Asset information management (AIM) offers significant benefits to highly engineered, asset-intensive facilities and networks. Accurate, accessible asset information improves performance and productivity, and also helps to reduce contractual, safety and financial risk.
The author: Anne-Marie Walters Global Marketing Director Processes & Operations, Bentley Systems
Assets commonly utilised within the chemical industry are unlike those found in other market segments due to their scale, complexity and life expectancy. In addition, asset information is typically held in and accessed from multiple enterprise systems, where it supports the many departments that ensure efficient and safe engineering, maintenance and operation. In the following, we will look at the importance of effectively managing change in asset information.
Crucial to effective AIM systems are robust capabilities associated with the management of change and context management to ensure the right information is provided to the right people. Throughout the lifecycle of a chemicals facility, information changes as assets are modified and without effective management of change, asset lifecycle information management (ALIM) is extremely difficult and costly. ALIM requires a system and processes to propagate changes across the many AIM systems and help chemicals facilities ensure regulatory compliance and achieve maximum operational efficiency. Within the chemical industry strict regulatory compliance and conformance is especially important with regard to the environment and the welfare of the general public. Consequently, all asset information must be kept current and correlate to related regulatory compliance requirements as well as other interrelated enterprise information. The ability to view all interrelated information in context adds extra value to an ALIM system and enables improved operations performance.
Categories of change
Over the considerable lifetime of an infrastructure asset, change – both within and without – is an inevitable and unavoidable fact of life. In other words, change is constant. It comes in all shapes and sizes and from many sources. It can be predictable or unexpected, manageable or catastrophic, beneficial or disastrous, significant or inconsequential, inevitable or avoidable. Unavoidable changes include those with a catastrophic and highly visible impact, such as changes resulting from natural disasters, sabotage and major accidents.
Change management is not simply about change prevention. Nor is it only about reacting to unexpected change. Moreover, effective change management is required to effectively and proactively leverage change to the benefit of the owner. There are three general categories of change – unexpected, predictable, and proactive. Each requires similar but varied views of information. Here are key capabilities you should expect from an effective change management system that can address all three categories. Unexpected events require critical change management capabilities for:
- Identifying what has changed and assessing the current state of the asset
- Understanding the impact of what has changed on the asset as a whole
- Determining the immediate actions required to mitigate the negative impacts
- Determining the actions required to recover from unexpected events
The impact of predictable changes and events (such as maintenance needs) can be mitigated by making preventative changes, given change management capabilities that support:
- Understanding the history of components and systems
- Identifying trends in the operational state of the asset, at both the component and system levels, that may assist in predicting future operational states
- Prioritising preventative actions to maximise the return on operational and capital expenditures
- Assessing the effectiveness of preventative actions
An effective path to proactive changes (such as debottlenecking and process improvements) can be enabled by change management capabilities that provide robust change impact analysis by:
- Identifying opportunities for asset improvements
- Assessing the ramifications of proposed changes
- Eliminating unintended consequences
- Measuring the impact of completed changes
Added value of context management
Asset information is required by stakeholders throughout an organisation. A change in one component might affect many other information elements such as documents, distribution orders or entire projects. This related information commonly resides in disparate enterprise systems, and the ability to view it all in context ensures that accurate information is available for optimal decision making.
AssetWise from Bentley is a system of servers and services that provides asset lifecycle information management (ALIM) for owner- operators of highly engineered assets. It improves engineering information integrity and operational efficiency while streamlining business processes associated with sustaining infrastructure assets over their lifecycles. AssetWise models contextual relationships between all forms of engineering and interrelated information, providing owner-operators with robust change effects analyses and information required to effectively plan and implement plant modifications and maintenance. AssetWise includes additional features and advantages such as certified configuration management (CM) capabilities that ensure information is uniquely identified, accurate, and trustworthy. There is an ability to model and analyse regulatory and business requirements throughout the lifecycle of change for improved execution. Document management and control ensures rapid, secure retrieval of documents by authorised users. Furthermore, structured and proactive records management leads to improved accountability.
AssetWise strengthens the engineering and commercial information management capabilities of owner-operators with an integrated system that improves return on assets (ROA) by increasing the productive life of the asset, minimises business risk through better access to accurate information and enhances operational performance by increasing infrastructure availability.
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