Overview of PISTEP activities

Industry Issues

Companies that operate in the process industries are under ever-increasing pressure from:

competition - the need to drive down costs
timescales - the need to achieve results faster
licence to operate - to show that they have the ability to manage their assets safely

This is not just the agenda of the owner/operator, it applies to the whole industry along the whole supply chain.

Today's business environment means that companies are increasingly stretched to meet challenging financial targets. This leads to an emphasis on the efficiency of business processes and the elimination of costs.

To this end, companies need to form alliances between owner/operators, contractors and suppliers. Concurrent engineering becomes a necessity.

These trends rely on the efficient creation, use and management of information about the business and its assets.

Increasingly it is companies' information and knowledge assets that will differentiate the leaders from the also-rans, those that prosper from those that do not.

Process Plant Lifecycle

All process plants are characterised by a clear lifecycle that starts at conceptual design, goes through project activities such as engineering design, procurement, construction and commissioning and results in an operating plant.

After a number of years of service, the process plant will be decommissioned and demolished. During the operational life of the process plant, it is likely to undergo a number of re-engineering cycles, which takes us back to a new conceptual design, more engineering, procurement and construction and results in a re-vamped, commissioned plant.

The Supply Chain

The lifecycle involves many different organisations. In addition to the Owner/Operator, there are contractors for design, construction and maintenance, equipment suppliers and perhaps process licensors and partners. Above all, there are regulators and assurance bodies.

The Problems

The way in which the engineering information is currently handled leads to a number of problems.

Too much information is buried in the form of documents - this means that it is difficult to find, difficult to update and difficult to use. Too often, expensive computer systems are used as typewriters.

With information held as documents, quality becomes very difficult to maintain. There are no ways to automate the checking process and no way to maintain consistency.

When Computer systems are used, they are often incompatible, making it difficult and expensive to share information. This means that information cannot flow smoothly through the lifecycle of the asset, particularly where responsibility changes, for example from a design contractor to a fabricator, or from a project to the Operator.

Too often, information is created for the immediate task in hand, such as procurement, no thought is given to the lifecycle support of the asset.

The User Vision

Users need to be able to find information rapidly and manipulate it efficiently
Users want access to shared information from wherever they or the information are located
Users want a single, consistent interface to find and use information
Users want to access a consolidated information set and be unaware of where it is held or what software is used
Users want to see information in a way that suits them and their job as well as being able to customise views
Users need their information to be of an assured quality, so it is dependable

To realise the user vision, we need an information environment where all systems interoperate using common, shared information and where there are no barriers due to organisational boundaries or physical location.

Above all, the information must be credible, reliable and, most importantly, dependable.

The Solutions

There is no simple "one size fits all", "out of the box" solution. But there are some clear principles that will meet the user vision, address the problems that exist and deliver real value to your business.

Manage the data, not the documents. Store the information in structured data bases - make it computer interpretable and therefore easier to find and get the computer to do the work.

Use Product Data Management. PDM manages the information about a process plant asset, along with the configuration, the version and access control and the workflow.

Use International Standards. To enable sharing across businesses and systems and to ensure that the information lasts the whole lifecycle, it has to be independent of the systems we use. The only way to ensure this is to manage the information according to international standards, in particular ISO 10303 ("STEP") and ISO 15926.

The Prizes

Significant room for improvement exists to free users from the clerical drudgery of finding and reformatting information prior to them doing useful work with it. Some industry norms assert that 40% of time is spent finding information, 40% reformatting it and only 20% actually doing effective work with it. The rewards are huge if the norms can be reset.

Studies have shown that savings of up to 20% in design man-hours are possible by providing access to consistent, credible and correct information, shared throughout the project.

Savings of up to 3% of lifetime operating costs are possible from good lifecycle management of information.

Savings in handing over information from contractor to Owner/Operator on a major project can be over $1 million.

Above all, owner/operators can demonstrate their compliance with all necessary HSE requirements.

How PISTEP can help

PISTEP was formed to promote the development of international standards, in particular ISO 10303 or "STEP" in the process industries.

With members drawn from owner/operators, engineering contractors, software vendors and academic institutions, PISTEP brings together a range of requirements and views.

Companies that have been involved with PISTEP for a number of years have been able to become early adopters of the resulting standards and systems and have already started to realise benefits.

PISTEP offers members:

networking with other companies
access to consultants and training
a source of information and publications
an opportunity to gain experience by being involved in some of the standardisation activities