Safety Drives Digital Plant Upgrade, Says Aveva

Aveva’s new business paper examines how 3D laser surveying technology can transform brownfield asset information.

Aveva announced its publication of a new business paper, Seeing Through the Fog, describing how recent advances in both 3D laser surveying and Information Management technology combine to enable the capture and use of an accurate digital counterpart of a brownfield plant. It explains how owner operators of existing facilities can now take advantage of the kind of "digital plant" information asset created in new-build projects.

“A third of plant information is typically out of date within five years, but users may not know which third, so it is easy to see how this can compromise plant safety for Owner Operators,” said Bruce Douglas, Senior Vice-President, EDS Strategy and Marketing, Aveva. “The inability to share trustworthy information easily across a site not only hampers normal operations, it makes it difficult to find vital information rapidly when responding to an incident.”

Whether a plant is new or old, owner operators need rapid access to comprehensive and reliable information. One essential element of this is accurate knowledge of the true as-operating condition of the plant. Laser surveying offers a rapid, non-invasive and affordable means of creating accurate and detailed 3D representation of brownfield assets. The business paper discusses the capture of the as-operating asset using 3D laser scanning and how technology can then add intelligence to the scan and link 3D objects to their associated information in many other sources.

“Asset information exists in a variety of incompatible forms,” added Dave Coppin, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Solutions, Aveva. “Operations personnel waste considerable effort in finding and verifying the necessary information for essential tasks. In an emergency, this can be critical. Information management technology now provides the solution to this problem, but it cannot create information where none exists. That is the power of laser scanning; now it becomes practical and affordable to capture the as-operating asset and build up a ‘digital plant’ information asset. Safety and operational excellence are the primary drivers for doing this, but the practical benefits cover every aspect of plant operations.”

The paper further examines how, by going beyond simply visualizing data, laser scan models can also be used for purposes such as determining accessibility or space constraints when performing risk assessments or the planning of major maintenance tasks.

www.aveva.com