Bentley Systems, Incorporated is setting the pace for integrated PDS data. Leveraging the benefits of ISO 15926 standardisation, the company is developing new products for serving and modeling this information across the enterprise – supporting sustainable infrastructure. V1 Energy editor Jeff Thurston spoke with Ann-Marie Walters of Bentley Systems, Incorporated to learn about these new advancements and how they are realising the benefits of increased interoperability, reducing costs, increasing collaboration and improving design capabilities for the energy lifecycle.
V1 Energy: What is ProjectWise PDx Dynamic Review Service?
AW: It is software that logs directly into a PDS database and extracts the graphics and data into a neutral data format (ISO 15926) such that a third party system can read this neutral format and reuse this information. PDS data is held within a PDS project database with a proprietary combination of DGN for graphics and ORACLE tables for data and reference to graphics. PDx Review extracts all this information into a common neutral format.
Prior to this the only way to extract PDS data from a proprietary database is via a saved DRV file snapshot, which is limited to 30 properties per item and the properties are controlled by the PDS system. So consumers of PDS data have been limited to seeing only what the PDS administrator allows and a small subset of the data at that. Such a tool has been used for controlled design reviews in say Bentley Navigator, Navisworks, SmartPlot or SmartPlant Review but not supported further design activity or handover of the full data model for operations. PDx Review extracts ALL the PDS data into the neutral ISO 15926 standard, thereby opening up all the data for access to all users.
V1 Energy: What prompted the shift toward ISO 15926 and this open approach to data?
AW: Many years ago the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster occurred in the North Sea. Industry discovered that Piper Alpha had no up to date records or documents for the equipment or even the people on the platform when it went down. They could not be sure of the source of the disaster or even be sure who was lost! Thus it took a long while to figure out what happened during that event. The platform was being maintained by a number of contractors, and much of the information for the platform it was learned, was with these third party contractors held in different formats, with varying consistency and accuracy, and even different naming conventions.
Industry decided to act to standardise formats and information. Shell was working on such a common data model, the Epicentre data model, for handling data across the lifecycle of it’s assets. Shell offered it to the industry and Epicentre became the foundation for ISO 15926 – the ISO standard for “Industrial automation systems and integration—Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities”. Through the EPITSLE group the standard was developed throughout the 90’s and into the 21st century.
Oil prices dropped off for a while in the 90’s, so progress was slow but when the price of oil rose, business started to demand faster projects and more efficient data handover into operations, meaning greater collaboration between contractors and owners, and demands on IT systems to effectively share information.
Bentley, as a vendor of IT systems, saw the demand for software supporting this need and with our long experience of ISO 15926 (from delivering engineering data warehouses managing lifecycle data), we knew the value this standard could deliver not to only to use to achieve interoperability between our many products but also to the industry to support collaboration. We are heavily investing in this standard, and are developing and delivering products actually based on the ISO15926 data standard as the core data model. Products like ProjectWise PDx Dynamic review service and our OpenPlant suite of products, the next generation of plant design tools that uniquely use an open, non proprietary data model as its core.
The wide spread adoption of ISO 15926 is fairly new. It is easier to apply this approach to new sites with up to date, electronic data compared to converting older, possibly paper based data, but over time data conversion will become easier and the management of information resources will achieve higher levels of efficiency.
V1 Energy: This creates a greater opportunity for leveraging other tools and data as well doesn’t it?
AW: If the software can read ISO 15926 then that is true. It can be used across different design systems and into operations to populate maintenance systems. There are a lot existing 3D PDS models out there. PDx Review enables that information to be unlocked and used across a wide range of companies and people, for example, revamping an existing plant, reusing a design on another project, opening up this information to maintenance and operations people for safety and operational reviews, perhaps for the first time ever.
V1 Energy: Does this have other advantages for Bentley products?
AW: As mentioned above, we have a lot of experience in ISO15926 due to a team we acquired a few year’s ago in ESSI. BP, Chevron and others worked with ESSI to develop an engineering data warehouse based on ISO 15926 in the 90s, to enable better data handover from their contractors. For years these companies have basically based their handover approach on this standard, thereby achieving benefits from this approach, and enabling other companies to learn from this experience and benefit immediately today. This gave us years of experience in writing and deploying ISO 15926 related software, which we are using today beyond information handover and to enabling true interoperability between disparate applications.
