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Helping manage unstructured information - Intergraph

Friday, February 19, 2016

Engineering software company Intergraph Process, Power & Marine (PP&M), is helping oil and gas companies manage unstructured information with its Intergraph SmartPlant Fusion solution.

Engineering software company Intergraph is helping oil and gas companies get a better understanding of their unstructured plant data with its SmartPlant Fusion software solution.

The software can be used to find, capture, organise and link large volumes of engineering data, providing a single point of access to information.

'It is common for plants or offshore platforms and projects to have their data in many different drawings, documents, models, lists and data sheets. These are all in different formats and usually scattered around in the organization on various locations and systems, which is very difficult to work with', says Sascha Antvogel, manager of global business development at Intergraph PP&M.

SmartPlant Fusion can be used by asset managers, maintenance managers, and engineering companies.

A recent survey conducted by Intergraph, executed together with TechValidate, has shown that, on average, 40 per cent of plant information is unstructured, Intergraph says. This leads to the people working on unstructured information spending over 20 per cent of their time validating information, Mr Antvogel says.

In the same survey conducted in the oil and gas and chemical sector, only 39 percent of respondents said they were completely confident they could find information in emergency cases.

Benefits

'The software enables people to make better decisions with more accurate information,' Mr Antvogel says.

'You can be less reliant on data stored in people's heads, and make the information accessible for the whole organization.'

Another useful SmartPlant Fusion feature is the capability to compare different documents, showing up where they differ. This enables users to easily differentiate between 'master' versions and duplicates. It is common for companies to end up with many different versions of the same document and not know which one they should be using.

SmartPlant Fusion also allows you to integrate Leica TruView HDS information created from laser scans taken of a facility. A user can search for a tag and see it in the TruView image, as well as search for all other documents and drawings that contain the same tag.

Photo realistic comparison can be done between the current condition of the facility in the TruView to identify the possible differences between the existing data and the current used documents. This enables the users to have the latest information available in all formats.

The SmartPlant Fusion software allows you to track the status of data and document completeness against a set of predefined criteria. When taking over a new asset, the owner operator can run all the documentation through SmartPlant® Fusion to identify if all the necessary documentation has been provided.

An example of an application of SmartPlant Fusion is one current client using the software to gather all the information about an asset to a single location, which can be made available to customers via a web portal.

Easy implementation

'Most companies already see the value of such a system, as trustworthy engineering data and documentation is essential to both effective project delivery and safe, efficient operations. The challenge is to convince the project managers to get started with building up the system,' Mr. Antvogel says.

'The easier a system is to build, the easier it is to persuade people to use it.'

'We see our clients dramatically reducing the time and effort required to find and validate engineering documents in only few months after implementation,' he says.

Associated Companies
» Intergraph

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