Speaking at a recent meeting of the USPI-NL led Cfihos (capital facilities information standards) meeting in Bougival, France, Alan Johnson of Mimosa presented a parallel engineering data standards effort, Mimosa’s ISDD (industry standard data sheets) destined for a similar use case, supplying XML or JSON data to a ‘digital business ecosystem’ crossing owner-operators (OO), engineering and procurement contractors (EPC) and the supply chain. This, like Cfihos, requires a long-term agreement between operators and suppliers as in the automobile industry. ISDD ‘could be used to generate Cfihos-data sheets.’ Along with Mimosa, Cfihos has recorded expressions of interest from other related standards organizations DEXPI and EPIM STI.
Josh Vincent outlines Chevron’s trial Cfihos implementation which has revealed various issues with the reference data library (RDL) and shortcomings in documentation. However, Chevron’s engineering project systems maybe be ready for use mid 2019. Co-presenter Vic Samuel stressed that roll-out mandated a stable release of the standard, ‘users don’t want radical change just after an implementation.’ The other issue is that most stakeholders already have their own ‘pretty good’ standards. All will (would?) have to change to align with a new common cross industry and which will ‘probably be not as good as what we’ve got already!’ Vincent observed that there is ‘no obligation’ to use (Cfihos) post handover. Many properties are not relevant for a maintenance system. Samuel noted the ‘excitement’ around Cfihos but ‘we need more on board from the supply chain to reach a tipping point in relationship between vendors and OOs.’
Cfihos chair Anders Thostrup (Shell) noted the special case of the brownfield asset where information is ‘a mess’ waiting to be tidied-up with Cfihos. Alan Johnston added that a (non-Cfihos?) Yokogawa/SAP/BP proof of concept on brownfield data enrichment is underway.
USPI-NL director Paul van Exel is in the process of signing memoranda of understandings with DEXPI and EPIM-STI and is in discussion with the UK-based IOGP whose JIP 33 addresses many of the same issues as Cfihos. Since JIP 33 shares some of the same OOs as Cfihos, cooperation and perhaps alignment of the two initiatives would appear desirable. But aligning with yet another ‘parallel’ initiative is not going to speed Cfihos progress.
While there are stumbling blocks, the Cfihos initiative does have an enthusiastic and growing following in both OOs and EPCs. More from USPI-NL.
© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.