As we acquired other organisations like Design Power, with PlantWise a conceptual design product, REI with STAAD the leading structural analysis product, and Rebis with AutoPlant the leading plant design product based on AutoCAD, we needed a simpler way to integrate all these products and their data, with our existing portfolio of products and between these applications. In other words we faced the exact same challenge as a company using such world leading products and trying to enable collaboration between it’s engineers.
We made a statement two years ago that regardless of whether industry got behind ISO 15926 or not, we were going to use it because is the most effective means to integrate all of the these (and many other) products together in a truly interoperable and effective environment.
V1 Energy: Does this result in advantages for other companies?
AW: We have a number of companies like Bechtel and CH2MHill who use many different kinds of tools in their operating environments and they see a number of benefits in standardising around ISO15926 because of the advantages to collaborate and integrate data and information. Bechtel is replacing their in-house ‘data broker environment’ with ISO 15926 based tools.
V1 Energy: How does this relate to and help in the case of 2D and 3D information?
AW: The standard handles both 2D and 3D data and can bring existing 2D and 3D models (such as PDS models) into the most modern of design environments, as well as enabling interoperability between disparate systems such as PDMS and AutoPLANT. Companies can choose which design tools works best for them and be sure that can interoperate and collaborate with other companies as well as handover to their clients (the owners) a full set of data about their assets in a non proprietary format. And they can handover data rather than 2D and 3D models which their owners might not have a need for.
V1 Energy: Can you tell me about the Bentley OpenPlant Modeler?
AW: OpenPlant Modeler is the next product in our OpenPlant suite of products due to be released this year. We announced our OpenStrategy at the beginning of 2008 to build a suite of design and analysis products using open data models without proprietary formats. We released the first product, OpenPlant PowerPID at the end of 2008.
This is the first and only P&ID creation package built on an open data model and is also one of the most productive P&ID tools on the market as it also uses the most modern of graphics engines and build on years of experience of delivering such products through AutoPLANT and PlantSpace, our existing design tools. Software such as AutoPLANT, PlantSpace and STAAD run their own proprietary formats which are integrated through plug-ins, OpenPlant PowerPID and OpenPlant Modeler ( the next generation 3D plant design product) take existing plant design and analysis systems to the next stage incorporating interoperability functionality at the center of the products and promising to deliver a step change in engineers’ and project team productivity across the design, build operate phases of an asset.
V1 Energy: So OpenPlant Modeler is a new 3D plant design tool?
AW: Exactly. We debuted it in Houston recently.
V1 Energy: How do the Plant and Geospatial worlds connect, or not?
AW: They do connect. ISO 15926 is one of the most mature standards existing today, especially in terms of breadth and depth of coverage. Its probably more advanced in terms of maturity compared to geographic based tools because it can support a new design tool like OpenPlant Modeler to be developed. By comparison, GIS related standards usually focus on integrating information between different systems, and are not yet used as a basis for software products. In Bentley we have worked hard to develop platforms that can reference both geographic and relational information such as that found in plant design tools. In other words with our plant (and for that matter building or civil) design models it is easy to locate them in the real world on the surface of the earth.
V1 Energy: Can you give me an example of where the combination of geographic and relational information and interoperability using standards has shown benefit?
AW: Indeed, I have an excellent example – not plant related but I think you’ll see the connection. Bentley and other vendors teamed with Homeland Security on a pilot project to bring together information to address a security threat at Newark airport. The pilot and subsequent demonstration involved, the integration of Google Earth satellite information with wide area maps of the broad area(where the threat was deemed to exist), to detailed maps of the precise vicinity, down to the models of the airport infrastructure and detailed floor plans where the actual threat was deemed to be happening.
This demonstration used a combination of standard and proprietary file formats to share data. Going beyond this we are now openly sharing file and data formats with Autodesk (including Revit) the two largest CAD vendors working together – to take work of this type out of a pilot and into the commercially available world. This will certainly go on to include many other tools, products and data standards. Bentley and Autodesk are committed to interoperability and open data standards and now we gladly see Autodesk beginning to express interest in ISO15926 and working with us on this standard.
V1 Energy: Do you think people have moved beyond locked in data formats?
AW: Absolutely. Our work with Autodesk is proof of this, but also our work in the area of ISO15926. Customer’s today do not want to be locked into one product, and many in the Plant field use two or more tools. We’ve moved beyond the data format arguments and now people are tending to focus on getting work done effectively, efficiently and with the highest quality with whatever tools are necessary.
