Technology helps deliver a smoother handoff

The emergence of 3D CAD systems has turned operational design into a multicolored, multidimensional landscape. To meet these needs, suppliers have come up with a wide array of tools to keep all of that data in order and accessible.

By Roberto Michel February 25, 2015

The emergence of 3D CAD systems has turned operational design into a multicolored, multidimensional landscape. It also requires a new approach to both supporting this new technology and integrating legacy data from 2D CAD as well as paper systems. To meet these needs, suppliers have come up with a wide array of tools to keep all of that data in order and accessible.

For example, Bentley Systems’ ProjectWise is a project information and workflow solution used by EPCs, while for owner/operators, Bentley’s eB Information Manager supports revision control for asset data. The company also came up with an open, portable format called i-models for collaborating around CAD and non-CAD data.

According to John Sanins, senior director of solutions management for Bentley Systems, i-models are like a PDF for engineering data.

QGC has made use of Bentley’s information management software to improve handoffs for its Queensland Curtis LNG project, a large facility that turns coal-seam gas into LNG. In particular, according to Sanins, QGC uses Bentley’s i-models as a central component of its data warehouse for viewing and sharing engineering data, while using Bentley’s eB Information Manager and Data Quality Server to consolidate and maintain asset information in a data warehouse used by its operations and production group.

The LNG facility, which was set to start producing at the close of 2014, is massive, having close to 700,000 pieces of equipment, four gas processing plants, four water treatment plants, and a pipeline network.

A project on this scale calls for efficiency in how data is transferred and maintained. "The challenge in industry is not only consolidating and normalizing data from engineering and getting it into a central data warehouse, but also having mechanisms to easily keep that data up to date," Sanins said.

Greg Dee, president of Hubhead Corp., said his company’s NRX AssetHub supports visibility into the progress of the data build through reporting tools that convey how complete the build is on a particular class of parts or equipment. "We are a data editor and visualization tool that gets the data ready to load into an enterprise asset management (EAM) solution," Dee said.

If key pieces of supporting information, such as serial numbers or maintenance plans, are missing, the solution reflects that through a score. "These features allow you to make sure that when you need the data to be ready for operations, it will be ready," said Dee.

SAP, which offers EAM software, expanded into the asset data collaboration arena in late 2011 when it acquired Right Hemisphere’s 3D visualization technologies. According to Mark Pyatt, a senior director for SAP who leads its operational integrity initiative for oil and gas, the solution set now is called SAP Visual Enterprise, and can be used to visualize engineering data and associate data such as piping and instrumentation diagrams with the views, "It really consolidates all of your information for operational simplification," said Pyatt.

– Roberto Michel is a freelance writer and editor with more than 20 years experience as an editor with business-to-business publications.

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Original content can be found at Oil and Gas Engineering.