas» (20.11.3)
  • Inspection reports available to authorities and workers (NR-20, 20.11.4)
  • No set frequency or retention period: both sit in the facility's inspection plan

Permits and ATEX

  • Every confined space entry preceded by an entry and work permit, PET (NR-33, 33.5.5)
  • PET valid for one shift, issued on paper or digitally (NR-33, 33.5.12 and 33.5.7)
  • «As PETs emitidas devem ser arquivadas pelo período de 5 (cinco) anos» (NR-33, 33.5.9)
  • Flames, heat or sparks near flammables: work permit, with no retention period (NR-20, 20.13.3)

From street to management system, in four moves

It's the same sequence in all four domains, whether a safety inspection, a works audit or the periodic check of a harness.

Capture

In the field, on the phone, with or without a connection. What is not captured on the spot gets rebuilt from memory, hours later, back at the office.

Evidence it

Photo marked up and captioned, signature identified, time and coordinates, tied to the item they evidence instead of bundled in at the end.

Handle

The nonconformity leaves the field already with type, priority, due date, owner and a 5W2H action plan.

Deliver

Dashboard for management, report in your branding, and the process opened inside the management system , yours or your client's.

What the inspection subject can be

A work front, a network asset, equipment or PPE with its holder, a material batch. Each with its own record and accumulated history, instead of a loose document per check.

The rule is in the model

Conditionals, weights, severity, mandatory evidence, calculated items and exit rule. The same inspection gives the same result with any technician.

The finding has a flow

From finding to proven closure, with a trail of who did what and when. Where there is SoftExpert, the process opens inside it by native integration .

The whole inspection fits on the phone

Checklist selection
Checklist selection
Checklist sections
Checklist sections
Item response
Item response
Photo markup
Photo markup

Evidence that holds up in an audit

One work-site inspection produces dozens of photos. Whoever opens them a year from now has to see, unaided, what each one evidences.

Mark and caption

Free pen in six colours over the image itself, captioned at the moment of the inspection.

The mark survives the PDF

What was drawn on the phone enters the document as a numbered table, tied to the evidence number and to the answer that raised it.

Photo markup
Photo markup
In the report
In the report

No inspection closes half-finished

The system counts what is missing and says who has to sign. Usually two people: the inspector and whoever answered for the work front.

Open items in view

Unanswered questions, mandatory fields left blank, pending result and missing signature, counted by the system before it lets you close.

Signature with context

Name, e-mail, ID document and location captured at the moment of signing.

Calculated result

Score and rating applied by the model's rule, identical across every site and every crew.

Only then, closed

No open items and no missing signatures. Until then the inspection stays in progress, visible to whoever ordered it.

Checklist data and pending items
Checklist data and pending items
Signature with location
Signature with location

From checklist to certificate, with nothing to write up afterwards

The certificate and the technical sheet come from the same checklist the team filled in on site. What was answered, photographed and signed becomes the final document, in the company template.

Answer

Each item with its answer, numbered evidence and who answered.

Conclude

The conclusion and the issues go into the document, with category and description.

Sign

The inspector's signature, with date, time and location.

Issue

Certificate or technical sheet in the company template, with instance number and revision.

The certificate comes from the checklist

Nobody copies answers into a separate document. What is in the certificate is what was recorded on site.

One checklist, several documents

Report, certificate and technical sheet from the same answers, each in its own template.

No stray versions

Instance number and revision on every page: the client always knows which certificate they received.

Your inspection standard, applied the same by every crew

What today depends on the inspector's experience becomes a rule in the system, the same on every front and with any technician.

Conditional answers

The inspection starts by asking the type of work: hot work, confined space, hazardous area or LPG filling. Only then does it show what applies. Each task sees only its own questions.

Weights and scoring

Each item is worth what it has to be worth, so the score reflects how critical the failure was rather than item count.

Calculated items

Formulas that combine answers and return the result on the spot, with no side maths.

Score evaluation

Rating bands that you define, applied automatically when the inspection closes.

Answer severity

A single critical item, such as missing PPE, fails the whole inspection.

Validation rules

Minimum and maximum ranges, mandatory evidence and justification, checked on the device.

The rule alerts instantly
The rule alerts instantly

The nonconformity leaves the field with an owner and a date

Finding the nonconformity is the start. What the operator charges for, and what you sell, is the record that someone closed it on time.

Opens on site

The noncompliant item opens the issue during the inspection, with the photo, the place and who found it.

