Success Story

Piping Specification Digitization

Downstream Operator

Overview

Management of a large petrochemical owner operator, looking to grow through capital expansions, identified piping specification management as an enabling foundation to support materials management, procurement and warehousing, and operations and maintenance with the objective of reducing costs and risk through the lifecycle of their multiple projects and plants.


Challenges

The existing paper and spreadsheet corporate library contained a highly utilized group of 140 piping specifications and management identified the following risks and challenges with it:

• Specifications were not managed in a controlled database which created risk of errors and/or duplication in the creation of engineering codes and SAP material identifiers. Assumption was that thousands of errors existed, and this created the possible risk of failures that could result in safety incidents and/or the loss of assets.

• System had become highly labor intensive with each paper specification having to be manually created/updated, then reviewed and approved using dated and inefficient workflows.

• Inflated Projects costs – Pay EPC’s on each project to create specifications and then populate into 3D design tools. Maintenance and Engineering have to do walk downs to validate as-built status of the plant and the equipment.

• Limited integration with SAP which created duplication of data entry work while introducing risk of creating inaccurate and inconsistent data

• Limited reporting capabilities which could impact the timeliness and quality of decision making

• As the size of the corporate library grew the reporting and tracking of line class components was becoming unmanageable.

The concerns with their existing solution also created worries that Supply Chain, Procurement and Warehousing were likely being impacted by having to purchase and store products from multiple vendors while housing thousands of spare parts which in turn could be tying up millions of dollars in unoptimized inventory.


Solutions

The client engaged ReVisionz to analyze the situation, compare options and make a recommendation on a long term solution to manage and sustain its corporate piping specifications and catalogue solution.

Based on our domain knowledge and implementation experience, ReVisionz developed use cases, implementation and cost models that created comparisons and scoring against 3 possible solutions:

• Continue with current paper/spreadsheet solution with enhanced processes and workflows

• Develop an in-house software solution

• Buy “best in class” commercial off the shelf software solutions.

The recommended solution including ROI analysis, implementation and sustainment plans were developed in alignment and around our client’s 5 key business drivers:

• Total cost of ownership

• Re-Use of information

• Technical data integrity

• Maintainability

• Integration across business systems

In this case, the fit for purpose solution is a commercial software solution that houses all corporate wide line classes and catalogues in a single digital database that supports the plant lifecycle and “create once, use many” concept while enforcing QA/QC processes and technical data integrity. The chosen solution also offers outputs to multiple 3D design systems and integration with SAP.


Outcomes

Benefits Achieved:

• The clean up of duplicates and inconsistent specifications has resulted in a corporate library that now houses 126 of the most heavily used line classes, a reduction of 14 line classes.

• Staff have seen an order of magnitude improvement in accessibility, quality and reporting of the information.

• Projects have experienced timely and accurate turnaround of new specifications and catalog items, as well as rapid loading and availability for these, within the design tool platforms used, right through to procurement.

• Operations and maintenance has streamlined their process for the reference, requesting and technical integrity of items being put into RFQ’s and onto PO’s.

• Warehouse and plant stores have seen an improvement in shelf space management and easier physical item identification with the reduction in duplication being the main champion.

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Consolidating & Migrating Engineering Documents

ReVisionz defines, implements, and populates a single source of truth -reducing costs and enabling timely access to asset information.

Success Story: Large Pipeline Company

Capability: Engineering Document Management

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