Case Study : Commissioning Utility Plant Equipment

Commissioning activities in the Oil & Gas Industry is all about time and scheduling because in the Oil & Gas Industry, time is money!

Introduction

Client is a Petroleum On-Shore midstream operating company.  They deployed 4 systems in the Permian Basin from 2022 to 2024.  Each deployment was successively improved by integrating the DeltaV System’s design data with the commissioning system.  

System #2 was a good baseline as it had several Senior DeltaV engineers on the team, but the commissioning effort was managed by a collection of Excel sheets that were not well-integrated to a central location.

System #3 utilized Hexagon’s Smart Completions package to manage the commissioning effort.  The schedule was trending to be behind schedule, so adjustments were necessary.  This is where Process Plant Unity (PPU) by Bravura AI was introduced.

The Challenge

In order to recover from the slipping schedule, a modification was made to the commissioning procedure.  Where the prior procedure was very data-intense and thus overly burdensome to the technicians and engineers.  The pace can be increased, but at the sacrifice of all the valuable data collection.  So how can the schedule be recovered without loss of integrity in the commissioning practices?

Solution

Process Plant Unity was introduced to handle all data handling associated with collection and reporting.  This relieved the technicians of these tasks, which accelerated the pace of commissioning by well over 2X.

The commissioning activities were converted to a procedural script, which was executed by the technicians and engineers in the field.  Upon successful completion, the document was signed for that device/loop/module/graphic.

Since the data for all steps in the commissioning are collected by various servers in the Plant Web Ecosystem, we were able to collect all the data from their respective repositories.  At the end of the project, we were able to load all the data into the PPU database and create reports for each device.  

Each report included the values configured for the following components of the overall loop:

1. From the AMS Database
   1. Selected data for the device configuration
2. From the DeltaV Database
   1. The I/O addressing and assignment
   1. The Control Module Top Level configuration
   1. Selected parameter values from the control module
   1. Alarm Configurations
3. From the DeltaV Live Database
   1. The details of the graphical representation of the Control Module

Project Alternatives without Process Plant Unity

The standard practices in the situation presented by this case study can be considered alternative approaches to the challenge. Most commonly, these scenarios are encountered:

• Alternative 1: Add Human Resources
  • Approach: When a schedule is at risk, additional resources can be added to accelerate the pace and attempt to “catch up”.
  • Constraints: The number of engineering seats is limited to the number of licenses available.  Also, physical space is at a minimum in a small control room or utility area.
  • Risks: Additional cost is incurred, additional capacity may not be completely realized due to other limitations and learning curve.  The recognition and adjustments need to be made at least 2 weeks, usually 4 weeks, in advance.  Often, commissioning schedules are only 8-12 weeks total, not leaving many weeks to recognize and adjust.

• Alternative 2: Sacrifice Integrity
  • Approach: Upholding high standards can be adjusted.  In this case, we could have eliminated the reporting component of the commissioning.
  • Constraints: The time and cost would have recovered and we would have likely met our time and budget goals.   
  • Risks: The obvious risk in making this compromise is that any mistake could go unnoticed and unreported.  

The Process Plant Unity Business Case

Since the outcome of this business case is that the goals were met, any savings must be reported as cost avoidance.  There are two dynamics that could be measured to estimate the value of cost avoidance:

1. The addition of human resource, if it were possible to, could be estimated at $1000/man-day if direct cost.  Overhead burden, training, and transportation are in addition.  Single technicians are not even marginally valuable, only pairs of technicians translate to a capacity improvement.  Thus, expenses can be estimated at over $10K per week of over-run.
2. The risk of schedule overrun is far more costly.  It is estimated that production from the facility is a direct revenue impact of $2MM per day or more.  Securing the goals of the project is easily justified at this level of revenue risk.

Importance of Microsoft Solutions

Our team relies heavily on Microsoft Solutions for internal collaboration, ensuring seamless remote work despite being spread across vastly different time zones. This robust setup minimizes the impact of working independently and maintains high productivity levels. By leveraging Microsoft Teams, we can conduct virtual meetings, share files, and communicate in real-time, which fosters a collaborative environment even when team members are miles apart. SharePoint serves as our central repository for documents, making it easy to manage and access information securely. The integration of these tools ensures that everyone stays on the same page, reducing the risk of miscommunication and enhancing overall efficiency.

Our Azure and SQL-based cloud environment is the backbone of our operations, offering scalable and secure solutions for data storage and processing. This setup allows us to handle large volumes of data with ease, perform complex queries, and generate insights that drive our decision-making processes. In this case, Power BI played a huge part in the final solution as well due to all built-in reporting capabilities. The cloud infrastructure also provides the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on our needs, ensuring cost-effectiveness and optimal performance.

In summary, the combination of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Azure, Power BI and SQL has been instrumental in enabling our team to work effectively and efficiently, regardless of geographical barriers and noting there is an extensive list of other Microsoft tools we deploy as we need for different occasions. This integrated approach not only supports our current operations but also positions us well for future growth and innovation.

Newfound Insights

Several lessons learned on this project are noted below:

• Progress tracking is a very important part of keeping management aware of our activities.  Integrating our commissioning system with Power BI will be a valuable improvement to be developed for the next project.
• Building the reports in a class-based modular fashion was found to be a very helpful leverage that will be used on subsequent projects.
• Managing the commissioning directly from the Emerson Plant Web Ecosystem databases, rather than loading a commissioning system using other engineering documents that are only indirectly related to the I&C system, will improve the fidelity between the commissioning progress and the integrated automation system.