The intensity of change across the plant industries is unprecedented, from the impact of economic challenges, to new market opportunities in resource extraction and production. Responding to change will require new approaches in the use of technology and resources, and more advanced project management capabilities.

This paper looks at how current innovations in plant design software are enabling owner operators and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies to:

-Respond to market opportunities with new levels of efficiency and agility

-Reduce the costs of developing and modifying plant operations

-Reduce risk as capital project teams become larger and more dispersed

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Shift Handover is a critical business process. While plant start-up, shift handover and shutdown account for less than 5% of the time, these critical ‘take-off and landing’ periods account for 40% of plant incidents. But incidents are just the visible tip of the inefficiency iceberg. In this in-depth Business Paper, AVEVA examines the nature and extent of the shift handover problem and outline how an information management solution can be used to overcome it. By eliminating many of the discontinuities created by traditional manual, paper-based handover procedures, the potential business benefits are considerable:

Reduced downtime

Fewer incidents

Reduced operating costs

Improved compliance

Reduced operating risk

...in short, a safer and more productive asset

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As the global demand for energy increases, operators will take on
more complex and higher risk projects to exploit discovered
resources. They will seek to manage their risk by distributing it into
their engineering contractor supply chain and, as a result, EPCs will
be presented with compressed timescales, stricter safety
requirements and more complex engineering problems to solve.

Plant design systems are a business critical tool for EPCs and need to
play an important role by providing a platform for design efficiency
and project agility. Plant design solutions must be quick to deploy
and easy to use, and must help to improve design productivity and
quality. Time spent at the start of the project setting up software is
the most expensive time to lose on the project – software needs to
let the engineers engineer.

In this paper, AVEVA outlines how the future of plant design will see
greater levels of agility, productivity, efficiency and compliance for
project execution.

From 1955 to 1989, with what we term ‘Lean technology’, the Japanese carved out for themselves 25% of the global automotive market, largely from the market share of the US and Canadian producers, who began to adopt Lean principles and methods in the mid-1980s. It was at this point that the global construction market started to investigate the Lean approach.

Thirty years on, and the level of adoption has been slow in the construction market, with the AEC segment having provided the most success cases. Successful application of the techniques to the construction of large facilities is harder to find.

The wholesale incorporation of a Lean philosophy into the Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) company is not a small undertaking; all staff and systems need to share the same goals single-mindedly. This AVEVA business paper outlines what is required from the next generation of Plant Design products to make this step change, and outlines our insight on how to apply Lean principles to Plant Design.

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Process Safety and Compliance are universal issues across all the world’s plant industries and individual regulatory authorities are increasingly collaborating to share ideas and to normalise globally consistent, best-practice requirements. These authorities have recognised the potential of Information Management technologies for supporting safe and compliant operations and we can expect to see their use progressively being encouraged, expected and mandated as regulations advance. But the issue is not only one of maintaining regulatory compliance. The US Centre for Chemical Safety claims that an average offshore incident costs an Owner Operator $80 million, so there is a serious economic incentive involved as well.

This AVEVA business paper examines current capabilities, opportunities and likely future directions in the application of technology. For convenience, reference will be made to new offshore regulations emerging in the USA, as these are likely to set benchmarks for global regulatory standardisation.

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Arguably the problem that gives plant operations professionals most sleepless nights is that of inadequate asset information. In day-to-day operations this wastes valuable time and effort; in an emergency it can be a serious problem. This paper examines how recent advances in 3D laser surveying technology can contribute to bringing the ‘information monster’ under control, to transform it from a problem into a priceless asset.

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