ASRC Energy Services Eliminates Expert Travel Costs with Remote Technical Support

The Challenge: Costly Expert Travel to Remote Arctic Locations

ASRC Energy Services operates in some of the most remote and challenging environments in the world. When highly technical issues arise on Alaska's North Slope—where temperatures can reach -40°F and locations are hundreds of miles from urban centers—the traditional approach of sending technical experts to the field created significant operational and financial challenges.

The company faced several critical issues:

• Prohibitively Expensive Travel Costs: Flying technical experts from Anchorage or other locations to remote North Slope oil fields involved commercial flights to Deadhorse, followed by additional chartered transportation to specific work sites. Each trip could cost thousands of dollars in airfare, lodging, and ground transportation, with expenses multiplying when multiple expert visits were required.
• Extended Response Times: Scheduling expert travel meant delays of days or even weeks, depending on weather conditions, flight availability, and expert schedules. When critical operations required specialized technical guidance, these delays translated directly to lost productivity and revenue for both AES and its clients.
• Weather-Related Disruptions: Arctic weather conditions frequently grounded flights and made travel impossible, even when experts were urgently needed. Blizzards, whiteout conditions, and extreme temperatures could strand experts or prevent them from reaching remote locations, leaving field teams without the support they needed.
• Limited Expert Availability: AES's most experienced technical experts were in high demand across multiple projects and locations. Flying them to a single site meant they were unavailable to support other operations, creating bottlenecks and limiting the company's ability to serve multiple clients simultaneously.
• Communication Barriers: Without visual context, phone-based guidance for complex technical operations was inefficient and prone to miscommunication. Field technicians attempting to describe sophisticated equipment configurations, control systems, or operational issues verbally often struggled to convey accurate details, leading to misdiagnoses and extended troubleshooting cycles.
• Client Service Level Impacts: When technical issues required expert intervention, AES's clients—major oil and gas operators whose production schedules and revenue depended on functioning infrastructure—experienced costly operational disruptions while waiting for support to arrive.
• Safety Concerns: Sending experts to remote Arctic locations for potentially brief consultations exposed them to travel risks and harsh environmental conditions that could be avoided if alternative support methods were available.
• Workforce Development Challenges: Less experienced field technicians had limited opportunities to learn directly from senior experts, as face-to-face training in remote locations was constrained by travel logistics and costs.

AES needed a solution that could provide immediate expert technical guidance to field operations without the delays, costs, and risks associated with flying experts to Alaska's most remote locations, while maintaining the visual clarity required for complex oil field work.

The Solution: Real-Time Expert Collaboration Through Wearable Technology

ASRC Energy Services selected Blitzz Concierge—an app-free mobile video platform—integrated with RealWear HMT-1 industrial headsets to transform how technical experts support field operations across Alaska's remote locations.

After initially using a Blitzz instance hosted by their partner GCI, AES recognized the strategic value of the platform and deployed their own dedicated Blitzz instance to serve their expanding remote collaboration needs.

Key features utilized by ASRC Energy Services:

1. Seamless HMT-1 Integration: Blitzz integrates directly with RealWear's HMT-1 hands-free, voice-controlled wearable headset, which is purpose-built for industrial environments. Field technicians can initiate video calls with technical experts using simple voice commands while keeping both hands free to work on complex equipment and operations.
2. Hands-Free Operation in Harsh Environments: The HMT-1's rugged design is certified for use in extreme temperatures, dusty conditions, and demanding industrial settings—ideal for Alaska's Arctic oil fields. Field technicians can work safely with gloves on while maintaining visual communication with remote experts, ensuring compliance with safety protocols.
3. Real-Time Visual Diagnostics: Technical experts at AES headquarters or other locations can see exactly what field technicians see through the HMT-1's high-resolution display, enabling accurate assessment of equipment conditions, control panel configurations, instrumentation readings, and operational issues without being physically present.
4. Interactive Collaboration Tools: Both experts and field technicians can use Blitzz's augmented reality (AR) features to draw, highlight, and annotate directly on the live video stream in real-time. This capability proved to be a decisive advantage over Microsoft Teams, as the annotation functionality enables precise guidance on specific components, wiring, valves, and equipment elements—critical when working on complex oil field systems.
5. Instant Expert Access: Rather than waiting days or weeks for an expert to travel to the North Slope, field teams can connect immediately when technical challenges arise, receiving real-time guidance that keeps operations moving forward without costly delays.
6. Superior Feature Set Compared to Alternatives: When clients initially encouraged AES to use Microsoft Teams with their HMT-1 headsets for easier IT integration, AES conducted side-by-side evaluations and determined that Blitzz was the superior tool for their specific use case. The ability to draw on the screen and provide visual feedback proved essential for the technical complexity of oil field operations—a capability that Teams couldn't match.
7. Easy Deployment and Adoption: The Blitzz platform was intuitive and required minimal training for both field technicians and technical experts, enabling rapid adoption across AES's operations without disrupting existing workflows.
8. Secure, Reliable Connectivity: Even in remote North Slope locations with limited bandwidth, Blitzz maintained stable video connections, ensuring that field teams could rely on remote support when needed most.
9. Knowledge Transfer and Training: Less experienced field technicians can now learn directly from AES's most seasoned experts via live video guidance, accelerating skill development and building technical capability across the workforce without requiring experts to travel for training purposes.

