Intergraph® has released SmartPlant® Fusion 2014, the latest version of its solution for EPC companies and plant operators to rapidly find, capture, organise, link and visualise large volumes of information through a simple web portal. As Intergraph notes, “trustworthy engineering data and documentation is essential to effective project delivery and safe, efficient operations. However, EPCs and owner operators struggle to manage large volumes of unstructured, unmanaged information – documents, drawings, models, lists and datasheets that exist in multiple formats and locations. This lack of control can lead to duplication, fragmentation and degradation of information integrity, and even its outright loss.
SmartPlant Fusion 2014 delivers several significant functionality enhancements for addressing those problems, including exponentially faster document loading; improved user experience and navigation; a reporting and charting engine with a number of out-of-the-box reports for document lists, tag lists, document status, tag-document relationships and more; improved integration with Leica TruView™ laser scans for more intuitive navigation; and multi-site capability. SmartPlant Fusion also provides interoperability with Intergraph’s template solutions for EPCs and owner operators. SmartPlant Fusion users can incrementally promote documents with their related tags into a fully managed environment within SmartPlant Enterprise or SmartPlant Enterprise for Owner Operators (SPO) with integrated tools, automated work processes, check-in/check-out, electronic sign-off, transmittals, management of change, and much more.
A recent survey of process industry professionals conducted by TechValidate, an independent research organization, in cooperation with Intergraph highlights the widespread challenges that owner operators and EPCs face when it comes to managing unstructured information (the survey characterises “unstructured information” as document-centric; unintelligent formats; poorly managed; undisciplined distribution and version control; high degree of duplication and outdated information).
Among the survey’s key findings:
- A high percentage of unstructured information exists in most organizations. Nearly half of the respondents (48%) say unstructured information represents at least 40% of their total facility information
- A vast amount of plant personnel time is spent finding and validating information. More than half of the respondents (52%) say they spend at least 20% of their total time searching for information. 7% say they spend between 60% and 80% of their time looking for information
- A significant majority of respondents say they lack confidence in their ability to find information to support emergency response, which impacts safety. Just 39% say they are completely confident they would be able to find information in a timely manner to support emergency response.
SmartPlant Fusion offers the fastest and smartest solution for gaining control of unstructured content. It deploys quickly, enabling users to establish links, extract intelligence and apply structure to unstructured documents and drawings.
Woodside Energy Business Improvement Manager Bill Van Butzelaar said, “The use of SmartPlant Fusion to capture 750,000 documents in record time and then integrate them into the Woodside standard systems has been a remarkable achievement. The cost to do this has been about 10% of what it would have been using alternative methods and being able to do it in eight months has been a phenomenal success for the company.”
Patrick Holcomb, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine’s Executive VP, Global Business Development and Marketing, said, “Intergraph initially developed SmartPlant Fusion as a solution to address brownfield legacy information acquisition, but now it is being applied to numerous other business challenges. For example, EPCs deal with huge volumes of unstructured, unintelligent information on revamp projects. SmartPlant Fusion helps EPCs manage the flood of in-bound documents from subcontractors and suppliers. This tool allows them to rapidly organise information into a structured handover package with tag-to-document cross-references. SmartPlant Fusion 2014 greatly extends the benefits of this solution. The user experience is enhanced, the functionality and reporting capabilities are extended and performance is dramatically improved.”
