The Integration Risk That Builds for Months Before an Automation Failure Shows Up
Automation system integration risk often shows up long before a system fails. By the time something breaks visibly, the risk has usually been building for months — in workarounds, mismatched components, and undocumented fixes that quietly pile up.
None of it trips an alarm on its own. All of it adds up.
David Thompson, Automation Manager at Design Solutions and Integration, has watched this pattern play out across nearly two decades of integration work. His most consistent finding: the teams that end up in crisis are rarely the ones who made one bad decision. They’re the ones who made dozens of small, reasonable decisions that were never designed to fit together.
Why Automation System Integration Risk Accumulates Before Anyone Notices
Most automation systems at an oil and gas operation were not designed as a single system. Operations teams added layers over time, each one solving the problem of its era. A VFD added in 2010. A PLC upgrade in 2015. A new SCADA interface in 2019. Each addition made sense at the time.
The risk enters in the gaps. When old hardware has to communicate with newer platforms using different protocols, those handoffs become fragile. “One piece of the system goes down, the rest could follow,” Thompson explains. The failure mode is not that any individual component is defective. Nobody integrated the components with each other in mind.
Parts availability compounds the problem. Older components that have been reliable for years eventually reach end-of-life. When that happens, the surrounding integration often has to change with them, and the teams doing that work may not have the institutional knowledge to understand what they are touching.
What DSI Looks for Before a System Shows Signs of Strain
Thompson’s approach to automation system integration risk starts with a question most teams do not ask until after something breaks: what does the full system actually look like right now?
“You kind of just have to take a step back and see what they have there,” he says. That review maps every connection, every communication method, every component whose support window is closing. It surfaces the mismatch points before they become emergency replacement decisions.
From there, the conversation turns honest about options. Incremental upgrades work when the system is small enough that each change stays isolated. For larger systems with hundreds of I/O points, a change in one section can ripple through the rest. That problem compounds when operators try to run automation across multiple well pads. Compatibility, support lifespan, and future expansion all have to be part of the decision, not just the cost of the current fix.
What a Clean Integration Leaves Behind
When automation system integration is planned rather than reactive, the results are measurable and lasting. Systems built on Ethernet-based networks with modern PLCs and standardized design documentation are easier to troubleshoot, easier to hand off to a new tech, and easier to expand without starting over.
Downtime decreases not because the equipment is newer, but because the system no longer relies on workarounds that only two people understand. Maintenance becomes routine instead of investigative.
Thompson ties this back to a principle DSI holds across all its work: doing the job right the first time builds a different kind of trust than fixing the same problem twice. When an integration partner stands behind their design, operations teams can plan around their systems instead of around their failures.
Conclusion
Automation system integration risk rarely announces itself. It accumulates in mismatched protocols, aging parts, and undocumented workarounds until one component failure reveals how interdependent everything has become. The teams that catch it early do so because they looked at the full system before a failure forced their hand.
DSI builds its integration work around that discipline: understand the system before you change it, plan for what comes after the fix, and build toward something the next crew can actually maintain.
About the Guest
David Thompson is an Automation Manager at Design Solutions and Integration, with nearly 20 years of experience across industrial, municipal, and energy automation systems.
About the Company
Design Solutions & Integration is a 100 percent employee-owned company serving oil and gas operators across the Bakken and Permian Basin. Learn more at relyondsi.com.
