Most facilities nowadays still manage digital procedures the same way they did twenty years ago. PDFs are usually on a shared drive, binders are in the control room, word files getting emailed around without any version control at all.
But the bigger problem now is the people coming into the industry. The operators who actually know how these plants run are leaving, and the documentation that should be in place to capture what they know is little to nonexistent. The IEA says that for every new energy worker under 25 entering the industry, 2.4 are approaching retirement. Close to half the oil and gas workforce is over 45. So you have a generation of senior operators walking out the door, a younger generation walking in, and there is nothing built to transfer what the first group knows to the second.
Procedures are one piece of that transfer problem, and what we think is the most important piece, but they only work if they actually hold the knowledge needed. We're here to tell you what most don't. They capture the steps but leave out the reasoning. The judgment calls. The things a 30 year operator just knows. And when that knowledge is missing, it shows up downstream. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has looked into over a hundred major chemical incidents over its history, and one of the findings that keeps coming up is the failure to maintain adequate operating procedures.
When we talk to operations teams, this is the thing we hear most:
“The frontline workers need to make decisions based on documents that many of them have never read.”
— Operations Leader, Gulf Coast Refinery
That pretty much sums it up. The knowledge exists. The documents exist. They're just not usable by the people who need them most, when it actually matters. This newsletter gets into what to look for when evaluating digital procedure platforms and how the major options stack up against each other.
What to Look For in a Digital Procedures Platform
Field Execution: The Right Data, In the Right Place, At the Right Time
This is the part that matters most, and the part most tools get wrong. A procedure is only as good as what the operator can actually use while standing in front of the equipment. That means serving the right information at the right step, not burying it three taps deep or forcing someone to remember which section applied to the valve in front of them.
Good field execution means the platform adapts to what's currently happening. Dynamic data types that change based on the reading the operator just entered. Input types that match a specific task, a number field for a pressure check, a photo for a visual inspection, a pass/fail for a safety gate. Conditional steps that surface only when they're relevant, so a younger operator isn't drowning in instructions meant for a different scenario. This is also where the knowledge gap gets closed or doesn't. A new operator following a well-built field procedure is effectively borrowing the judgment of the person who wrote it. A new operator handed a static PDF is on their own.
When evaluating platforms, pay attention to how your operators use it, and if it actually does what they saw in a demo. The authoring tools can look great in a demo and still fall apart the moment someone is using them one-handed (or hands free) next to a running pump.
PDF Delivery vs. Step by Step Execution
The most important point here is format, a lot of platforms take the PDFs you already have, make them searchable, add version control, and call it digital. The underlying document hasn't changed at all, though. It's still a 40 page file the operator scrolls through, and digitizing a static document mostly just gives you a static document you can search.
Step by step digital work instructions are a different format entirely. Instead of one long file, the procedure is structured content broken into individual actions, each one its own discrete piece with its own photos, hazard warnings, reference data, and sign off. That structure is what makes everything else possible later: the version control that actually tracks changes at the step level, the compliance mapping, and the analytics on what gets skipped. You can't get any of that from a PDF, no matter how much you bolt onto it. Format is the foundation. Get it wrong, and you're limited forever.
“The amount of time that Interface is saving us, both on the back office as well as our frontline, finding these procedures, printing them out, using them. That time saving benefit is immediate.”
— Operations Manager, Midstream Gas Operator
Offline Access
If your digital procedure platform needs a live internet connection to work, it’s going to fail exactly when your operators need it most. Think about remote well pads, offshore platforms, and underground facilities. A solid platform syncs everything to the device so procedures are there regardless of connectivity, then pushes completion data back up when a connection comes back.
AI-Powered Procedure Ingestion and Authoring
Converting a 30 page PDF into structured step by step content used to mean a technical writer sitting with it for days. One procedure. Multiply that by thousands, and you’re looking at years of work before you even get to start maintaining what you’ve already converted.
“We can now have a team of two people doing the job of a 20 person team.”
— HSE Director, Specialty Chemicals Plant
AI tools have changed this completely. The good ones can identify safety critical steps, flag gaps where hazards aren’t called out, cross reference regulatory requirements like OSHA PSM and API standards, catch inconsistencies across related procedures, and suggest improvements based on incident history. You still need the human in the loop to sign off, but the time savings are massive.
