Bringing the Benefits of Technology to Capital Projects The Role Of ISO 15926 In Strategic Asset Lifecycle Information Management Trend to Increasing Information Needs in Capital Asset Intensive Facilities Asset Lifecycle Information Management is becoming increasingly important to the design, construction, commissioning, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of capital asset intensive facilities. Factors driving the trend towards an increase in the depth and coverage of information include: Improving ROA and access to capital Global competition and reducing risk Increasing complexity and sophistication of new assets Changing workforce demographics Higher health, safety and environmental awareness and regulation Improving asset availability and reliability Information creation, distribution, management, retrieval and application are now a substantial part of the cost base for every organization in the capital project value chain. From Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and Suppliers, through Engineering, Procurement and Construction companies (EPCs) and their subcontractors, to Owner Operators (OOs) and their service providers.
Costs of Information Management The size and complexity of today’s capital projects, coupled with the degree of inter and intra company collaboration required for successful project execution, has elevated information management to an area of strategic importance. The result of increasing information requirements is a deluge of data and documentation that is making any single piece of information much more difficult to find. Information management practices today are inefficient and ineffective, repetitively creating and recreating local, non-reusable information using solutions that are not interoperable. Each group involved with the design, manufacture, construction, maintenance and operation of assets, independently defines and develops their own information requirements. This involves substantial duplication of information, resources, and effort. In addition, separate information requirements cause even further delays and costs when the data must be shared, because each group must go through the process of defining, collecting, and often repurposing the data before they can reuse it. This lack of complete and accurate information being available at the right place at the right time results in businesses: Taking longer to bring products and services to market Consuming more resources and incurring more costs Forfeiting asset reliability Creating health, safety and environmental issues.
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Access to Relevant and Precise Information is Key to Asset Lifecycle Information Management Information Relevancy Today’s skilled workers need immediate access to diverse information from enormous libraries in order to solve the issues they encounter on a daily basis. The optimal solution finds and retrieves exactly the information required, no more and no less. Currently, specific information is buried and hidden within exorbitant amounts of non-relevant information. Provided information must be relevant, accurate and concise.
Information Precision Pervasive automation of information exchange and information management requires precise, agreed meanings for engineering data. The meaning of a term and corresponding value in one system must carry over to another system, with all of the technical nuance implied in its original specification. If the meaning of the data changes, even slightly, in conversion from one system to another, the value of the information is reduced and the potential for design errors, additional build costs, regulatory mismatch, and health and safety impacts increases. Information must be cohesive, complete, and consistent.
Information Availability There is still a large gap between what most information systems can provide and what users need and expect. Current legacy information systems cannot address these issues due to structural limitations and the lack of consistent information categorization. Getting accurate, reliable and consistently categorized information into these systems in a timely manner provides immediate and substantial benefits for the users and businesses that rely on them. Information must be current, correct, and available.
Why ISO 15926 Satisfies the Key Asset Lifecycle Information Management Issues ISO 15926 is the International Standards Organization’s standard for capital equipment and related information and is designed specifically to address these asset information management issues. Using the ISO 15926 standard for information exchange allows: Use of reference data defining standard terms with precise meanings Accurate expression of relationships between data Retention and query of the full lifecycle history of the data Exchange of structured data in a standard format with a standard protocol Automatic collation from multiple external sources on demand Freedom from the need to identify, map and transform between applications Definition of deliverables suitable for inclusion in contract language.
Conclusion ISO 15926 addresses the key business issues for asset information through a well-developed and robust technical infrastructure. The ISO 15926 framework allows information to be created once, managed between organizations and across systems, and made available to all authorized users as required to improve timely decision making. Utilizing IS0 15926 enables organizations to meet their asset information requirements while reducing the costs associated with defining, collecting, transforming, deploying and sustaining this information over the lifecycle of assets and facilities.
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