Neste Oil SNC-Lavalin Nuclear Samsung Heavy

Transcription

Neste Oil SNC-Lavalin Nuclear Samsung Heavy
A publication of Intergraph® Process, Power & Marine
2010
SmartPlant
Foundation
®
A Special Focus of
IBERDROLA
Neste Oil
PBMR
SNC-Lavalin Nuclear
Grenland Group
Samsung
Heavy Industries
Table of Contents
Case Studies
4 IBERDROLA Realizes the Power of Integration
6 Fabricom Suez Improves Data Quality with SmartPlant® Foundation
8Neste Oil Takes Steps for a Cleaner Future
10PBMR and SNC-Lavalin Nuclear Find SmartPlant Enterprise Is the
Right Solution for Nuclear Power Plants
12PTTEP Creates Enterprise Engineering Hub
14 SCG Chemical Group Discovers the Value of Intelligent Data
16 Murray & Roberts Innovative Strategies Boost Productivity
18Grenland Group Chooses SmartPlant Enterprise to Maximize
Offshore Production
20Linde Engineering Pulls It All Together at Snøhvit
22 Smooth Sailing for Samsung Heavy Industries
24 Worley Parsons Merging Cultures, Growing Success
Viewpoint
Page 12
Creating an enterprise
engineering hub
Page 14
Discovering the value
of intelligent data
Page 26
Promoting
interoperability
26 FIATECH Promotes Interoperability
Perspective
Page 4
Realizing the power
of integration
28 Intergraph Discusses the Tiers of Integration
Page 28
Navigating the tiers
of integration
Intergraph, the Intergraph logo, SmartPlant, SmartMarine, SmartSketch, PDS, SIGRAPH.CAE, and INtools are registered trademarks and SupportModeler is a trademark of Intergraph Corporation. Microsoft, SQL
Server, Excel, and SharePoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. SAP and SAP NetWeaver are registered trademarks of SAP AG. Zyqad is a trademark of Aspen Technology Inc. ©2010 Intergraph
Corporation. 6/10 PPM-US-0084A-ENG
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Insight
SmartPlant Foundation provides a complete solution
for sharing engineering data and integrates document
management with engineering tools.
Salman Abdulla
Vice President, Operations, Emirates Aluminum Co. Ltd.
Case Study: IBERDROLA INGENIERÍA Y CONSTRUCCIÓN
Realizing the Power of Integration
SmartPlant Enterprise helps IBERDROLA grow operations around the globe
n By David Joffrion
IBERDROLA Ingeniería y Construcción (Engineering and Construction), established in 1995, has
become one of the world’s leading energy engineering companies. With active projects in more
than 25 countries and a project portfolio valued
at more than US$3.3 billion, IBERDROLA is realizing increased activity from a strategy shift
to target the creation of engineering and construction of power generation, distribution and
control facilities.
Heavily involved in large nuclear and renewable
energy projects, IBERDROLA’s services also
include project management, engineering, supply, construction and commissioning, turnkey
projects and operational support. IBERDROLA
has approximately 2,500 employees. Headquartered in Spain, the company has subsidiaries
and branches in another 22 countries.
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Insight
We specifically chose SmartPlant 3D because
of its powerful global workshare and
automation capabilities.
F ernando Torres
System Manager, IBERDROLA Ingeniería y Construcción
Integration is the key
IBERDROLA began implementing Intergraph
solutions in 2003, when the landscape was
ripe for expanding its business into new markets. The company wanted to execute international EPC projects much like the ones it had in
Spain, and the challenge was to do this while
saving time and money in execution in spite of
the distance and geographical distribution of
its international customers.
Insight: Special Focus
To access international markets, IBERDROLA
knew it must be more competitive. And, to
be more competitive, it focused on one goal
– integration. IBERDROLA understood the
success of an EPC project depended in large
part on the integration of all the components
in the project. In effect, this meant coordination between all the disciplines involved in the
life cycle of a power plant, from engineering
to commissioning.
Within each of its EPC projects, many groups are
involved – subcontractors, engineering, procurement, logistics, construction and commissioning.
Managing the data flow and information is critical in this environment. All the groups have access to view and edit data, and with the SmartPlant Enterprise solutions, the workflow operates
smoothly and seamlessly.
The firm has also been able to avoid conflicts
of information between disciplines, preventing
duplication of data and guaranteeing modifications are done in real-time and received across
the entire workshare.
“We chose the Intergraph solutions because, as a
company, it has provided us a secure implementation with excellent technical support,” said Fernando Torres, system manager at IBERDROLA.
“Intergraph has helped us evolve our functionality toward a more user-friendly environment, and we have experienced great performance in our engineering and 3D design
efforts. We specifically chose SmartPlant 3D
because of its powerful global workshare and
automation capabilities.”
Standardizing on SmartPlant 3D
For its initial implementation, IBERDROLA chose
Intergraph’s PDS, SupportModeler, SmartPlant
P&ID and SmartPlant Instrumentation for its
design and engineering functions. SmartPlant
Review and SmartPlant Explorer were used to
access information for visualization purposes.
However, for its goal of system integration,
IBERDROLA decided it made no sense to start
that process while it was still using PDS and
SupportModeler, so it began the migration from
these solutions to SmartPlant 3D, Intergraph’s
next-generation, data-centric design solution.
IBERDROLA completed implementation of
SmartPlant 3D in early 2008, and continued its
use of PDS and SupportModeler only on projects that began before then. SmartPlant 3D
provided increased functionality, design speed,
and better performance on power plant design
projects. In the latter half of 2008, IBERDROLA
began the implementation of SmartPlant Foundation, and in 2010, it will begin the integration
with the SmartPlant Foundation project document management tool.
Products used
n PDS®
n SupportModeler™
n SmartPlant 3D
n SmartPlant P&ID
n SmartPlant Instrumentation
n SmartPlant Review
n SmartPlant Foundation
Key benefits
n Short product learning curve; reduced
design times and reuse of designs
n
n
S ystem integration helps to prevent conflicts of information between disciplines
“ Environment of engineering” enables all
subcontractors and partner engineering
companies to work within IBERDROLA’s
templates, procedures and specifications
Dual project environments
IBERDROLA breaks down its EPC projects into
two scenarios – Environment of Engineering
and Project Management.
The Environment of Engineering contains
almost the entire Intergraph SmartPlant Enterprise suite of solutions and its integration
with SmartPlant Foundation. For IBERDROLA,
the key is to keep the “know-how” within the
company. This means all of the subcontractors
and engineering companies work with their
templates, procedures and specifications, and
all the designs are made by remote access using Citrix. Using the same systems, architecture
and working models, everyone involved in the
project will work with a common model. It is
within this environment that SmartPlant Instrumentation, SmartPlant P&ID and SmartPlant 3D
are used for designing process diagrams, construction drawings, purchasing counts, design
reviews and checking assemblies.
The Project Management environment is where
IBERDROLA accesses and integrates all of the
value-added products within the EPC projects.
Connections to the enterprise and resource
planning (ERP) system running SAP, the bill of
materials system running BDU, the document
SmartPlant Foundation
management system running SmarTeam, the
planning system running Primavera, and the
visualization system running SmartPlant Review all reside here. All are strategic disciplines
in IBERDROLA’s EPC projects. For example, the
integration between SmartPlant Review and
Primavera empowers IBERDROLA to revise the
main sequences of project construction schedules, correct mistakes and make improvements
in the early stages of a project.
Internal group aids implementation
To help with the implementation of the Intergraph solutions, IBERDROLA has an Architecture
and Technology (ARTE) department responsible
for, among other things, testing new software
and configuring new products. When the products are “developed and proven,” ARTE trains
the respective business area within IBERDROLA
on the new application and provides technical
support, if necessary.
This methodology was quite helpful for
IBERDROLA. As IBERDROLA added new products during the software implementation process, the ARTE team received the training and
then, in turn, provided it to the IBERDROLA
application teams. One exception to this was
for SmartPlant 3D, where the whole design
application team received training together
with ARTE.
To maximize software performance for the
company’s implementation, some customization was required, such as adding properties
to objects, creating libraries, configuring outputs (reports, drawings, isometrics, etc.) and
establishing a methodology to work with
these tools for its projects. Once the customization was complete, IBERDROLA quickly experienced such benefits as reduced learning
curves, expedited design times and the ability
to reuse designs. These benefits, in turn, have
resulted in increased productivity throughout
the enterprise.
David Joffrion is a contributing editor for Insight
and is based in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.
www.iberdrolaingenieria.es
Insight
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Case Study: Fabricom Suez
Fabricom Suez Improves Data Quality with
SmartPlant Foundation
EPC gains flexibility, efficiency and better quality data management
n By Øivind Hansen
great amount of data was misspelled
A
Tags were copied several times
n Properties had invalid values
n Not all information followed the engineering
numbering system.
n
n
Fabricom Suez is a leading supplier of maintenance and modification services to the oil and
gas industry. With its main office in Stavanger,
Norway, Fabricom employs more than 1,650
people performing challenging engineering
work, executing projects and providing specialized maintenance services.
Fabricom selected Intergraph’s SmartPlant
Foundation to more accurately manage and
reuse engineering design data throughout the
life cycle of its projects.
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Insight
Limitations of spreadsheets
Before choosing SmartPlant Foundation, Fabricom
faced a number of limitations and disadvantages
with information storage. The company used
Microsoft® Excel® as its main tool for keeping
track of engineering data.
Gaining flexibility
Realizing the disadvantages of spreadsheets,
Fabricom evaluated several information
management solutions and chose SmartPlant
Foundation. This gave Fabricom a database
solution that provides flexibility, efficiency and
better quality data management.
As its projects expanded in size and the amount
of tag information rose, Fabricom experienced a
The company has integrated SmartPlant
Foundation with ProArc, its existing document
management system. This enables Fabricom to
make a tag-to-document relationship – keeping track of all the documents produced for
each information tag and vice versa.
number of problems:
n Changes were difficult to track
n Data security was lacking
For initial solution implementation, Fabricom
imported the information already created, mainly
from Excel spreadsheets. Initially, 5,000 tags with
Insight: Special Focus
their associated properties and approximately
250,000 property fields were imported into the
SmartPlant Foundation database.
Boosting data quality
The data generated in SmartPlant Foundation
is transferred daily to Fabricom’s customers’
plant information management (PIM) systems,
with a status flag triggering the tags to transfer.
In its recently completed pilot project, Fabricom
has seen marked improvements in the quality
of the data and the working environment. Every
discipline is now able to find, view and edit
information in one central place.
Ease of use
Fabricom employees found that SmartPlant
Foundation training was a very smooth process.
Because of the software’s intuitive nature, employees quickly learned the basic functions. As time
passes and they become more familiar with
the system, they expect to become even more
proficient in completing tasks and functions.
Of the 111 users created for the system, 25
percent have view access only and the rest
are editors divided into different groups.
