Industrial sectors are fast gaining ground in the drive towards digitalisation. Many companies are implementing intelligent data management systems, engineering data warehouses and maturing their culture to become data-centric. To achieve maximum digital transformation, leading companies must prioritise these initiatives on the cloud.
There is no doubt that a company that is focused on making data-driven decisions will see performance improvements across both capital projects and operations. But without the cloud the same old challenges of siloed teams, ineffective decision-making, cumbersome and incomplete handovers—not to mention costly mistakes and schedule overruns—are likely to persist.
Transitioning data to the cloud creates a true engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) 4.0 approach by joining the dots between engineering data, process simulation, project execution and people—the heart of a world-leading digital twin.
It connects geographically dispersed teams, including the EPC, owner and third-party vendors—and facilitates connected, faster decision-making based on live, accurate data from across every aspect of the project. By aligning everyone around a single secure source of trusted, standardised data, deeper insights can be extracted to drive better-informed project and operational decisions.
Faster innovation
A shared cloud environment enables data to be rapidly and securely transferred between project teams and disciplines and seamlessly handed over to operations. In the cloud, teams and disciplines can slice and dice a live feed of accurate data exactly as and when they need to. With easy access to information and teams connected on the cloud, collaboration becomes effortless and breeds innovation.
Larger ecosystems
With teams increasingly working remotely, a cloud-hosted data system is the answer for ensuring all project team members remain connected, informed and on-track. It can be easily scaled-up and down to accommodate global contractors, vendors, and EPC and owner operator teams. This not only ensures engineering data is consistently shared but also improves project transparency to reduce risk in later project phases including procurement, construction, handover and startup.
Flexible resources
With an EPC 4.0 cloud deployment, teams are no longer confined to an on-premise system; they can be located anywhere in the world. This opens up a pool of global resources that ensures your next capital or maintenance project is delivered by the people with the exact skills, experience and rates that meet your requirements.
Economies of scale
Highly visual dashboards provide EPCs and owner-operators oversight across one or more capital project(s) simultaneously. They gain end-to-end control over the entire project and can use these insights to identify opportunities to negotiate more robust and advantageous agreements with vendors and contractors across their portfolio.
The benefits are clear. Capital project teams can achieve a 30pc increase in engineering efficiency, and a minimum of 15pc on the total installed cost of their projects. Extending the approach into the execution phase, teams can expect to shave months off the project schedule, cut equipment catalogue specification time by 30pc, optimise material management and reduce overall field labour costs by an average of 10pc.
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*Amish Sabharwal is executive vice president, engineering, at AVEVA.
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