INTEROPERABILITY IN DESIGN OF INDUSTRIAL PLANT

Introduction

Advancing interoperability is a recognized global opportunity. More than one study (see i.e. "Cost Analysis of
Inadequate Interoperability in the U.S. Capital Facilities Industry") have highlight the possibility to reduce cost
in design life cycle not only for Industrial Plants. Despite years of effort an adequate level of interoperability
exchanging models data in not achieved yet. The cause of this are various: information security and emerging
economies, industry's fragmentation and slow adoption of new technologies concur at the problem.

Fig. 1 - Typical Industry Bubble Problem: Snapshot of Europes Manufacturing&Process Plant Overlapping
Engineering Data Standards (USPI-The Netherlands)
This poster presents an overview of current activities for advancing interoperability in design of industrial
plants, presenting a dedicated case study on a particular case involving a major Plant design software house
and summarizing the experience done by Marson 3D and Eleo2 Company.

State of art

What is a definition of interoperability in design of industrial plant? From NIST above mentioned "information
need only be entered into electronic systems once, and then it is available to all stakeholders instantaneously
through information technology networks on an as-needed basis. This simple point of view can be easily
implemented with a common database. Yes, but inside a dream. In fact, due to different program languages,
different need in detailed operation and accepted standards not totally defined, interoperability is incomplete

for all the facility life cycle phases. For a total interoperability we need that "companies in the process
industries shall be able to share and/or exchange electronically the information needed to design, build,
operate and maintain process and power plants using internationally accepted standards".
At today there are some application that present a good integration, most of time held by the same software
house. Some standard has been developed and currently utilized such as CIS/2 and PCF std. AISC have
announced that in the long term the IFC std will satisfy the needs of structural steel industry. But it is one
specific sector only. Interoperability include all the division involved in facility life cycle phases that include,
not limited to, electrical and instrumentation, maintenance and operation. This last point is critical: all the
effort have to be done trying to leave data usable downstream of the design phases.

Tecnocity case study: from survey to construction

This little work summarize most of the interoperability problems above mentioned. In relation to the new
production requirements of operation of the whole district heating system Milano North, A2A Calore &
Services it conducted a review of its Central Cogeneration called Tecnocity located in the Pirelli Bicocca.
Lack in documentation has been filled up through a laser scanner survey. First step of interoperability was the
transformation of point cloud into a characterized 3D model directly in the final 3D environment. P&ID was
created with a intelligent database that can be linked with the model 3D. From the 3D model us been exported
files directly importable in piping stress analysis software and structural analysis software (by CIS/" exporting).

Conclusion

Interoperability is necessary to optimize facilities life cycle phases. The design process is on the correct way to
improve a total interoperability in his specific working phases. Improve is needed in the transfer of design data
from Engineering Companies to Plant Owner in order to make available data downstream of design process
directly to operation and maintenance, that is the most long phase of Facilities life cycle:

Fig. 2 - Typical Life Cycle for Commercial Building

To improve an Advanced Interoperability more factors have to concur:
- Change in business processes: implementing new and shared standards, structured information
exchanges;

Information Delivery Processes: a Information Delivery Manual (IDM) is necessary to specify the types
of information required during all phases of life cycle;
- Information Management: major challenge is to synchronize different sources to ensure consistency of
data. Particular attention have to be done on details representation that can be not aligned with
schematic calculation models;
- Culture change: operators have to be trained in order to adopt the new tools and technology,
overcoming the inertia of many years of consolidated design process.
In the Tecnocity project two different Companies have work together with coordination on the activities and
the formats to be extracted, training its staff in order to provide the best solution for each other workflow
saving around 20% of working hours due to not re-inputing of data.

Reference

Fiatech, "Advancing Interoperability for the Capital Projects Industry: a Vision Paper"
UK Cabinet Office, "Government Construction Strategy"
NIST, "Cost analysis of inadeguate interoperability in the US capital facilities industry"
NIST, "Metric and Tools for construction productivity"