Depending on their discipline and the functions
they perform, editors are divided into either
standard or super users. This gives Fabricom
greater control over data integrity.
Building an enterprise solution
Fabricom has been highly satisfied in its progress
with the SmartPlant Foundation data management solution implementation and the team from
Intergraph. In the future, the company plans to
develop a comprehensive approach to meeting its
enterprise engineering needs by modularly integrating SmartPlant Foundation with other solutions
from the SmartPlant Enterprise software suite
including SmartPlant Instrumentation, SmartPlant
Electrical and SmartPlant P&ID.
Øivind Hansen is the SmartPlant Foundation
system owner at Fabricom and is based in
Stavanger, Norway.
Suncor Becomes the 300th Intergraph SmartPlant
Foundation Customer
SmartPlant Enterprise document and data management solution posts
50-percent growth in past year
n By David Joffrion
Just one year after reaching the
200th customer mark, rapid industry adoption of Intergraph’s
SmartPlant Foundation has
pushed sales past the 300th
customer
milestone
with
Suncor Energy Inc.’s selection
of the engineering information
management solution.
Suncor, a major North American
energy producer and Intergraph
customer, selected SmartPlant
Foundation to manage non-Intergraph data – Suncor’s legacy of 3D models – for oil and gas
development projects. The sale marks a 50-percent growth rate for SmartPlant Foundation in
a single year.
SmartPlant Foundation is the ISO 15926-compliant document and data management solution
within SmartPlant Enterprise, an integrated solutions suite that provides full design, construction, materials and engineering data management capabilities needed for the creation, safe
operation and maintenance and capital project life cycle management (cPLM) of large-scale
process, power, marine and offshore projects.
SmartPlant Foundation’s life cycle data management also enables a smoother handover
from EPCs to owner operators and for owner operators to more easily maintain, refurbish
or modify their plants. The solution permits electronic management of all project and plant
engineering information, integrating data on the physical asset, work processes and regulatory
and safety imperatives to facilitate enhanced global decision-support capabilities.
Gerhard Sallinger, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine president, said, “We are pleased to
recognize an industry leader such as Suncor as our 300th SmartPlant Foundation customer. The
remarkable pace of the industry’s adoption of this solution demonstrates the value of its ability
to accurately manage all aspects of a plant’s design, modification, upgrades and refurbishment, effectively managing the evolving plant configuration from front-end engineering design
to plant decommissioning.”
David Joffrion is a contributing editor for Insight based in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.
www.suncor.com
www.fabricom.no
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
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case study: Neste oil
Neste Oil Takes Steps for a Cleaner Future
World’s largest renewable diesel facilities designed with SmartPlant Enterprise
n By Tuuli Kousa
Neste Oil is a refining and marketing company
focusing on advanced, cleaner traffic fuels. The
company’s strategy is based on growing both
its oil refining and premium-quality renewable
diesel businesses. Neste Oil’s refineries in Porvoo
and Naantali, Finland have a combined crude
oil refining capacity of approximately 260,000
barrels a day.
made from renewable raw materials. NExBTL
technology is several years ahead of any competitors in the renewable fuels market. It can
be produced in large volumes on an industrial
scale. NExBTL can be used in all diesel engines
and it significantly reduces both tailpipe and
greenhouse gas emissions.
Growing energy demands
As world energy demands continue to grow,
new energy solutions are urgently needed. At
the same time, Neste Oil believes that combating climate change calls for immediate action.
Minimizing environmental effects and ensuring
sustainability are the company’s main business
drivers in renewable fuel production.
Renewable fuels
Renewable fuels are Neste Oil’s fastest-growing
business. Neste Oil produces and sells premiumquality NExBTL renewable diesel based on the
company’s proprietary technology. A number of
new NExBTL plants are currently under construction and the company is continuing an active
program of research and development on biofuels and raw materials suitable for biofuel usage.
To help face these challenges, Neste Oil has
developed NExBTL technology. NExBTL renewable diesel is the cleanest diesel in the world
The demand for biofuels is growing rapidly. Neste
Oil has set an objective to become the world’s
leading producer of renewable diesel.
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Insight
Insight: Special Focus
Growing production capacity
Worldwide demand for diesel fuels is expected
to reach 750 million tons a year by 2015. Traffic
biofuels currently account for approximately
one percent of total global fuel production
according to the International Energy Agency.
Production capacity of conventional biodiesel and higher-quality renewable diesel in
Europe totaled around 16 million tons in 2008.
Consumption is projected to reach 13 million
tons per year in Europe by 2010.
Neste Oil has responded to this demand challenge
by launching a major expansion of its own capacity. A plant commissioned at the Porvoo refinery in
2007 already produces approximately 170,000 t/a
of NExBTL renewable diesel, and a second plant of
equal size is due to be completed in 2009.
Neste Oil made a decision to build a 800,000
t/a NExBTL plant in Singapore in 2007. In 2008,
NExBTL renewable diesel capacity outlook
Location
Capacity
Investment
Year Complete
Porvoo, Finland
170,000 tons
US$135 million
2007
Porvoo, Finland
170,000 tons
> US$135 million
2009
Singapore
800,000 tons
US$735 million
2010
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
800,000 tons
US$900 million
2011
Neste further expanded with a similar-sized plant
in Rotterdam. Both plants are currently under
construction and are due to come online in 2010
and 2011 respectively. These will be the world’s
largest renewable diesel facilities.
Engineering
Technip Italy is performing the EPC work for
the Singapore and Rotterdam plants. The
information and communications technology
specification for the project included a requirement that Intergraph applications would be the
main engineering tools used for the project.
This requirement was put in place because
Neste Oil wants to maintain its plant data in
the native data format after commissioning.
Neste Oil also made this decision because the
majority of global engineering contractors use
Intergraph applications.
Intergraph’s global presence and support give
engineering companies the ability to make plant
modification and document updates to maintain
plant information over the plant life cycle.
Document management
In 2008, Neste Renewable Fuels was looking for
a document management system for its NExBTL
renewable diesel plants. Intergraph SmartPlant
Foundation was chosen in 2009.
The main reason for Neste Oil’s selection of
SmartPlant Foundation is that the product is part
of the Intergraph SmartPlant Enterprise and is
specifically designed for efficient plant document
management. Plus, the system offers the potential
to expand to manage plant data and 3D models.
SmartPlant Foundation will be linked to Neste
Oil’s maintenance management system.
Implementation began in February 2009. After
the first phase, the system is now ready for document handover from Technip Italy’s document
management system.
Technological pioneer
Neste Oil’s NExBTL diesel is a major innovation
that has been extensively tested and in commercial production since 2007. NExBTL renewable
diesel offers a major reduction in both greenhouse
gas and other harmful emissions. Measured over
the product’s entire life cycle, its greenhouse gas
emissions are between 40 to 60 percent lower
than those of fossil diesel, depending on the raw
material used. Blended with conventional diesel,
NExBTL reduces overall emission levels in line
with the proportion blended.
Differences Between NExBTL and Conventional Biodiesel
NExBTL Renewable Diesel
Conventional Biodiesel
n
an only be used up to 5-7% content
C
(maximum allowed under European
diesel standard)
n
Can be blended up to 100 percent content
n
Compiles with the strictest quality standards
n
Reduces tailpipe emissions
n
Increases NOx emissions
n
Offers excellent storability
n
Must be used by a “best before” date
n
Does not require and engine modifications
n
Can cause engine problems
n
iofuel usage requirement cannot be
B
met without compromising fuel
quality specifications
SmartPlant Foundation
NExBTL diesel fuels have been studied
extensively with cars, trucks and buses, and the
results have all been very positive. In addition to
lower greenhouse gas emissions, the fuel offers
significantly lower particulate emissions than
conventional diesel, as well as lower NOx
emissions than conventional biodiesel. A clear
reduction in tailpipe aldehyde emissions confirms
that NExBTL renewable diesel burns cleanly.
Using NExBTL renewable diesel has a significant positive impact on emissions, as the fuel
generates substantially less particulate and NO2
emissions than conventional diesel fuel. Test
results show that NOx emissions are cut by
around 10 percent and particulate emissions by
around 30 percent compared to fossil diesel.
Research and development
The energy supply of tomorrow will be based on
multiple technologies and feedstock. Very large
volumes of renewable fuels will be called for in
the next few years, and no one raw material or
technology can meet this challenge alone. All
current approaches will be needed, together with
a number of new ones as well – which is why
Neste Oil is working hard on finding and introducing new raw materials and new solutions.
The company is committed to using only sustainably produced raw materials in the production
of its renewable diesel. Significant new feedstock
for transport fuels includes vegetable oils, tallow,
wood residues, side products, and waste.
Neste Oil is working with more than 20 research
institutions on six research initiatives aimed at
identifying new raw material suitable for use as
biofuel inputs. The research initiatives include
jatropha, algae and microbes. A pilot project to
demonstrate the use of wood residues is under
construction in Finland.
Tuuli Kousa is a communications manager at
Neste Oil and is based in Helsinki, Finland.
www.nesteoil.com
Insight
9
case study: PBMR and sNC-lavalin nuclear
SmartPlant Enterprise: The Right Solution for Nuclear
Power Plants
Data-driven, integrated and rule-based environment is vital for next generation complex nuclear power
plant projects
n By Wayne Smith
The nuclear power industry is one of the most
regulated industries in the world. Traceability
of all data and documents that are generated
during the plant life cycle is fundamental in the
nuclear industry.
Data pass through various phases of the product and plant life cycle, beginning from design
concept, basic engineering/FEED to detail design,
procurement, construction, licensing support,
pre-commissioning and commissioning, operations, refurbishment and decommissioning. For
this reason, it is imperative that information
integrity is ensured throughout a plant’s life cycle
reflecting the design basis.
Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) was seeking a technology enabler to assist with the
engineering and management of plant data. The
technology enabler would allow PBMR to hand
over an integrated data model of the entire plant
10
Insight
to the owner operator ESKOM, one of the world’s
largest utilities.
construction in 2010, with the first fuel to be
loaded four years later in 2014.
Established in 1999, the PBMR organization
intends to develop and market small-scale, hightemperature reactors both regionally and internationally. The 700-member PBMR team is based
in Centurion, near Pretoria in South Africa.
Comprehensive solution
Together with SNC-Lavalin Nuclear, PBMR’s
plant and product realization and engineering
groups have implemented Intergraph’s SmartPlant
Enterprise suite as the engineering solution for
the PBMR demonstration power plant to be
constructed at Koeberg. PBMR is focused on using
SmartPlant Foundation’s infrastructure and centralized repository for maintaining all plant data
and documents.
SNC-Lavalin Nuclear (SLN) has nearly 50 years
of experience in the design and construction
of nuclear power plants around the world that
includes project management and plant life
cycle support experience. While assisting in
other areas, SLN is primarily involved with the
engineering, procurement, construction and
management as an EPCM subcontractor for the
PBMR demonstration power plant at Koeberg,
near Cape Town in South Africa.
