Greg Pada, vice president, head of engineering business at AVEVA. (Image source: AVEVA)
Greg Pada, vice president, head of engineering business at AVEVA, writes about overcoming business complexities with collaborative, data-centric engineering and design industrial cooperation. He says that this de-risks design and build processes to unlock value and sustainability gains for capital projects.
Against a complex backdrop of supply chain issues, geopolitical tensions and environmental crises, engineers are being tasked with designing and building a sustainable future for generations to come. They must execute capital projects within razor-thin margins, prevent cost overruns, adhere to tight schedules, and navigate intricate workflows. These challenges face brownfield and new projects alike and must increasingly factor in newer challenges such as lower-carbon processes and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Challenges
Digital transformation technologies, particularly industrial intelligence tools, can help. Within an integrated, intelligent ecosystem, internal and external teams can come together to transform value chains into agile, profitable and sustainable networks. Across geographies, industrial teams are already collaborating on common problems with colleagues from within their companies and from partner organisations.
However, they must frequently contend with data silos and a diverse mix of tools and disciplines. An open, agnostic digital backbone can help break down these barriers. Such a connected ecosystem enhances real-time collaboration and builds communities that can access the same intelligence to build solutions for complex, multifaceted problems together. With increased transparency, the design, build and handover stages of capital projects become less risky. In turn, businesses can reduce time to market for new products.
Secure data sharing is the game-changer. In a connected industrial ecosystem, engineering data becomes accessible to teams at all levels, regardless of where they are based—often with tools such as the digital twin.
Digital twins
While maintaining security and confidentiality requirements, these united workflows foster a flexible, collaborative work culture and help attract new talent. Business stakeholders likewise gain timely access to the information they need, promoting efficient collaboration. Several industrial enterprises are realising tangible benefits from just such connected, data-centric approaches to design and build.
Engineering processes become simpler. Teams at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the US-based energy innovator, work to deliver clean, limitless power to the world. By sharing essential 1D, 2D, and 3D engineering data in the cloud, remote and hybrid teams can design and build simultaneously. As they develop data models, they can add complex details specifying how each component relates to the next.
This has improved accuracy, reduced re-work and slashed project times, while eliminating IT overheads. Real-time collaboration helps optimise industrial operations. Yinson Production helps the energy services industry improve safety and sustainability with its autonomous floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) units. The maritime contractor is involved across the entire project lifecycle, from engineering and build to operations and decommissioning.
Examples
As business has expanded, Yinson has required more control of its data and the ability to structure it better. Using a cloud-based data management system together with a digital engineering suite, Yinson teams can now collaborate around real-time data dashboards and view operational assets in context. This speeds up maintenance and execution, all within the same solution. With the software, greenhouse gas emissions are now monitored daily instead of monthly, putting Yinson on track for reductions of 30% by 2030.
As we can see, connected data solutions offer the competitive advantages needed amid an increasingly complex engineering landscape. They can help avoid the time and budget delays that are common to capital projects, while improving project sustainability.
Accenture estimates that 95% of all billion-dollar projects are delivered late or over budget.
EPC 4.0—digital transformation of EPC companies using industry 4.0 technologies—fosters innovation and empowers teams to deliver projects on time and within budget.
Their benefits encompass cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and innovation, all of which are vital for the growth and prosperity of EPCs and owner operators in today’s competitive market. As markets continue to grow more challenging, building a collaborative environment to support data-centric engineering and design teams is the way forward for simplified engineering.
In short, enabling collaboration across the industrial ecosystem can transform business outcomes for people, profit and planet.
