Tekquest was contracted by BG LNG Services, LLC (BG LNG) of Houston, Texas to develop a application suite for tracking Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) vessel performance and scheduling. BG LNG Services, LLC is a division of the BG Group, a global natural gas conglomerate which focuses on the discovery, extraction, transmission, distribution and supply of natural gas to existing and developing markets around the world.

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The application, subsequently dubbed the Vessel Performance Data Monitoring System (VPDMS), was comprised of two distinct applications. The first was an onboard Windows-based application, which captured and transmitted the performance and scheduling data from each LNG vessel to the second application, a land-based web application responsible for logging and presenting the data for viewing and analysis.

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The windows application was built using Visual FoxPro 7, and consisted of several form 'abstracts' (Voyage, Port and Suspension of Passage) which captured operational performance data and vessel space time positioning information. There was also a scheduling module, which tracked the vessels schedule over several weeks.

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As data was updated daily, it was converted to XML and transmitted via email/satellite communications to a special email account. This account was scanned periodically by a program which processed the XML- formatted abstracts and schedules, parsed them, and updated the database. The MS SQL Server database contained all of the historical abstract data for all vessels under the ownership/employ of BG LNG.

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A separate website contained two modules, a roles-based security application for controlling access to the application, and a viewing and reporting module for use by analysts.