The PBMR plant design has undergone development since 1993. The plant is scheduled to begin
Insight: Special Focus
“PBMR is a complex and first-of-a-kind project,”
said Aaron Bukhari, a consultant to PBMR and the
chief information officer at SLN. “Our primary reasons for looking at the Intergraph products were
traceability within a data-driven and integrated
environment that will enable PBMR to deliver a
plant with all intelligent data and documents.”
Bukhari confirmed that SNC-Lavalin Nuclear has
used Intergraph technologies from the early days
of PDS to the current SmartPlant Enterprise suite.
He noted that the savings in man-hours and engineering effort using SmartPlant Enterprise will be
dramatic over the course of a plant’s life cycle.
customer distinction for product innovation, partnership and proven results.
“When the owner operator chooses SmartPlant
Enterprise, the plant data handover can be an
integrated process that should reduce the overall
plant operating cost,” he said. “Using Intergraph
tools enables concurrent engineering from multiple
locations that translates into significant efficiency
and dramatic savings.”
One of the immediate benefits to PBMR involves
data and document organization. SmartPlant
Foundation enables the creation of data fields
which can be assembled into documents and
presented in reports.
With basic engineering (PFDs and P&IDs, including
mechanical datasheets) enabled by SmartPlant
P&ID and AspenTech Zyqad™ PFD software,
these tools can integrate and share information
through SmartPlant Foundation.
The ongoing task involves the creation of reference and model data to be used when and
where required. For example, five complete line
specifications were created within five days using
the SmartPlant Reference Data tool. Typically,
this would require weeks of painstaking work. A
significant time and cost savings was realized by
capitalizing the standard ASME piping database
add-on.
SmartPlant Electrical and SmartPlant Instrumentation also contribute toward an integrated environment. SmartPlant 3D plays a pivotal role by
maintaining the repository of the master model
for all phases of the plant life cycle.
SmartPlant Enterprise’s integrated, data-driven
environment is helping PBMR to manage data
such as the life cycle of tags, datasheets and
workflows, and to integrate data from third party
tools such as AspenTech and Tekla. Meanwhile,
the constructability team is busy combining data
from various sources such as scheduling and
SmartPlant 3D tools into SmartPlant Review.
Award-winning efforts
At the Intergraph 2007 International Users
Conference, PBMR received one of Intergraph’s
inaugural Icon Awards for using SmartPlant
Enterprise solutions to integrate the plant life
cycle environment for its next generation reactor design. The award is Intergraph’s highest
Bukhari remarked that the vision behind SmartPlant
Enterprise was a major factor in PBMR’s decision
to choose Intergraph for its advanced technology
nuclear power plant design.
SmartPlant Enterprise enables a complete data
set to be provided, while reflecting any changes.
“Traceability is one of the key capabilities we
were looking for in the product, to ensure that
everything is captured and nothing will be lost.
SmartPlant Enterprise’s traceability, control and
workflow management are among our greatest
assets,” said Bukhari.
Implementation
After PBMR chose the Intergraph solution, the
software was implemented through a combined
effort by the PBMR product realization software
team, the PBMR engineering software team and
SLN’s plant systems team, with support provided
by Intergraph team members and partners in
South Africa, Europe and the U.S.
Reduced cost is another key benefit of SmartPlant
Enterprise for this unique project. “There is no
other product that can reasonably cover all the
cost areas of construction, operability and maintainability, and provide a cost benefit,” Bukhari
said. “The Intergraph solution can deliver this cost
benefit over the long-term.”
Employing Intergraph’s SmartPlant Enterprise
suite of tools will significantly reduce the time it
takes for PBMR to bring reactors to market and to
deliver plants to owners and operators complete
with all data and maintenance information.
PMBR considers its relationship with Intergraph a
true success story, as it implements its next generation nuclear plant technology.
“A broken process results in broken technology,”
said Anton Kotzé, the product realization software
systems manager at PBMR. “We work very hard
to recreate our business processes, workflows and
procedures, and to encourage EPC managers to
SmartPlant Foundation
embrace an integrated mindset for working with
the fourth generation of engineering. SmartPlant
Enterprise is very pivotal to solidify this integrated
mindset with the associated work methods.”
“We know that to develop an architecture and
environment for distributed engineering, we want
everyone to draw from the same centralized databases,” Bukhari said. “From this viewpoint, we
envision that use of the SmartPlant Foundation
repository will increase even more.”
From beginning to end
PBMR’s vision is for a technology that covers the
entire life cycle of a nuclear plant, beginning with
conceptual engineering and continuing through
to operation and eventual decommissioning.
Intergraph’s market-leading technology supports
plant life cycle effort. According to Kotzé, PBMR will
continue to expand its use of SmartPlant Enterprise
as more products are designed and developed.
“PBMR believes that Intergraph’s product range
supports its vision and strategy 100 percent,”
Kotzé said. “This is confirmed by the products we
see coming from Intergraph and through much
discussion of this topic.”
“A successful roll-out of any plant life cycle
information management system, from design
to decommissioning, requires business processcentric operations – policies, procedures, work
instructions, workflows, reports, specifications,
catalogs, rules and processes – along with a
stable technology base,” said Bukhari.
“These are exciting times when vendors such as
Intergraph can deliver a vision and align their
products with business requirements for the
plant life cycle.”
Both Bukhari and Kotzé see SmartPlant Enterprise
leading the way into a new dimension of what
they call the “ERP of engineering.”
Wayne Smith is a contributing editor for
Insight based in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.
www.pbmr.co.za
www.snclavalin.com
www.slnuclear.com
Insight
11
case study: PTTEP
PTTEP Creates Enterprise Engineering Hub
SmartPlant Enterprise investment for greenfield project offers safety benefits and significant ROI
n By Jana Miller
Petroleum producer PTT Exploration and
Production Public Company Ltd. (PTTEP) is a
dynamic Thailand-based exploration company. It
has invested in exploration and production activities in a variety of countries, including Thailand,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Oman,
Egypt, Algeria and New Zealand.
PTTEP recently implemented an enterprise engineering hub powered by SmartPlant Foundation.
The platform serves as a single point of reference
for information on the Arthit asset and will result
in cost savings in terms of time and resources
no longer wasted searching for information in
numerous databases.
“Maintaining accurate information that can be
used effectively until the end of an asset’s life
is a real challenge,” said Suchart Srivaranon,
integrated planning engineer and data handover
team lead of the Arthit Project at PTTEP.
The Arthit Project represents the company’s first
exploration project as operator. Covering more
than 4,000 sq km in the Gulf of Thailand, the
12
Insight
Arthit petroleum fields are located approximately
230 km off the coast of Songkhla province. The
area includes natural gas and condensate.
Safety first
“For an exploration and production business like
us, the safety of field staff on projects like Arthit
is of paramount importance,” said Srivaranon.
“As a result, information used by engineers and
field staff must be accurately prepared using an
efficient ‘housekeeping’ system.”
To do this, the company has invested in engineering data warehousing – a global platform that
can house data, integrate numerous applications
and enable multiple users across the enterprise
to access information.
previously used to manage and maintain the
extensive information generated was limiting.
Ongoing use of the system was deemed a “mission impossible” by engineers.
The project team needed a system that could
house a vast amount of complex data within a
global, process-based framework, ensuring the
efficient and seamless delivery of contextual and
role-based information to all necessary parties.
“Communication of approval and changes of
‘as-built’ drawings and general engineering
business processes between engineers can take
weeks – or even months,” said Srivaranon.
By ensuring that data are accurate and consistent, staff members can reduce errors and
improve personnel safety on-site.
“To revolutionize the process, engineers need
to be able to make changes, send the changes
directly to drafting via an intelligent system and
manage approvals using an automated workflow
process integrated with the e-mail system.”
Data flow
During the design and construction phases of
the Arthit Project, the housekeeping system
A sound investment
In theory, powerful data warehousing would allow
a large volume of information to be managed.
Insight: Special Focus
SmartPlant Enterprise is used by the majority of
leading companies within the energy and petroleum
industry and was widely recommended.
Suchart Srivaranon
Integrated Planning Engineer and Data Handover Team Lead of the Arthit Project, PTTEP
But the project team realized that integrating
their chosen data warehousing solution with a
range of applications would be challenging.
The benefits of such integration would ensure
less time spent on change control processes.
That would maximize profits returned, as
proven by global research group IDC (Steven
Graham, A Study of the Financial Impacts of
Data Warehousing, special IDC report).
Typically, field staff and engineers spend almost
30 to 40 percent of their working time finding,
verifying, re-formatting, changing or trying to
understand the information gathered about an
asset. An IDC survey found that 90 percent of
companies investing in an engineering data
warehouse solution had a three-year return on
investment of more than 40 percent.
Comprehensive solution
PTTEP’s search for a data warehousing solution led it to Intergraph’s SmartPlant Enterprise
solutions. SmartPlant Enterprise offers a powerful portfolio of best-in-class applications to
ensure an open, independent data storage system that improves project execution, handover
and plant operational efficiency.
“SmartPlant Enterprise is used by the majority
of leading companies within the energy and
petroleum industry and was widely recommended,” said Srivaranon.
Within the suite, SmartPlant Foundation is the
key to centralizing, incorporating and managing well-organized orders for data. It also
enriches intelligent cross-referencing between
various types of engineering information
without boundaries. To maximize the efficiency
of the enterprise engineering hub, PTTEP
will integrate SmartPlant Foundation with
SmartPlant P&ID, SmartPlant Instrumentation
and SmartPlant Electrical.
Birth of the hub
By using SmartPlant Foundation as the platform
for its hub, PTTEP expects to benefit from:
n A single engineering portfolio with seamless
data accessibility
n Greater accuracy and consistency, faster processing of engineering information and more
efficient change management
n Standardization in engineering documentation
n 10 to 15 percent OPEX reduction
n 80 percent reduction of volume and cost of
equipment documentation for operation.
SmartPlant Foundation will also send an e-mail
alert to parties involved to follow up on the work
required for the designed workflow. This shortens
normal processing time to days or a few weeks.
The goal is to have all applications working together from the enterprise engineering hub – the
information gateway through which users can
connect to all of the information they require.
As well as being used as an engineering handover
tool and an application integration tool, the hub
will also be used as an engineering companion to
asset tracking software Maximo. Maximo serves
as a supplier gateway for technical information
and as a client and regulatory review portal.
Next steps
Expanding the hub to cope with surface and
sub-surface engineering applications and related information will be the next big challenge for
PTTEP. Like other leading owner operators and
exploration and production businesses, PTTEP
views the hub as a way to effectively maintain
and collate information for the duration of the
Arthit Project’s life cycle.
SmartPlant Foundation
“Arthit is a greenfield project and we have a good
opportunity to shorten implementation processes
by using data conversion and manipulation techniques,” Srivaranon said. “Once information is
integrated using the same application platform,
we could possibly initiate information standards
to be used among various engineering disciplines.
