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Oil and Gas

Modernizing the Well Site at Nova Mud

How SEQTEK replaced a legacy system in six months, then kept building the tools Nova Mud uses to run every well from start to finish.

Illustration of a drilling rig at dusk beside a field office trailer with a lit window

  • 6 monthsto replace a legacy system used for 20+ years

  • 30 secfor a recap report that used to take a week

  • 50%+of product sent to well sites found unused

  • 15 to 20dashboards for leaders and supervisors

The challenge

Nova Mud provides drilling mud, drilling chemical products, and mud engineering services to operators across the Permian Basin in West Texas and southeast New Mexico. Its mud engineers visit well sites once or twice a day to test mud samples, recommend what to mix in, count the product used, and produce a mud report for the drilling company.

For more than 20 years, that work ran on a legacy system built in the late 1980s or early 1990s, supported by complex Excel spreadsheets full of engineering formulas. By the mid-2010s, the system was built on outdated technology that could no longer be upgraded or supported. If it broke, there was no easy fix.

Much of the business still ran by hand:

  • Disconnected tools: Engineers went back and forth between the old system and spreadsheets to complete a single well site visit.
  • Paper dispatching: Product requests went from engineer to supervisor by phone, then on handwritten notes to the dispatchers’ desks, with no record of what was requested or sent.
  • Data with nowhere to go: Nova Mud was collecting valuable data but had no way to analyze it beyond doing it by hand.

SEQTEK’s approach

Before writing code, SEQTEK learned the business from the ground up. The team rode along on engineers’ drive-by visits and spent time in the on-site trailers to see how the work actually gets done in the field.

Starting in August 2018, SEQTEK built a modern replacement for the legacy system, with every formula from the spreadsheets moved into the app so engineers could complete their whole workflow in one place. The new application went live on January 29, 2019, just six months later. SEQTEK then trained engineers, supervisors, and management in person at Nova Mud’s offices in Hobbs, New Mexico, and Midland, Texas, fixing issues and folding in feedback in real time.

Because many well sites have no internet or even cell service, SEQTEK built the app to work offline and sync automatically once a device reconnects, first as a progressive web app and later as an iPad app.

The partnership didn’t stop at launch. Over the following years, SEQTEK delivered dozens of releases with new features for engineers, supervisors, dispatchers, management, and accounting, including two major additions:

  • Business intelligence: SEQTEK connected Tableau directly to the app’s database and built 15 to 20 dashboards and reports, giving leaders and supervisors real data on wells, engineers, and financials.
  • Digital dispatching: Engineers now request product in the app, supervisors approve, adjust, or decline, and dispatchers manage every delivery, pickup, and transfer from one dashboard that prints the driver’s ticket.
Before and after. Before: engineers switched between a decades-old system and spreadsheets, product requests went by phone and handwritten note, end-of-well recaps took up to a week in PowerPoint, and data sat unanalyzed. With SEQTEK: one app holds every formula and works offline, engineers request product in the app for supervisors to approve, recaps generate in about 30 seconds, and 15 to 20 Tableau dashboards show wells, engineers, and financials.

The results

  • A week to 30 seconds

    End-of-well recap reports for drilling companies used to take up to a week to build by hand in PowerPoint. Now they generate in about 30 seconds.

  • Hidden waste, made visible

    The data showed more than half of the product sent to well sites was never used, meaning extra inventory and extra trucks Nova Mud could now address.

  • Every request on record

    Dispatching moved from phone calls and whiteboards to a tracked, approved workflow, improving accuracy across every delivery.

  • One system, end to end

    Nova Mud now manages a well from setup to final recap in one modern application built to last.

Illustration of a white pickup truck on a dirt lease road at dawn, heading toward a distant drilling rig across the flat Permian Basin

The business value

Nova Mud didn’t just get a replacement for aging software. It got a partner that learned its industry from the field up, a system that works where its people work, and the data to see problems it had only suspected. That foundation has kept growing with the business for years.