Classifies

Type, priority and due date set by the process rule, the same on any front.

Handles

Named owner, 5W2H action plan, controlled deadline and automatic chasing.

Evidence

Auditable timeline: who did what, when, and with what evidence attached.

Nothing waits for someone to remember

Deadlines coming due, issues with no owner and overdue actions show on the dashboard and in the alert before the client asks.

Occurrences in the panel
Occurrences in the panel

Expand your ecosystem

The field record enters SoftExpert as a process

Native SoftExpert integration

Smart apps and SoftExpert have partnered for over twenty years. The integration is native, built by people who work on both sides, not a connector bolted on from outside.

  1. 01

    Mobile execution

    Inspection or audit completed on the phone, with evidence, answers and item context.

  2. 02

    Server orchestration

    SmartApp receives the closure, validates the package and prepares the integration send.

  3. 03

    Integration queue

    Async processing with status, retry and history for every submission.

  4. 04

    SoftExpert workflow

    Opens or updates the native SoftExpert process — no file export/import.

  5. 05

    Occurrences and actions

    Deviations follow the existing nonconformity flow, with evidence and owner.

  6. 06

    Dashboards, portals and reports

    Management follow-up, synced checklist portal and report attached to the process.

SmartApps Checklist no celular — dados do checklist
SmartApp
SoftExpert no notebook — workflow e fluxograma
SoftExpert

The record is already inside SoftExpert

Follow-up portal, answer grids, deviation with evidence and history for every send — in SoftExpert.

Follow-up portal
Follow-up portal
Deviation with evidence
Deviation with evidence

Every occurrence type has a workflow of its own

You create the occurrence types yourselves, and each one carries its own workflow. Below are four examples, not a closed list: a support ticket and an audit nonconformity are not handled the same way.

Nonconformity

Record · Root cause · Actions · Effectiveness check

Environmental anomaly

Record · Handling · Approval · Effectiveness check

Improvement opportunity

Record · Analysis · Actions

Support ticket

Record · Handling · Closure

Steps are assembled, not imposed
Steps are assembled, not imposed

From root cause to a verified close

This is where a digitised inspection parts ways with a good-looking report: the finding gets a method of analysis, a plan with an owner and a deadline, and a check that confirms the result.

Cause, not symptom
Cause, not symptom
Action plan with schedule
Action plan with schedule

Reports, inspection certificates and technical sheets, with your branding

The same checklist produces the document each reader needs: a report for management, a certificate for the end client and the asset technical sheet for the auditor. Nobody puts anything together in a rush the day before.

Report, certificate or technical sheet

Each document type has its own template: fields, order, logo and visual identity. You pick the template; nobody assembles the document by hand.

Numbered, traceable evidence

Each photo has its own number, linked to the item that required it, with who answered, date, time and coordinates.

Log of issues raised

Nonconformities listed at the end, with category and description, ready for the end client and the auditor.

Instance and revision in the footer

Every report carries the instance number and the revision on each page. No doubt about which version the client received.

Checklist report and verification sheet from the same checklist
Checklist report and verification sheet from the same checklist

The whole process in five steps

Dedicated features for every need.

01

Design the checklist

  • Your own checklists

    Sections, items, weights and rules from your standard

  • Conditional answers

    The right question at the right moment

  • Validation rules

    Limits, mandatory fields and blocking

  • Calculated items

    Formulas solved by the system

02

Run it in the field

  • Web and mobile execution

    Offline by default, on iOS and Android

  • Complete evidence

    Photo, audio, video, signature and GPS

03

Score and rate

  • Weights and scoring

    The score reflects real criticality

  • Score evaluation

    Rating bands applied automatically

  • Answer severity

    A critical item fails the whole set

04

Handle the deviation

  • Configurable handling workflows

    A workflow of its own for each occurrence type

  • Root-cause analysis tools

    Ishikawa 6M, with the root cause flagged

  • Action plan and effectiveness

    5W2H and effectiveness check with evidence

05

Govern and integrate

  • SoftExpert integration

    Native, with governance and history

  • Customisable reports and inspection certificates

    With issues, images and your company branding

  • Spreadsheet import

    Initial load with no typing

  • Users and crews

    Scope and permissions by profile

  • Traceability and audit

    A complete trail of who did what

Take digital to the field. Bring the evidence back.

Contact

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SmartApp for Oil & Gas

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