That really would be a big return on investment
for us.”
Jana Miller is editorial director of Insight.
Enterprise engineering hub
To build its enterprise engineering hub, PTTEP
chose the following Intergraph SmartPlant
Enterprise solutions:
n
SmartPlant P&ID
n
SmartPlant Instrumentation
n
SmartPlant Electrical
n
SmartPlant Foundation
About PTTEP
PTTEP was established in 1985 in response to
the government of Thailand’s desire to strengthen the nation’s energy stability and minimize
costly petroleum imports. The Petroleum
Authority of Thailand (PTT) established PTT
Exploration and Production (PTTEP) to explore,
develop and produce petroleum reserves to
maximize the country’s highest possible benefit
from energy resources.
As PTTEP’s business operations expanded
dramatically, both domestically and internationally, the company decided to reduce the
government’s administrative and financial
responsibilities. So PTTEP registered as a
publicly traded company in 1992, becoming
PTT Exploration and Production Public Company
Ltd., and currently has a registered capital of
US$105 million.
www.pttep.com
Insight
13
case study: SCG Chemical group
Discovering the Value of Intelligent Data
SCG Chemical Group puts data handover standards into action with SmartPlant Enterprise
n By Surachate Chalothorn
The Siam Cement Group (SCG) has been a leader
in the Asia-Pacific region since its founding under
the Royal Decree of His Majesty King Rama VI
in 1913. It was Thailand’s first cement producer,
and has played a key role for nearly a century
in the growth and modernization of the country
and the region.
SCG entered into the petrochemical business 15
Today, SCG has diversified into a number of
industries, becoming the largest and most
advanced industrial conglomerate in Thailand,
with five strategic business units: Petrochemicals,
Paper and Packaging, Cement, Building Products
and Distribution.
Data handover problem
14
Insight
years ago when its first petrochemical industrial
plant was developed. Since then, SCG Chemical
Group has grown about tenfold to become a
fully integrated, leading petrochemical producer
in the Southeast Asian region.
SCG Chemical Group’s first world-scale ethylene
complex, built by Toyo Engineering Corp., began
operating in 1999 with an annual production
capacity of 600,000 tonnes of ethylene and
300,000 tonnes of propylene. Due to a rapid
Insight: Special Focus
growth in demand for the products, we retrofitted the plant in 2001 to increase capacity to
800,000 tonnes of ethylene and 400,000 tonnes
of propylene per year.
For the plant retrofit project, the engineering
contractors had extensively made use of intelligent IT solutions to collate and manage the
engineering data. However, the information
was not handed over in an intelligent format
that could then be re-used for operation and
maintenance throughout the life cycle of the
plant. The data was instead provided mostly
in scanned image format. This meant we had
to direct a large amount of resources toward
incorporating the scanned images into our
operation and maintenance systems.
Intelligent data
To help bridge this data gap, the SCG Chemical
Group turned to Intergraph’s SmartPlant
Enterprise solutions to create intelligent plant
engineering information.
We first chose INtools®, now known as SmartPlant
Instrumentation. SmartPlant Instrumentation helps
us design, manage and maintain our instruments
throughout the life cycle.
We next implemented SmartPlant P&ID, which
creates intelligent piping and instrumentation diagrams and builds a comprehensive data model.
We were able to handle the conversion
to SmartPlant solutions with our internal
resources. Staff members only needed a month
for training and preparation. Our team of six
drafters and one junior engineer converted
more than 300 P&IDs in just seven months – a
remarkable achievement!
Managing information
After SmartPlant Instrumentation and SmartPlant
P&ID went live, our group adopted SmartPlant
Foundation as an engineering document
management system. SmartPlant Foundation
also enables a tight integration with SmartPlant
Instrumentation and SmartPlant P&ID. The
system streamlines data entry, identifies and
resolves inconsistencies and presents data in
the format that best meets the need of a specific
task. SmartPlant Foundation helps us plan for
maintenance, expansions and modifications, as
well as any shutdowns.
In addition, SmartPlant Foundation helps us
prove compliance with governmental regulations.
International protocols, national laws, insurance
requirements and local authorities all require
increasing detailed technical documentation.
Non-compliance could result in significant costs
or, in the worst case scenario, a shutdown.
Setting the standard
Thanks to our implementation, we now realize
the value of using intelligent engineering
software systems for plant operation and maintenance and the ability to interchange data among
plant applications.
We are currently planning a second ethylene
complex. The project consists of a world-scale
naphtha cracker and downstream polymer units.
There will be multiple contractors from different
locations involved in the project.
Because of our experience, we are now defining the approach for handover of documents
and data for this project. EPC contractors,
subcontractors and vendors must provide data in
formats that can be populated and loaded into
our existing SmartPlant Foundation system.
By using SmartPlant Enterprise, the tremendous
amount of data prepared during the EPC phase
becomes very useful for operation and maintenance throughout the life cycle of the plant.
Data can be accessed efficiently, minimizing
the effort to re-input the data after the plant
is handed over to the operations team. Also, if
this data is available in an intelligent format, it
can easily be re-used for plant modifications and
de-bottlenecking.
The road ahead
Our company prides itself on being a pacesetter in the introduction of new technology
and new skills to Thailand. It’s no surprise,
then, that we are continuing to work with
Intergraph to develop and implement additional
tools, particularly in the area of operations
and maintenance.
Intergraph has helped us develop our “road
map” with a step-by-step approach to achieving full benefit from the invested asset. By fully
taking advantage of SmartPlant Enterprise
intelligent software solutions, we can continuously improve our plant’s productivity and
performance. We will follow this road map on
our path toward operational excellence.
Surachate Chalothorn serves as olefins research
and technology manager for the SCG Chemical
Group in Thailand.
www.siamcement.com
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
15
case study: Murray & Roberts
Innovative Strategies Boost Productivity
Murray & Roberts manages their engineering data more efficiently with SmartPlant® Foundation
n By Pat Thomson
We knew that we needed an engineering data
warehouse,” explains Hannes Marais, corporate
engineering manager at Johannesburg-based
Murray & Roberts. “It would be a place where
we could capture and control all our engineering
data, and that would also become a knowledge
base for repeat business and repeat engineering
processes. We had an in-house system, but realized that it would take too much time and money
to update.”
The company looked for a commercial solution
from the open market that would fit its business
processes. Following a period of research, Murray &
Roberts chose Intergraph’s SmartPlant® Foundation
engineering information and workflow management software and services provided by the
distributor Intergraph Systems Southern Africa
(Pty) Ltd.
“We found that while there was no worldwide
shortage of tools for data warehousing, the
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Insight
Intergraph option was by far superior and offered
a lot more than just data storage,” said Richard
Genade, CAD manager at Murray & Roberts.
“It gave us a ready-made interface to engineering data design tools, such as Intergraph’s
SmartPlant® P&ID, SmartPlant® Instrumentation
and SmartPlant ® Electrical, as well as nonIntergraph tools. The ability to plug these tools
in and out was attractive.”
Implementation is a team effort
This core requirement was just one part of the
picture. For the solution to function effectively
as the company’s central engineering data
“hub,” it would have to be able to interface at
an intelligent level with document management,
materials management and procurement – and
ultimately, non-engineering business systems.
Murray & Roberts and Intergraph worked
together to find the best implementation plan for
Insight: Special Focus
We like SmartPlant Foundation because it is an
integrated system that does not really distinguish
between the different disciplines – it is really all
one structure. We think of SmartPlant Foundation
as a project tool that everyone on the project
should be using.
Jacques Struwig
SmartPlant Foundation systems administrator, Murray & Roberts
SmartPlant Foundation. “We used our functional
requirements specification as the guideline for
our minimum requirements, but beyond that we
began with an open mind and an open vision,”
recalls Jacques Struwig, SmartPlant Foundation
systems administrator.
Struwig and his colleagues are quick to compliment
Intergraph Systems South Africa for their partnership during the SmartPlant Foundation implementation. They also stress the support of Murray &
Roberts’ senior management, which they say has
been essential to the success of the project.
The development process was broken into a series
of phases with subsequent site acceptance tests:
– Project determination and budget signoff
– Functional specification
– Development of a class library structure
friendly, but in terms of new working practices,”
says Genade. “Acceptance will not happen
overnight, but it is a goal that we need to
strive for. The challenge is not unique to Murray
& Roberts – the global workforce is aging, and
in South Africa many engineers are now 50-plus.
There is a tendency to ‘blame the system.’”
Owning the data, becoming enabled
“Because a system like SmartPlant Foundation is
developed around your business processes and
procedures, it forces the user to comply with those
rules and regulations,” Marais says. “But at the
same time, it also gives the user full ownership of
the data. Once people begin to experience that,
they also begin to see how much more they can
get out of the system – how it can work well for
them as an enabler rather than a regulator. For
example, they understand how they benefit from
These were followed by engineering datasheet
development, document control and workflows.
better traceability and revision control.”
Murray & Roberts’ SmartPlant Foundation user
community of about 200 members includes
both engineers and document controllers. “We
prefer to think of it as one project team,” Struwig
explains. “We like SmartPlant Foundation because
it is an integrated system that does not really
distinguish between the different disciplines – it
is really all one structure. We think of SmartPlant
Foundation as a project tool that everyone on the
project should be using.”
now feeds all the P&ID data into SmartPlant
How have the users responded? “It is a big
challenge, not technically, because it is user-
Using an exchange tool, Murray & Roberts
Foundation’s Microsoft® Windows® environment, allowing the project team to pull interactive equipment, line and valve lists into an Excel
spreadsheet. Group members agree that gaining
interfacing it to SmartPlant Foundation and feeding equipment data into SmartPlant Materials to
enable the procurement process. The company
is currently an Intergraph PDS user but plans
to migrate to SmartPlant 3D, Intergraph’s nextgeneration, data-centric and rule-driven solution
for streamlining engineering design processes.
Meanwhile, SmartPlant Foundation/ERP workflows have been prepared in anticipation of
Murray & Roberts’ new PeopleSoft system,
shortly due to go live.
Ending the paper nightmare
Project handover has been transformed by the
new engineering environment, which is 100 percent digital. “Performing the final handover has
always been a paper nightmare,” says Genade,
“but with SmartPlant Foundation, the time it
takes to gather the data has been considerably
reduced.” Genade’s experience is supported
by industry-wide research, which shows that a
“digital engineering” handover can cut costs by
as much as 60 percent.
The response from owner/operators has been very
positive. As Marais explains, “Three of our clients
are now considering switching to SmartPlant
Foundation after receiving the projects we have
completed for them. They can see the value.”
Pat Thomson is the Power, Process & Marine divisional manager for Intergraph Systems Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd., an Intergraph distributor.
