June
2016
43
HYDROCARBON
ENGINEERING
P
oorly managed engineering information could be
compromising safety and effectiveness in an
operational facility, or contributing to cost overruns
on capital projects. For this reason, operators in the
process industries must consider a move to the cloud to
remain competitive.
Unstructured information: second class
safety and increased costs
Access to trustworthy, integrated engineering data and
documentation is essential for both effective project
delivery and safe, efficient plant operations. However, a
surprising number of engineering, procurement and
construction (EPC) companies and plant owners still rely on
paper documents, drawings and datasheets that are
scattered around in various official and unofficial storage
locations – also known as ‘unstructured’ information.
The absence of a centralised information asset as a single
source of truth poses serious safety hazards for both EPCs
and asset owners. In a recent study
1
conducted by Intergraph,
in cooperation with TechValidate, nearly half of the survey
respondents from the process industries reported that 40%
or more of facility information is unstructured. A worrisome
figure when combined with the statistic that only 39% were
confident they could find the necessary information to
adequately respond to an emergency.
HEAD
IN
THE
CLOUDS
Kevin Holmes, Intergraph
®
Process, Power & Marine, UK,
discusses how the implementation of cloud technology in process
plants can help to improve safety and project productivity.