V1 Energy: Why do you think ISO 15926 has been so successful?
AW: It came from the industry to begin with, thus was originating with Plant needs in mind. It is very flexible and differs in some respects from other ISO standards. The format structure is combined with a strong open architecture and includes flexible underlying libraries. Pragmatically, the reference library can be used in a flexible way to adapt and change as the asset adapts and changes over its life.
V1 Energy: Sustaining Infrastructure is a core theme for Bentley, what are you seeing out there to support this idea?
AW: Absolutely. Our Year in Infrastructure Project book (which we produce every year) includes an incredible range and variety of projects that our users are currently involved with. The Yearbook is a summary of our BE Inspired Awards Competition into which users nominate their greenest and most sustainable projects. Among others categories, I oversee the jury which chooses the winner in the ‘Power Generation’ category.
In this category, we had the range of power generation projects submitted, from wind projects, hydro related projects, solar power cells, nuclear power plant and clean coal technologies. In addition into our Water Treatment category some of the finest examples of ecologically sensitive engineering designs that I have ever seen have been submitted. Our buildings categories has includes several examples of Green Cities and buildings, such as Dubai Sustainable City.
In the plant world, most infrastructure was designed and built quite a while ago using PDS and many sites are under pressure to install ‘Clean Technology’ in order to remain sustainable. Our PDx Review Service, enables these projects to get a fast start using their existing design information and to make these revamps and plant changes easier. as often legislation is involved and speed is important. PDx Review enables these projects to be estimated and assessed for changes with less risk and in less time, which to date has been so much harder to do where integration and extraction was not possible.
V1 Energy: How does all of this relate to paper? Are we moving into true 3D digital modeling now?
AW: A lot of people still work on paper and that is because their data is sitting in databases and cannot be connected to, thereby enabling it. Our approach is to enable that information, making it available for use through higher levels of interoperability.
In many cases the need to have data in a certain proprietary format has resulted in a situation where the data has become stranded. Proprietary formats necessitate the need to have available systems and that trained staff and engineer’s able to use and extract data often on paper for everyone else. As a result data is lost and rarely kept up to date.
Open formats solve these problems, the data lasts as long as the asset itself and not the system that created it. In addition, increasing collaboration between companies using different 3D modelling tools as standard nowadays, also supports new modeling approaches – like OpenPlant Modeler. Thus is is reasonable to say that we are moving toward higher level digital models, but not with higher complexity. The barriers are being reduced thereby enabling more sharing and access.
V1 Energy: What about training and education?
AW: We are seeing that while people like classroom training, travel restrictions are impacting their budgets for this. So we have developed online training and distance learning. We have invested in high powered servers and modern, internet based technologies, to enable our experienced trainers to provide learning to people through a virtual classroom. We even do our company training through this environment which has reduced our travel costs significantly and increased our learning hours.. We are seeing a huge uptake in this education provided in this way this year. We offer a range of courses ranging from free two hour taster sessions to full five day classes.
V1 Energy: Are you involved in simulated construction as well?
AW: Last year we acquired a company called CommonPoint that had a product called ConstructSIM. This product is a 3D based review and planning tool designed specifically for the construction environment. It brings together project plans, engineering models, delivery schedules, fabrication requirements – everything required for construction – into a virtual 3D model that is generated on the fly so detailed construction planning can be carried and actual worked monitored and automatically reported on.
It provides an accurate and real picture of where construction is at so problems can be avoided and unnecessary delays eliminated. People can see in 3D what is happening as the model proceeds during use. Planning can be done at the shift level, for example, and it produces a series of ‘work instructions’ for use on the work site. We demonstrated ConstructSim interoperating with our own design tools at at DaratechPlant in Houston recently.
V1 Energy: What about the inclusion of construction safety?
AW: We have engaged Jim Porter (recently retired Chief Engineer of Dupont and a world renowned expert in process plant safety) to guide us in building safe working practises into our products. He is pulling together a team of experts to be our advisory panel for these developments ensuring we cover every aspect required in a pragmatic and usable way. For example, the software should be able to recognize where scaffolding or crane work is involved and when or if people should be working underneath and pro-actively warn of or prohibit unsafe situations occurring. Building into the software materials and equipment safety requirements, so that as well as a work package being produced, the safety instructions are produced as well. We are just beginning to work on this and ideas are flowing in. It’s exciting times here in Bentley!
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Anne-Marie Walters is Global Marketing Director for Bentley Systems, Incorporated