About Murray & Roberts
With a strong presence in southern Africa
and a focus on the construction economies
of the developing world, Murray & Roberts
is a group of engineering, design and construction companies serving primarily the
mining and metals, building and infrastructure manufacturing and steel industries in
South Africa and more than 50 countries
around the world.
fully interactive datasheets has been a great
engineering advantage – different disciplines
having access to the same data at the same time
boosts accuracy and productivity. Engineering
data integrity is also assured.
Murray & Roberts’ latest step has been
www.murrob.com
to implement Intergraph’s SmartPlant Materials,
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
17
case study: Grenland Group
Grenland Group Chooses SmartPlant Enterprise to
Maximize Offshore Production
Integrating huge amount of data in tight timeframe
n By Terje Tvinnereim
Grenland Group needed to be able to deliver
all engineering and manufacturing information
for the Low Pressure Modification Project at
the Oseberg field in the Norwegian part of the
North Sea. The project involved two offshore
platforms connected by a bridge.
Owned and operated by StatoilHydro, the
Norwegian oil and gas company, the enormous
and complex Oseberg field modification effort
required 170,000 engineering labor hours. The
project deadline was also extremely tight.
Meeting the challenge
At Oseberg, the project goal is to be able to
produce more oil from the wells as the field
18
Insight
enters the final portion of its life cycle. Low
pressure modification means that, with a lower
pressure production method, StatoilHydro will
maximize the amount of oil it can extract during the end-of-life of these wells.
The project is a huge challenge with great
potential gain. To succeed will require a monumental effort in integrating disparate data,
including manual drawing information, existing
3D models converted from PDMS, use of new
3D laser scanning technology and new modeling data. The modification project also demands
new process information and instrumentation
Insight: Special Focus
tasks to be generated, in addition to the update
of existing P&IDs and instrumentation.
The company faced extreme difficulty when it
routinely used a wide variety of design engineering applications. The various applications
did not work together, compounding workflow
problems. As the company and its business
grew, design engineering system activities
became increasingly harder to support and
more expensive to manage.
Desired integration
Grenland’s new integrated design engineering
system had to deliver information as clash-free
3D models and structural, piping, equipment,
SmartPlant Enterprise met and even exceeded
our expectations.
“Intelligent tools on a common platform are
feeding the main information into a single data
source,” said Ørbeck. “That means you get
control of your design and can achieve your
project goal on time and within budget.”
Terje Ørbeck
CAD manager and 3D coordinator, Grenland Group
support and raceway modeling elements, as well
as structural assembly and manufacturing drawings, all the way down to the cutting details.
The system would be expected to routinely and
rapidly produce piping isometrics, P&IDs, instrument loop drawings and materials take-off data
– all while maintaining a seamless connection
with the purchasing system. On top of that,
Grenland’s system would be required to act as
the central source for all engineering information,
integrating data from several other systems.
To support multidiscipline projects in the
onshore, offshore and marine markets costefficiently and on time, Grenland needed an
integrated design system that used traditional
3D models and 2D CAD drawings as a design
basis. The desired system would act as a single
platform for all engineering information, especially in large-scale projects.
Putting it all together
The timeframe for StatoilHydro’s project
completion is very critical. This puts a heavy
burden on Grenland to be able to automate
the information flow to avoid delays. The
project’s financial success, both for client and
owner operator, depends on this.
“SmartPlant Enterprise is essential to achieving our goal,” said Terje Ørbeck, CAD manager
and 3D coordinator at Grenland Group. The
major requirements influencing the company’s selection of SmartPlant Enterprise, and
SmartPlant Foundation in particular, included
the following:
n integrated system for all design disciplines
A
that uses a common user interface
n Modern system architecture that can be built
upon for the future
n
P&IDs. Generally speaking, the internal design
control workflows and acceptances will be performed inside SmartPlant Foundation. SmartPlant
Enterprise and SmartPlant Foundation have great
potential to be the key information source for the
entire project’s development and completion.
n “easy to learn” user interface with
A
modern graphics
n A serious supplier with depth of experience
in the plant design market
n A local, knowledgeable support team with
sufficient resources to follow through.
n
Setting the standard
“To put it mildly,” Ørbeck admits, “there was a
lot of very different engineering software in use
at Grenland.” Information had to be integrated
from general drafting systems, like AutoCAD and
MicroStation 2D drawings, and from 3D modeling, such as from PDS, PlantSpace and PDMS.
There was a need for standardization in order to
minimize costs and maximize resources.
Grenland chose the SmartPlant Enterprise suite,
including SmartPlant 3D, SmartPlant Foundation,
SmartPlant P&ID and SmartPlant Instrumentation.
“SmartPlant Enterprise met and even exceeded
our expectations,” says Ørbeck.
Approximately 20 designers in the Oseberg
project use the system for 3D modeling, structural design, piping and equipment design and
raceway design. Layout and structural fabrication drawings, piping isometrics and spools are
all extracted from the system. In addition, seven
process engineers and five instrument engineers perform design work using SmartPlant
Enterprise. SmartPlant Foundation is used as
the information source for a wide range of
people who need access to project data.
Straight from the source
The use of SmartPlant Foundation as the main
design engineering data source for the project
will be further extended to also include publishing of drawings like layout, manufacturing drawings for structural design, piping isometrics and
SmartPlant Foundation
Quick training
After Intergraph’s initial implementation and
educational services, Grenland took over the
ongoing training and project implementation.
Grenland now has the ability to manage huge,
multidiscipline projects in a reliable and easyto-use manner on a common platform.
“Our business requires many contractor
resources. It’s crucial that training be easy
for these people,” said Ørbeck. “They won’t
have SmartPlant Enterprise experience, but
we must get them productive in the project
as soon as possible.”
Proven technology
“SmartPlant Enterprise has proven to us that this
will work. It’s intuitive and easy to learn,” said
Ørbeck. “This is a really big plus for Grenland.
“SmartPlant Enterprise is a great project tool.
Of course, you must have excellent IT people
on the front end to prepare for, adapt and
implement this platform. But the reward comes
for the general user who can learn the system
quickly and put it to work right away.”
Terje Tvinnereim serves as senior vice president
of the Technology Centre at Grenland Group.
He is based in Sandefjord, Norway.
www.grenlandgroup.com
Insight
19
Technology at Work: linde engineering
Photo courtesy Helge Hansen / Statoil
Linde Engineering Pulls It All Together at Snøhvit
Snow White is a fairy tale success project where concurrent engineering dreams really do come true
n By Jana Miller
For large-scale projects, concurrent engineering
offers synchronized development across companies
and sites. In coping with complexity, suitable
IT infrastructure and sophisticated updating
management are critical.
Despite the success in developing alternative
energy sources, the burning of fossil fuels still
accounts for a large part of energy consumption.
Whether for coal, natural gas or petroleum, the
easily accessible deposits have been exhausted
for quite some time. Oil and gas producers must
drill ever deeper to reach the highly sought-after
organic hydrocarbon compounds.
In the middle of the 19th century, drillings to a
depth of less than 50 meters often yielded success.
However, today’s producers must generally drill
a few kilometers down into the ground in order
to discover natural gas or crude oil. Depths of
more than 6,000 meters have been reported –
and only a small fraction of explorations carried
out eventually find worthwhile deposits. A rule
of thumb is that only one in eight oil test drillings
are actually successful. If one is successful, then
the laborious production process can begin.
20
Insight
Snow White brings pioneer spirit
One of the latest natural gas projects is Statoil’s
Snøhvit (Snow White) project. Beginning in
2006, a newly developed field is expected to
yield about 5.67 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export. According
to current estimates, production might last for
some 30 years.
However, the natural gas fields Snøhvit, Albatross
and Askeladd covered by the Snow White project
are below the seabed of the Barents Sea, some
150 kilometers northwest of Hammerfest, Norway.
The technical term for this approach to petroleum and natural gas production is “offshore
production.” It is considered to be as expensive
as it is technically demanding. Even though up to
400 offshore plants are already located in the
North Sea alone, this industry is characterized
by innovation.
For example, Statoil created for the Snow White
project Europe’s first remote offshore development. A total of four wells, as well as many
kilometers of pipelines, are monitored and
operated from a control station on the island
Insight: Special Focus
of Melkøya. The processing facilities, which are
also located on Melkøya, are used to liquefy the
natural gas before it is shipped to Europe and
the U.S. in special container vessels.
Linde Engineering plans gas
liquefying plant
Since early 2002, many engineering firms have
participated in the EUR 6.5 billion (approximately US$8 billion) project. One of those firms
is Linde Engineering, which was awarded the
contract for the gas liquefying plant. A division
of Linde AG, Linde Engineering has annual sales
of EUR 1.58 billion (approximately US$2 billion)
and a staff of more than 4,200. Headquartered
in Wiesbaden, Germany, the group specializes
in the planning and construction of plants for
air fractionation, natural gas processing and
olefin and hydrogen production.
In order to meet the deadline for engineering
this large plant, which includes more than 15,000
loops and a demanding process control system,
Linde Engineering joined forces with more than 30
engineering partners and suppliers. These subcontractors use a variety of IT systems and tools for
planning and operation. This meant that special
attention had to be paid to suitable IT integration
concepts for the project.
Concurrent engineering for efficiency
For large-scale projects, concurrent engineering
offers synchronized development across companies
and sites. In coping with complexity, suitable
IT infrastructure and sophisticated updating
management are critical.
Concurrent engineering yields significant benefits
of enhanced overall efficiency, which can only
occur when a continuous workflow across disciplines and partners is achieved. Without control
over the exchange of the extensive project data
and documents, there is no way to organize this
magnitude of collaboration. Experienced project
managers know that in this context, data update
management is the key.
In theory, this is quite simple. As early as the
1980s, approaches were discussed which
defined the optimal sequence for various workflow activities. Each stage was characterized
by specific activities, methods and techniques,
and by the required tools and results, labeled as
milestones. In this ideal model, project, quality
and document management are considered as
the integrating functions across phases.
In practice, however, it is a quite different matter.
Although the various phases are theoretically
separated in terms of time, they actually overlap.
Therefore, not all milestones of one phase have
to be completed and accepted before the next
phase can be started. However, this approach
does require that subsequent activities are based
on released milestones.
In concurrent engineering, this requirement is
abandoned as well. The next phase can start even
before the milestones of the previous phase have
been released. With this approach, planning time
is drastically reduced, yet some redundant work
may take place. Also, it must be possible to revert
to a previous phase. This working method, however, can only work with a high-performance
data update management system.
With the data update management system,
changes, errors and problems, as well as suggestions for improvement, are logged, managed
and submitted in the form of up-dating requests.
The update itself is performed according to
internal procedures or customer specifications.
Interdisciplinary perspective
Another major aspect is the interdisciplinary
perspective. Usually, updates not only impact one
discipline, but other disciplines as well. Suppliers
and contractors must also be involved in updating
management. Therefore, the IT infrastructure must
go beyond the company itself.
In addition to the 30 sub-suppliers’ various
tools, Linde Engineering itself uses a number of
different planning systems. Intergraph’s PDS is
one of the core systems for process engineering.