The implementation enabled AES to provide technical support for sophisticated operations including well completion work, facilities maintenance, pipeline construction, equipment troubleshooting, and complex engineering tasks—all performed in challenging Arctic conditions with remote expert oversight.

'ASRC Energy Services' work environment presents unique challenges that demand innovative solutions. With Blitzz integrated into their HMT-1 headsets, their technical experts can now support critical oil field operations across Alaska's remote North Slope without leaving their desks. This is exactly the kind of transformation we envisioned when building our platform—enabling expertise to travel at the speed of light, not the speed of an airplane.

— Rama Sreenivasan, Founder and CEO of Blitzz

The Results: Eliminated Travel Costs and Immediate Expert Support

By integrating Blitzz Concierge with their HMT-1 headset fleet, ASRC Energy Services transformed how technical expertise is delivered to remote field operations, leading to substantial improvements in efficiency, cost savings, and operational responsiveness:

• Eliminated Expert Travel Costs: Technical experts no longer need to fly to remote North Slope locations for many support scenarios, eliminating thousands of dollars in travel expenses per incident. What previously required expensive flights, lodging, and ground transportation now happens instantly through video collaboration.
• Instant Expert Response: Field teams receive immediate technical guidance when issues arise, eliminating delays of days or weeks associated with scheduling and executing expert travel to remote sites. Operations that previously stalled while waiting for expert arrival can now continue with minimal interruption.
• Weather Independence: Blizzards, whiteouts, and extreme Arctic weather conditions no longer prevent field teams from accessing expert support. Even when flights are grounded and physical travel is impossible, technical guidance remains available through Blitzz.
• Increased Expert Leverage: AES's most experienced technical professionals can now support multiple field operations simultaneously without geographic constraints, dramatically expanding their impact and enabling the company to serve more clients with the same expert resources.
• Superior Technical Guidance: The ability to draw directly on live video streams enables precise, visual communication about complex oil field equipment and operations—a capability that proved essential and was the deciding factor in choosing Blitzz over Microsoft Teams despite client IT preferences.
• Reduced Client Downtime: Major oil and gas operators working with AES experience shorter interruptions when technical issues arise, protecting their production schedules and revenue while strengthening AES's reputation for responsive, reliable service.
• Enhanced Field Technician Capability: Less experienced technicians build expertise faster by receiving real-time guidance from senior experts during actual field operations, accelerating workforce development without the logistics challenges of in-person training in remote locations.
• Improved Safety Profile: Reducing the number of expert trips to remote Arctic locations decreases exposure to travel risks and extreme weather hazards, while maintaining the quality of technical support delivered to field operations.
• Operational Flexibility: While Blitzz isn't yet part of AES's everyday operations, the platform has become an essential tool for supporting very technical work in remote locations—with potential to expand into daily operational workflows as adoption grows.
• Easy Transition to Dedicated Instance: After proving the value with a partner-hosted implementation, AES successfully deployed their own Blitzz instance, gaining greater control and customization options while expanding remote collaboration capabilities across the organization.

Key Success Metrics

Conclusion

By integrating Blitzz Concierge with their RealWear HMT-1 headset fleet, ASRC Energy Services eliminated the time, cost, and weather constraints associated with flying technical experts to Alaska's remote North Slope oil fields. Senior technical professionals can now provide immediate, visual guidance to field operations across hundreds of miles of Arctic terrain without leaving their desks.

This transformation has enabled AES to reduce operational costs, accelerate response times, and deliver superior technical support to some of the world's largest oil and gas operators working in one of the planet's most challenging environments. The platform's hands-free operation, AR annotation capabilities, and ease of use proved decisively superior to alternative solutions like Microsoft Teams, becoming an essential tool for supporting highly technical work in remote locations.

With nearly 40 years of experience and 2,400 employees serving Alaska's energy industry, ASRC Energy Services continues to lead through innovation and operational excellence. Blitzz has become a strategic capability in AES's mission to provide safe, reliable, and responsive service to clients operating in the Arctic—ensuring that technical expertise is always available when and where it's needed most, regardless of weather, distance, or travel logistics.

As AES looks toward future growth and the potential for Blitzz to become part of daily operations, the platform positions the company to expand its service capabilities, support more clients simultaneously, and maintain its leadership as Alaska's premier oil field services provider—proving that the most valuable experts are often the ones who don't need to travel at all.