Status and prospects of the DES gravitational wave counterpart search and discovery pipeline

As proven from the detection of an electromagnetic counterpart to GW170817, time is of the essence when determining the counterpart to gravitational wave (GW) events. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) as well as many other groups will be searching for these counterparts during the next LIGO observing run (O3). In order to determine a host galaxy to such events quickly and efficiently, there are various steps needed. These steps, which include creating an observing plan, image processing, and curating a candidate list, create what we call the GW search pipeline. After the discovery of GW170817 we now expect an increased event rate and thus require improvements in our pipeline. We have achieved a factor of 5 improvement in data processing time and efficiency. In this talk I overview the status of our system and discuss the prospects for impactful science results during O3.