In the Snøhvit project, PDS 2D is used to prepare
P&IDs for revision and substitution.
Basic planning and instrumentation for process
control and electrical engineering in the gas
liquefying plant were performed with Intergraph
SIGRAPH.CAE®. Documentum is used for project document management.
Instrumentation data integration
Statoil expects planning results to be in the
Intergraph SmartPlant Instrumentation format.
Therefore, the SIGRAPH.CAE data is imported to
SmartPlant Instrumentation. Linde has successfully
used this market-leading software since 2003.
SmartPlant Instrumentation offers data-based
Photo courtesy Eiliv Leren / Statoil
representations of the areas of measurement,
which provides a variety of benefits:
n
No need for graphic dialog knowledge
n
Highly standardized loops
n
S upport for batch processing, which clearly
enhances effectiveness.
Some contractors carry out their planning using
SmartPlant Instrumentation. To obtain a holistic
data model from the large number of results,
two methods are used. Various SmartPlant
Instrumentation databases are merged, or the team
works directly on the SmartPlant Instrumentation
master database at Linde Engineering.
In the future, this integration work could be
supported by Intergraph’s SmartPlant Enterprise
solution. With its open architecture, SmartPlant
Enterprise enables convenient integration of
third-party software, including internal applications and business system applications. In
addition, SmartPlant Enterprise provides serviceoriented concepts for implementation of optimal
industrial processes.
A member of the SmartPlant Enterprise, SmartPlant
Foundation offers efficient information management for the process, power and offshore industry
worldwide. The SmartPlant Enterprise permits
effective sharing of information and controlled
communication and data exchange between
tailored development tools. Furthermore, it provides a platform which integrates information
flow between applications. Data only needs to be
entered once, and can be reused again and again.
Statoil has already used a similar Plant Information
Management system based on SmartPlant
Foundation. By effectively optimizing the inventory
of plant information, significant time and cost
savings can be achieved throughout the plant life
cycle of the Snow White project.
Jana Miller is editorial director of Insight and is
based in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S.
www.linde-engineering.com
www.statoil.com/snohvit
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
21
Case Study: Samsung Heavy Industries
Smooth Sailing for Samsung Heavy Industries
SmartMarine® 3D cuts design errors and boosts productivity
n By Jana Miller
The second largest shipbuilder in the world,
Samsung Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. (SHI) is
strongly focused on the shipbuilding and offshore markets. The South Korean company has
almost 11,000 employees and sales totaled
US$8.5 billion in 2008.
“Since choosing SmartMarine 3D, we’ve made
a remarkable reduction in the amount of design
errors and material costs. We’ve also improved
construction productivity,” said Yeong Soo Bae,
executive vice president of Shipbuilding Design
at SHI.
Integrations with third party solution Enest, a
structure nesting program, along with several
in-house solutions, have proved very beneficial.
“These integrations translate into a large reduction in design labor hours at SHI,” said Bae.
SHI designs and constructs high value-added
vessels such as LNG carriers and large passenger ships, as well as drill ships and shuttle
tankers, for which it is globally ranked No. 1.
“With SmartMarine 3D, we have reduced
design errors in half. We have also improved
productivity by about 10 percent.”
SmartMarine 3D
SHI uses SmartMarine 3D for designing and
building the structure and outfitting of ships
(see table). The solution helps SHI manage a
Microsoft SQL Server® database with 1.1
terabytes of active data.
Across the enterprise
SHI recently chose SmartPlant Foundation,
Intergraph’s information management solution,
to improve its productivity. This marks the first
implementation of SmartPlant Foundation in the
shipbuilding industry. SmartPlant Foundation
forms a central data warehouse and engineering and manufacturing data change channel for
large and complicated ship design.
SmartMarine 3D supports concurrent engineering and a front-loading workflow. The solution
provides a large amount of production information to easily interface with ERP systems, and
SHI is working to take advantage of this by
developing an interface.
As shipbuilding projects grow larger while project
schedules become shorter, an integrated product
and engineering information management system
represents a key success factor. The shipbuilder can
exchange quality design information and manufacturing information during the project and deliver
The company operates eight overseas facilities,
including a ship block factory in China. SHI
holds three international quality standards –
ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 – and
is internationally recognized for its quality,
safety and environmental awareness.
Seeing results
SHI’s Geoje Shipyard began using Intergraph
SmartMarine® 3D in production in 2004 and
it has already yielded measurable results that
have impacted SHI’s bottom line.
22
Insight
Insight: Special Focus
as-built information to ship owners at the same
time the project is completed.
SmartPlant Foundation will be used as a standardized data warehouse in the shipbuilding division
as a first step. SHI has plans to use Intergraph
solutions for the entire design process, in both
shipbuilding and offshore plant projects.
In addition, SHI will standardize its basic
CAD format corporate-wide to Intergraph’s
SmartSketch®. This SmartSketch standardization will extend to SHI’s offshore plant division
and its subsidiary shipyard in China.
In-depth services
SHI’s experience has shown that SmartMarine
solutions require far less training than previously
used software solutions and its employees can be
fully productive in far less time – in a matter of
months instead of a year or more. Training includes
basic courses such as a seven-week course for
structural users, and a three-week course for
outfitting users.
“Intergraph supports our management team with
valuable services,” said Bae. “The Intergraph staff
has also helped us with a number of customization
efforts, including catalogs, rules, specifications,
drawing labels, plus standards data migration.”
Proven experience
“We chose Intergraph because they have adopted
the most advanced, state-of-the-art architecture,”
said Bae. “Intergraph is a steady and promising
company, with strong experience in developing
both plant and shipbuilding CAD software.”
SHI looks forward to even greater success in
the future, and is looking at possibly expanding its enterprise solution by adding Intergraph
SmartPlant P&ID to its solution mix.
“One thing we plan to achieve in the upcoming year is to reduce design cost,” said Bae.
“SmartMarine 3D will be used for at least the
next 10 years for all of our projects as our main
CAD tool.”
Jana Miller is editorial director of Insight.
www.shi.samsung.co.kr
Through the Workflow
SHI takes advantage of SmartMarine 3D
for a variety of shipbuilding tasks, including:
Ship structure design
SmartMarine 3D molded form
Structure
detailing
n Structure manufacturing
n Planning
n Drawing
n
n
Ship outfitting design
S martMarine 3D pipe routing
SmartPlant Structure
n Equipment placement
n HVAC
routing
n Cableway routing
n Cable routing
n Planning
n Hole management
n Hanger and support
n Weight and CG
n Interference check
n Drawing
n
n
Other Intergraph solutions used
S martPlant 3D
SmartPlant Foundation
n SmartSketch
n SmartPlant Markup Plus
n PDS
n
n
Complementary solutions used
n
n
E nest
EzHULL
Samsung Heavy Industries is using Intergraph technology for a variety of highvalue marine structures:
Project
Implementation Area
Delivery Date
97,000 tonnes drill ship
Aft E/R (excluding forward M/C
room, thruster room)
2008
96,000 tonnes drill ship
E/R
2009
950,000 bbls FPSO
All area
2009
910,000 bbls FPSO
All area
2010
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
23
Case Study: Worleyparsons
Merging Cultures, Growing Success
WorleyParsons selects best practices to meet increased demands
n By Robert Gibson
WorleyParsons is a leading provider of professional
services to the energy, resource and complex
process industries. Headquartered in Sydney,
Australia, the company currently employs more
than 14,000 people in 94 offices located in more
than 30 countries. The firm provides technical,
project and operational support services to the
hydrocarbons, minerals and metals, infrastructure
and power industry sectors.
project services providers. In fact, WorleyParsons
is considered a leader in setting up and executing alliance-style contracts to provide clients
with complete solutions for projects or to support facility operations. One such alliance was
between Worley and Parsons E&C of Houston,
Texas, U.S. In 2004, Worley acquired Parsons
E&C Corporation and the company became
WorleyParsons Limited.
The global company is the result of several successful mergers. One of the original companies
which would become part of WorleyParsons was
Wholohan Grill and Partners, an Australian
structural engineering consultancy founded in
Sydney in 1971. Worley was established in the
United States in the 1960s and expanded to
the Asia-Pacific region in the 1970s. In 1987,
Wholohan Grill and Partners purchased Worley
Engineering (Australia) Pty Ltd. and the combined
company changed its name to Worley.
Navigating the transition
The merger of Worley and Parsons E&C created
the same challenge that many of our clients face:
the successful integration of corporate cultures,
data and systems. The merger enabled us to
experience first-hand what many of our customers
currently are going through.
As part of its successful growth strategy, Worley,
and now, WorleyParsons, forms partnerships
and alliances with both customers and other
24
Insight
When Worley and Parsons E&C merged, we
established communities of practice (sometimes
referred to as best practices committees) based
around our engineering systems.Our first objective
was to put together roadmaps of the systems
used by the major centers. Basically, we needed
to know who was using what system at what level.
Insight: Special Focus
After reviewing these roadmaps, the decision was
made overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to
use the Intergraph SmartPlant Enterprise suite.
The products were, and are, our preferred engineering, information and material control solutions.
As manager of engineering and design systems
for Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle
East and Africa, I work closely with other regional
and group-wide representatives for project delivery,
engineering, procurement and construction
management systems to ensure efficient and
consistent use of the integrated systems. The company has major design centers located in the
United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East,
China and Australia. Using a variety of solutions,
WorleyParsons performs conceptual design,
front-end design, detail design, procurement,
construction management and asset services.
Setting the global standard
Two years ago, WorleyParsons signed a multiyear Global Alliance Agreement covering the
SmartPlant Enterprise suite of engineering
applications, including SmartPlant Foundation,
SmartPlant Materials, SmartPlant Instrumentation,
SmartPlant 3D and PDS.
This agreement enables us to increase productivity
through core engineering and materials control
tool standardization, streamlined work processes
and a consistent training methodology. SmartPlant
Instrumentation is a standard across most of
our projects. We’re using PDS in many offices,
and SmartPlant Review is used for all of our PDS
projects. SmartPlant Foundation and SmartPlant
Materials are global standards for us and we
plan to use SmartPlant 3D on a major project
next year.
Common tools meet varied needs
We work through all five phases of an asset’s life
cycle, customizing our services for each sector.
To maintain WorleyParsons’ leadership role, we
must develop solutions for our clients that can
be deployed locally and globally. Our execution
centers rely on having common engineering
and design systems, collaboration technologies,
techniques and practices.
In today’s world, our clients need to get into
production as quickly as possible to meet
market demand. Often, this makes projects
schedule-based rather than cost-based. The
engineering and design tools we use must be
able to meet the necessary flexibility required
for all of our different client needs.
Intergraph devotes a great deal of resources
talking to the major companies about best
practices technology, so they understand the
challenges of our industry. The engineering
world is bursting at the seams. Our company
has to be ready to execute projects from anywhere at any time.
