Close-Up TV News recognizes Pacific Industrial Contractor Screening (PICS) for its revolutionary software that improves efficiency and eliminates redundancy for some of the largest energy companies in the world.

Risk analysis is a crucial component of any business’s decision-making process, so you can imagine how serious it must be for some of the world’s largest multinational oil manufacturers ­– BP, Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips – companies whose daily operations help us meet our most fundamental energy needs.

For these companies, choosing which specialized contractors they retain for their refineries requires thorough due diligence. Any contractor with ambitions of providing its services for these operators must first submit to a rigorous and extensive prequalification process before they can even be considered. 

“What if you could create a software-based consortium where a contractor’s information could be collected once and shared among all subscribing operators?” says John Moreland, CEO of PICS. “That would save a lot of time and money.”

And PICS is just that: a consortium of large multinational oil companies and manufacturers and the contractors and suppliers that work for them. The company’s proprietary software offers a standardized qualification process that includes a comprehensive prequalification questionnaire and an onsite safety audit to verify implementation of safety programs. PICS deals with the service behind the data, evaluating a contractor’s safety program, training program and inspection programs for critical equipment. With PICS software, a contractor can accomplish this due diligence once.

“This is typically due diligence the companies themselves would have to do; our software does it for them,” says Moreland. “Once you do this you’re flagged in the system as a contractor that’s qualified to work for any operator in our consortium.”

When a contractor wants to work for Shell, they are directed to PICS. Companies like Shell put their full trust in PICS to act as an impartial third party and maintain the information in their database.

“It’s a unique experience being thrown into the middle of an oil refinery,” says Moreland. “We understand the industry from the user’s perspective and I think that’s what’s really helped us.”