Compliance Mapping and Audit Trails
Version history, approval workflows, proof of periodic reviews, and timestamped records of who executed what and when. If you’re in a regulated industry you already know the drill. The thing to look for is whether a platform can actually map your content to specific regulatory requirements and pull audit ready reports together without someone having to build a binder from scratch before every inspection.
Management of Change Integration and Incident History
Every time equipment changes through a management of change process, every procedure tied to it needs to be reviewed. Platforms that can automatically flag the affected procedures and push updates through save a ton of time and close one of the biggest gaps where procedure drift happens. It's even better when the system can pull lessons learned from past incidents right into the procedure content.
How the Major Digital Procedure Platforms Compare
We put ourselves in this comparison because we'd rather be upfront about it than pretend we don't have skin in the game. This is a small subset of the tools out there, not a comprehensive market review.
| Feature | Intelex | Interface | Microsoft Power Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core Focus | Enterprise EHS and quality management with document control | AI native procedure auditing, rewriting, and step by step delivery built for high hazard industries | Low code / no code app builder, not purpose built for procedures |
| Procedure Format | Version tracking, but procedures stay as static files (PDF/Word) | Step by step with AI conversion from existing docs | Custom built. Nothing out of the box |
| AI Capabilities | ehsAI module for document analysis and compliance automation | AI auditing, gap detection, automated rewriting, hazard identification | Copilot helps with app building but nothing procedure specific |
| Offline Access | Limited, mostly web based | Full offline with local sync | Possible but takes significant configuration, limited to basic operations |
| Compliance / Audit Trail | Strong. Built for EHS regulatory compliance across OSHA, ISO, EPA | Regulatory mapping, gap detection, version control | Only what you build. No compliance frameworks included |
| Deployment Speed | Months (enterprise implementation) | Weeks (AI handles bulk of content conversion) | Months to years. Needs dev resources or a systems integrator |
| Best For | Large enterprises that need a full EHS platform with document control as part of a broader safety system | Teams sitting on large procedure backlogs that need fast, intelligent remediation | Organizations with internal dev teams already deep in the Microsoft ecosystem |
Intelex
Solid EHS platform with good compliance and incident management modules. Document control is in there but it’s a piece of a much bigger system, not the main thing. If what you need is a full EHS suite and you want procedures to live inside that, it’ll work. But if the actual problem is procedure quality and how they get delivered to the field, Intelex keeps everything as static files. That’s a real limitation.
Microsoft Power Platform
You can technically build whatever you want with it, but that's also the problem. There's zero procedure functionality out of the box. You're starting from nothing, this means months of development time just to get something usable, and that's before the real cost kicks in. Ongoing maintenance never really stops, and the moment you take your eye off it, something breaks. Every regulatory update, every new field requirement, every bug is an engineering ticket. Only 8% of internal software projects are delivered on time and the customization you wanted at the start tends to cost 5 to 10x the original estimate once edge cases and expanding requirements hit. You need either internal dev resources dedicated to keeping it running or a systems integrator on retainer indefinitely. If your team already has Power Apps developers and you want total control, go for it. For most teams though, spending that kind of time and money to recreate what purpose built tools already do just doesn't make sense.
Interface
Lastly, we built Interface specifically for managing operating procedures in high hazard industries. AI does the heavy lifting of converting legacy procedures into structured step by step content, auditing them against regulatory standards, and keeping everything current as things change on the ground.
“I’m going manually through every procedure on our portal and doing a control F search for H2S to see how it applies to our H2S standard.”
— Compliance Specialist, Offshore Operator
“Having Interface is gonna save us a significant amount of time. And effort. And ensure the quality of these operations.”
— Plant Manager, Downstream Refining
Look, no single tool is going to be perfect for everyone. It comes down to what your actual problem is. If you need a full EHS compliance suite, Intelex was built for that. If you want to build custom internal apps and your team already lives in Microsoft, Power Platform gives you that flexibility. If the problem is your procedures specifically, the quality, the compliance gaps, getting them into a format people can actually use in the field, that’s where we think the biggest gap still is.