Intergraph’s new generation design tools facilitate
virtual teaming and global workshare, which are
crucial to our success. We are interested in new
technology with modern programming techniques
that allow more integration to take place and
make the information more readily available.
For WorleyParsons, as well as for our clients,
adopting common systems and work methodologies creates cost benefits by reducing setup,
training and support costs, while also removing
duplication of efforts.
Of course, 80 percent of aligning, developing
and deploying systems is about the people. You
must have an environment of ongoing training
and knowledge sharing to succeed.
Doing more with less
We are endeavoring to do more with fewer
people. This requires ongoing implementation
of productivity-improving technologies.
We appreciate the professionals from Intergraph,
representing different products, who become
imbedded in the WorleyParsons community of
practice. This strong partnership allows for faster,
more successful training and better understanding
of each other’s directions and requirements.
Improving handover
A major issue for WorleyParsons’ clients is documentation and data handover from the project
execution team to the operations and maintenance
teams. Clients know they must be mindful of the
different engineering and project services systems
for ongoing use by their asset services contractor.
Clients are much more educated in understanding
what kind of support they need, the value of the
data and how much money they save with a
successful handover. They’re not as concerned
about the technology used as they are about the
quality of the information that is handed over.
Ideally, our clients involve us at the beginning
of the process rather than at handover. The most
important element is communication. We get
everyone together to work on the issues, going
from handover backwards. When you build those
relationships at the start, it makes the process
much easier for everyone involved.
In the future, we will be able to undertake work
using any of our well-established systems and
then hand over the data in the format required
to populate the clients’ systems. The authoring
tools become less important than the actual format
of the data created to pass on to the client.
Engineering integration
Moving forward, I predict that the project services
industry will continue to move toward more
common integrated systems around the world,
with support coming from fewer locations.
Engineering is all about people, processes and
technology. WorleyParsons is putting in place the
best people, and with Intergraph’s help, equipping
them with the best processes and enabling
technology available.
Robert Gibson is manager of Engineering &
Design Systems ANZ & AMEA for WorleyParsons and is based in Perth, Australia.
www.worleyparsons.com
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
25
viewpoint: fiatech
Promoting Interoperability
Everything has now come together – let’s get moving
n By Dr. Richard H. F. Jackson
As director of FIATECH, an Austin, Texas-based
not-for-profit consortium, I am focused on finding ways to accelerate development and deployment of technologies to improve substantially
how capital projects are designed, engineered,
built and maintained.
I regularly sit at the table with some of the
finest minds from the construction and buildings industry, including EPC companies, O/O
companies, hardware and software developers,
universities and research organizations like the
National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), to identify industry challenges and work
on solutions. One of the key issues we discuss
is interoperability.
Coming to the forefront
Although the concept of software interoperability
has been around for quite a while, it’s only in
recent years that things have changed in a way
that gives us greater confidence we will achieve
it soon.
26
Insight
The first is that interoperability has become
a topic of discussion in the boardroom and at
the highest management level in our industry.
Top executives understand that interoperability
is an opportunity for vendors and users alike,
and that we can work together to develop new
business models to achieve it. Software vendors
will have to invest to create more interoperability
capabilities in their software, and users will have
to invest to implement new work processes that
take advantage of that.
The second major change is that the technology
of software interoperation has improved with
the widespread use of XML as a tool for sharing
information. More and more software developers
can share information this way, and more and
more users are developing XML files to be shared
in this way.
Costs of inadequate interoperability
What we don’t know is what the shift to
interoperability will cost. Obviously, we need
Insight: Special Focus
new technology and staff training, as well as
a new focus on how we do business. What we
can demonstrate, however, is how much money
and productivity are currently being lost because
most systems are not interoperable.
Some years ago, while I was a senior executive at NIST, I commissioned a study of the US
automobile manufacturing industry supply chain.
We discovered that more than US$1 billion were
wasted each year due to poor data communications, miscommunications, data duplication and
the cost of recovering from errors due to bad or
inaccurate information. This was (and still is) a
huge number and it got people’s attention.
Not long after I moved from NIST to FIATECH,
we worked with NIST to do a similar study for the
construction industry. That study showed that the
losses due to inadequate interoperability were
conservatively placed at US$15.8 billion in 2002.
Among industry stakeholders, O/Os bore the
highest share of these costs, and 85 percent of
their expenses were incurred during operations
and maintenance due to time spent finding and
verifying facility and project information.
Working together on solutions
O/Os understand what interoperability is and
what it’s costing them not to fix it. A common
myth in the interoperability debate is that O/
Os must take the leadership role, or else the
problem will never be adequately addressed.
That’s not entirely true anymore. While O/Os are
certainly vested in the success of this issue, they
do not have exclusivity over the vision, nor the
sole means to achieve it.
Another common myth is that EPCs will only
do what owners tell them to do, and then
only if owners pay for it. We’ve already seen
EPCs streamlining their own work processes
and creating interoperability inside their own
companies, because they see the value in it and
need solutions today, to run projects today.
A third myth is that software developers can’t
lead, won’t work together, and want to slow
down interoperability to protect captive markets.
In truth, the real leaders and visionaries in the
software industry (most of whom are members
of FIATECH) understand that interoperability
is a train whose progress may be slowed, but
whose eventual destination is unmistakable.
They want to satisfy their customers and remain
profitable, and they understand that those who
embrace change and adjust their corporate
strategy will thrive in the new interoperable
world of the future.
The big challenge is finding incrementally profitable steps to take toward our longer term vision.
All parties have to come together to determine
these steps and drive us forward.
Navigating change
Despite the community of professionals who are
ready to take action, industry experts agree that
a lot of hard work and troubled waters lie ahead.
It’s not yet known what the total costs will be,
what the most immediate opportunities are, nor
the long-term return on investment. But we’re
getting a lot closer to understanding all of this.
perseverance from everyone involved. Users will
need to be realistic when it comes to implementation. They must ensure that their interoperability is built for a purpose, and that they expect to
gain profit from it.
EPCs and O/Os will certainly face some confusion in dealing with different vendors and working out system interoperation issues. The act of
creating standards requires having agreement
on the common work processes, rules and data
ownership. It also means realizing what is not
common and treating that as customization.
Technically, it requires writing queries, which is
difficult, and data mapping, which is also difficult.
Staff training will be required, and productivity
may temporarily decrease while the new systems
are put into place. This new business model also
represents a tremendous change in how we think
about and protect intellectual property.
Captain the ship
FIATECH members are pooling resources,
knowledge and experience with the goal of
accelerating the achievement of interoperability. We hope to make the journey toward our
goal as smooth as possible for all concerned,
and we’re working in all parts of the industry
to produce the tools, mechanisms and justifications for the process.
I believe the day is coming when O/Os will be
ready to demand interoperability, the EPCs will
say they can make it happen and the vendors will
be prepared to provide the necessary tools. As we
look to that day, we can imagine a perfect world
where all project information will be available to
those who need it, when they need it, where they
need it, in the form the need it and at an affordable price.
Ric Jackson is director of FIATECH and is based
in Austin, Texas US.
About FIATECH
FIATECH provides global leadership in identifying and accelerating the development,
demonstration and deployment of fully
integrated and automated technologies to
deliver the highest business value throughout
the life cycle of all types of capital projects.
FIATECH envisions a future in which capital
projects are executed in a highly automated
and seamlessly integrated environment across
all phases and processes of the capital project
life cycle.
Membership in FIATECH offers the opportunity to be in the driver’s seat, identifying
critical technologies to improve the operations and bottom-line results for capital
facilities. FIATECH delivers the following
benefits to all of its members:
Program management experience
Leveraged funding
n Technology needs identification
n Knowledge base of technical experts
n Industry partnerships
n Networking and team building
n Anti-trust protection
n Widespread implementation
and accessibility.
n
n
Members of the FIATECH board of directors include representatives from:
B echtel Corporation
n Fluor Corporation
n Burns and Roe
n Intergraph Corporation
n Center for Housing and Urban Development, Texas A&M University
n KBR
n Peter Kiewit Institute, University
of Nebraska
n
H2M HILL
C
Procter & Gamble
n Consolidated Contractors Group
n Smithsonian Institution
n The Dow Chemical Company
n Target Corporation
n DuPont
n Zachry Construction Corporation.
n
n
www.fiatech.com
Change is often challenging, and it doesn’t
just happen overnight. It takes hard work and
SmartPlant Foundation
Insight
27
perspective: intergraph
Variety is the spice of life
It’s a given today that any two products can
be “integrated” together using any one of a
wide variety of technologies and techniques to
deliver equally varied levels of “interoperability.”
Software vendors, as a cost of doing business,
expend significant resources to support a wide
range of integration technologies and standards,
both de facto and international, and Intergraph
is no exception.
Tiers of Integration
Taking steps to integrate the enterprise
n By Ewan Botterill
Figure 1
It is also important that one should define the
integration in the context of the work process
that is being undertaken to select the most
appropriate technical approach. Focusing on one
methodology to the exclusion of all others can
not only have a detrimental effect on the bottom
line of the business, but can equally blind one to
the opportunities of the “quick win” that could
potentially fund the next integration goal. The
remainder of this article will describe some basic
integration concepts in terms of tiers so that
these descriptions can be used in subsequent
business discussions.
Integration and Interoperability (I&I) are recurring
themes for business improvement. Indeed, research
projects have indicated that benefits accrued from
I&I can yield up to an 8x benefit to that derived
from automation alone.
But many organizations find it difficult to describe
what I&I actually means to them. This makes it
hard for these organizations to describe to an IT
vendor what they want – or for them to understand what the IT vendor is offering.
This is not surprising, since the predominant
engineering IT focus in recent history has been
applied to automation. Automation can be
defined as the optimization of productivity from
an application by reducing the time it takes to
accomplish a specific task.
It’s also a general truism that I&I are more about
the boundaries between disciplines and business
functions (the automation tasks), and so the very
transference and management of information are
affected by things that are not directly functions
of I&I themselves, such as:
n
wnership (of the information and the
O
integration task)
28
Insight
ost
C
Timeliness
n Quality
n Status
n Change
n Milestones
n Contracts.
n
n
Effectively, I&I are as much concerned with
information management as with business
process automation.
Intergraph identifies five different forms of integration – referred to as tiers to indicate increasing
levels or steps of capability – evolving as suits the
business (Figure 1). While the following solutions
are situation-dependent, the product platform,
tools and architecture deployed support a wide
range and mix of these options. This is a requirement if they are to address more than one problem
in a given business.
Effectively, an “enterprise” strategy needs to embrace several or all of these options. Selecting a
common technology platform, such as Intergraph’s
SmartPlant Enterprise, solves the issues of how the
tiers inter-relate or evolve from one to another.
Insight: Special Focus
Step up
One of Intergraph’s goals has been to establish
a framework and methodology for I&I. There
are two primary reasons. First, hundreds of
applications are used during the life of a process
plant. Integrating all of these and managing the
resulting information in a point-to-point fashion
would not only be daunting, but also would be
a costly and never-ending task. Secondly, process
plant data are highly inter-related and interdependent, and as such, a common language for
exchange and sharing is clearly advantageous
between data-centric applications.
