From immediate cost-savings to achieving net zero

By mid-2022, an oleochemical plant in the Netherlands, was facing a seven-fold increase in energy costs. A leader in hydrogenating vegetable oils into solids for use in food, cosmetics and countless other everyday products, the hydrogenation process depends on steam, steam that is made using natural gas.

Unable to pass on the increased price pressures, they asked Royal HaskoningDHV if it could identify cost-cutting opportunities. The company was doubtful – its hydrogenation process was already felt to be pretty efficient – but it doesn’t hurt to ask the question amid a global energy crisis. Bart Vander Velpen, Director Net Zero Industry at Royal HaskoningDHV; “They were astonished that, despite their already high efficiency, we were able to identify a number of issues that they had not been able to see. All by using data”.

> Strategic versus tactical Asset Management Royal HaskoningDHV, a long-established engineering consultancy, is fast evolving into an engineering and Asset Management specialist. Where once its role ended when an engineering project concluded, its Asset Management team can show you how to make further improvements on an ongoing strategic basis. The driver? Data. “We support the creation of professional Asset Management organisations that can use data to set strategic goals for their assets and improve their work processes, structures, responsibilities and accountability year after year,” explains Michelle Ham-Oudkerk, Associate Director Asset Management Consultants at Royal HaskoningDHV.

In essence, where an engineering team will focus on a single issue, Royal HaskoningDHV’s Asset Management specialists employ data to consider the complete picture over a longer timeframe. By securing, analysing and using data to make the best short, medium and longterm decisions, they can help the client to future-proof its assets – its physical resources – and make both strategic and everyday decisions that weigh performance, costs, risks and so on both immediately and down the line. “Having access to data enables you to keep these in balance and to make the right decisions at the right moments,” says Ham-Oudkerk.

> Deep insight into how the organisation really works Asset Management’s integrated approach reflects the fact that today, through data, we can get a far better insight into all the ways in which processes, work structures, responsibilities, sign-offs, lifecycles, life expectancy, maintenance schedules and so on overlap with and impact on each other. And then there are strategic issues like CO2 reduction, managing energy costs, circularity, adapting to a shrinking labour pool and more. The implication here is that in managing your assets, you shouldn’t just think about CO2 reduction, say, but also consider things like circularity, extending a maintenance period, automation or robotisation and when to replace an ageing asset.

This is the difference between traditional maintenance management and the data-driven Asset Management that Royal HaskoningDHV advocates. Ham-Oudkerk; “An Asset Management policy should apply to every aspect of the work floor, and everything you do should align with the organisation’s strategy and top management goals”.

She gives the example of a company that wants to end its reliance on gas by 2030. This will involve switching to renewables. In the meantime, at local level, a unit has plans to move from oil to gas, because gas is cleaner than oil. The problem with this from a strategic Asset Management perspective, is that such a move now could prove to be a waste if shortly after the unit has to re-engineer its operations to run on renewables. Multiply this one example across dozens or even hundreds of projects and maintenance cycles and you get an idea of the complexity.

And this is where data comes in. Through dashboards at tactical and strategic level, Royal HaskoningDHV helps organisations to align individual decisions with the wider strategic Asset Management goal. Basically, it helps individual teams avoid making choices that, unintentionally, undermine or complicate the wider strategic ambition.

> What gets measured gets improved

So what of the oleochemical plant? Back to Bart Vander Velpen; “We began as we always do by collecting data, in this case to understand their steam use –when, how much, continuously or intermittently – and the first thing we saw was that they were generating more steam than they were using”. And not just a little more, either. Initially, Royal HaskoningDHV expected they could reduce their energy needs by 9% a year. In reality, the team found a potential 14% reduction. “This was just the