Presentation integration
The simplest tier of integration is presentation
integration. Data from multiple sources are
accessible and provided side-by-side within a
single interface, such as that of a Web portal, e.g.
Microsoft SharePoint® Portal or SAP® NetWeaver®,
though this is not the only technology to provide this capability.
SmartPlant Explorer is one such example of
presentation integration, presenting information from the SmartPlant Enterprise engineering
pressures, temperatures, units of measure,
etc., it is more advantageous to translate/map
this data to a common intermediate application, agnostic and neutral in form, such as
Intergraph’s SmartPlant Schema, thereby reducing the number of transformations required to
support “enterprise integration.”
Figure 2
SmartPlant Foundation manages these two different levels of data granularity containers and
contents simultaneously: documents (containers) define the boundary condition/scope for
exchanges and provide the deliverable record,
while the data (content) is extracted and aggregated together with that from other exchanges.
tools. SmartPlant Foundation can also be used in
this context. For example, a user could navigate
from data within SmartPlant Foundation, such as
a plant tag, to corresponding data in other systems – e.g. to a maintenance procedure in SAP,
to associated records in Documentum, or to realtime data in OSI-PI – and have it all presented in
the same client interface to promote the decision
support process.
Data from two source applications are presented
side-by-side within the same interface (Figure 2).
An action or selection of data in one system view
may trigger a pre-determined response from the
other system view. To the end-user, it appears that
the data may in fact be integrated (supplied by
one integrated system), when in reality it is not.
This type of integration is most beneficial to users
for whom information creation is not their primary
role, such as the managerial, clerical and manual
workforce. In this illustration, SAP NetWeaver is
providing the portal technology. The next version
of SmartPlant Foundation will offer generalized
portal capabilities and will supply “Web parts”
for inclusion in a project portal. As we will see,
this portal technology also provides vital underpinnings for deploying composite applets.
Data integration
The second tier, data integration, is primarily
about aggregating and consolidating information from different sources together into a single
common storage mechanism. Applications provide the data as exports, either with the content
already mapped to the receiving system’s data
model during export, or via an external transformation mechanism to then be loaded into the
target system, a process of Export/Transform/
Load (ETL). In this environment, the applications
providing the data do not care, nor do they need
to know, that the data integration (receiving)
system exists.
A classic example of a data integration environment
is document management. Documents, drawings,
models, files and “containers” of all sorts are
brought together and loaded into a common classification indexing or librarian system for storage
and retrieval. Intergraph’s solution for document
management is SmartPlant Foundation.
Another more granular form of data integration is that of the engineering data warehouse
(EDW), also supported by SmartPlant Foundation.
“Content” from multiple disparate applications
is brought together and harmonized to form a
single uniform view of the “truth.” This more
granular data integration also forms the foundation of the other tiers of integration. It supports
the uni-directional movement of data between
systems and requires the data to be mapped to
the data model of the target system.
In point-to-point integrations, this is invariably
a direct translation. But when multiple systems
are required to share the same common data,
SmartPlant Foundation
Clearly, if data are being brought together
from multiple sources, it is possible that some
duplications exist. If they don’t have information
management capabilities, most tools importing
data simply overwrite the existing data. Some
may have revision management capabilities
for this new data, but it is not common.
Therefore, as well as providing a common language for the exchange, the information management capability associated with data integration
must also deal with this duplication – consider it
a process of enforcing consistency on a project –
correlation, aggregation, consolidation, etc.
Additionally, data integration should also deal
with the provenance, status and security of the
data. It is for these reasons that such capabilities are considered essential for the project data
handover application of a data warehouse.
The benefits of data integration include the same
benefits as presentation integration, plus the
abilities to:
ggregate/consolidate the data such that
A
overlaps are removed, providing a cleansed,
high-integrity exchange/store of data
n Neutralize the data to a common form for
ease of access, such that the source/originating applications (which could be many) are
not required for the information consumer to
install, learn or indeed pay for and support,
and the data appears as a seamless whole.
Application integration
Application integration extends the data integration capabilities by adding transportation of
the data to the correct location for the receiving
n
Insight
29
perspective: ARC Advisory Group
application, and then importing it via an application-specific protocol.
This is different from data integration, because
the data integration mechanism does not assume
that any thing more than a “file parser/loader”
capability exists for the receiving system – which
results in reduced time and cost of deployment,
but requires that the tool supports some form of
validation (correctness) of the data.
Many tools today provide sophisticated Application
Programmatic Interfaces (APIs) or other methodologies for data acquisition which ensure quality
and integrity of the resulting data. But they do
require more effort to deploy (Figure 1). Typically,
this route is chosen if the applications are going
to exchange data bi-directionally, on a frequent
basis, and the user is engaged in the export and
import process. Such examples include high-value,
high-frequency point-to-point exchanges – for
example, between a 3D design tool and a stress
analysis program.
Another key difference is in the scope of the
content being exchanged as represented by the
data overlaps (Figure 3). The circles represent the
content of data within three different applications. The primary goal for data integration is to
remove the overlaps so that the receiving system
has the total sum of the data – or, in other words,
to “enforce consistency.”
Conversely, the primary goal for application integration is to exchange only the common/shared
data between the applications. So the goal is to
manage the data overlaps – or, in other words,
to “manage inconsistency.” This latter aspect
of application integration is provided in the
SmartPlant Enterprise via SmartPlant Foundation
and SmartPlant Adaptors to the tools.
Why are these two methodologies different or
required? To answer that question, one needs
to look at the business process being executed.
Consider two examples:
1. T he engineering data about an instrument
have been checked and approved. The data
are pushed to the procurement system
for purchasing.
2. A
dialogue is going on between a process
engineer and an instrument engineer during
the definition of an instrument.
In the first example, there is no dialog – it is
non-negotiable. In the second, there is a backand-forth exchange of evolving data. It is this
negotiation, the iterative refinement process, which
is the substance of engineering – the essence of
SmartPlant Enterprise.
pplication integration can be set up, the user can
push the “integration” button and data flows
from application A to application B. It can be
executed in a point-to-point fashion. This works
fine if one of the following apply:
n
n
n
Figure 3
Integration occurs in a small workgroup where
interpersonal communication is good.
ilestones between disciplines can be aligned
M
for the exchange to occur.
But a business process integration is normally
required when one of the following occurs:
n
T he user has to interact with the data externally
to their working application to decide what to
accept or reject.
This would be a negotiated transaction – engineers want to be notified of change, but may
decide not to accept for many reasons.
n
n
n
Business process integration
But application integration on its own takes
no account of the business process involved –
There are only two applications involved.
T he projects extend beyond a workgroup
(enterprise or extended-enterprise).
ilestones between disciplines or partners do
M
not neatly align. For example, engineering is
not a real-time activity.
T here has to be some control, distribution, notification and management of the integration.
This requires an electronic workflow execution,
involving the actions to notify, store, deliver,
consume and move on.
Therefore, you need to establish business process
integration when you:
n
n
n
Cannot determine or predict the synchronicity
of processes, exchanges and tasks between
business functions
Need to control the flow of the data between
these functions and understand progress
Need to notify and warn of change, but allow
the process to continue unabated.
For this to be successful, not only are data integration and application integration required,
but you also require:
n
n
30
Insight
Insight: Special Focus
odeling and execution of the workflow proM
cesses between disparate business functions
Identifying the timing and scope of the handover/
exchange tasks
The final tier of integration offers the ability to
create entirely new applications (or applets) that
may or may not have a data store of their own,
and that utilize the high-quality, high-integrity data
stores that have been integrated together in the
previous tiers.
Figure 4
For example, a SAP NetWeaver portal can host
“Web parts” (iViews) from Intergraph, Meridium
and SAP simultaneously – all communicating with
each other as part of a “role-based” application
(Figure 4). In this example, a reliability engineer
is browsing engineering data, maintenance data
and failure data simultaneously, querying each
application as if they were one, and then executing
a new task which is not part of the three integrated
systems, but of the new “composite applet.”
Evolutionary change
Some of you may be asking why you should
make all of this effort to segregate out integration
techniques, methodologies, approaches and implementation strategies. The answer is simple – cost
of ownership. When considering the methodology
for I&I, one should think beyond the cost of initial
development of the integration to the whole life
cost (Figure 5).
Figure 5
There’s a lot of theory out in the industry today.
Going from a document-centric world to a datacentric world represents a huge jump for many
people. Most of the old ideas don’t translate.
We realize that you have a job to do and can’t
wait for technology to catch up with theory, which
is why we offer pragmatic change.That is the
benefit of the SmartPlant Enterprise approach. It is
flexible and offers many ways to integrate data.
n
n
n
Interjecting into the application itself or providing
a notification mechanism to warn the user of
potential change
S toring the change until the user is ready to
receive and absorb the change (an information
messaging bus for real-time data exchange is
a distinct liability here)
elivering the change (after applying data and
D
application integration, of course).
Optionally, you could enable the user to choose
what to retrieve now, what to retrieve at a later
date, and what to reject. This may sound like a lot
of effort, but it is necessary to provide true con-
currency of project execution tasks without the
anarchy of data changing “under the feet” of the
end-user (a recipe for disaster).
Composite applet implementation
By this point, we have understood the data flowing through our business, presented the data where
appropriate, consolidated the data to remove/
manage duplication, and harmonized language for
portability. We have also provided mechanisms to
Ultimately, “where you’re going to be” is revolutionary. But you can’t put revolution into a project
that’s executing. It just won’t happen, due to both
cultural and contractual issues.
So change has to be evolutionary. That’s why
Intergraph offers pragmatic steps along the way to
achieve this change.
Ewan Botterill is director of global business
development for information management
at Intergraph Process, Power & Marine.
transport the data between applications, as well as
to control the route and timing of distribution. Now
we know enough to go to the next integration tier.
SmartPlant Foundation
www.intergraph.com
Insight
31
Your Single
Engineering source
SmartPlant® Foundation
keeping it real
Integration and interoperability are continuous themes for business improvement. Indeed, research projects
indicate that their benefits yield up to an 8x improvement over that derived from automation alone. Intergraph’s
information management solution, SmartPlant® Foundation, can be the single source of access for the engineering
reality of your plant – its structure, tags, equipment, data, and documents. SmartPlant Foundation also offers
you flexible approaches to integration through modular, incremental deployment options.
Real-time decisions must be made based on reliable information. We know your engineering information is
profuse, complex, and dynamic. SmartPlant Foundation keeps it current, synchronized, readily accessible –
and keeps it real.
Learn more at www.intergraph.com/go/foundation.
Intergraph, the Intergraph logo, and SmartPlant are registered trademarks of Intergraph Corporation. ©2009 Intergraph Corporation. 11/09