Speaking at the recent closing-out presentation of the Norwegian READi* project that set out to ‘shape the future of digital requirements and information management in oil and gas’, DNV’s Magne Berg expressed the hope that the project’s deliverables could form a ‘pillar to sustain digitalization going forward’ with ‘a union of the physical asset and digital twin’. DNV project manager Erik Østby outlined the four-year project journey from its somewhat confused beginnings in 2017. One early participant commented, ‘I’m not too sure what this is about but I think it’s important’. Ontology was a new word for many so a ‘dummies guide’ was developed for the steering committee. The project was endowed with a 36.2 million NOK budged and some 21,000 hours of in-kind support from partners. Early in the project a decision was made to settle on the ISO/IEC 82229 standard for the ‘structuring of systems including structuring of information about systems’ for use in contracts with suppliers. Also in scope was the revision of ISO 15926 Part 14. Berg acknowledged that there is a ‘huge job to follow up on, the work will continue’.
* Requirements Asset Digital Information
Paal Frode Larsen presented Equinor’s SPINE Project that seeks to ‘take READi into operations’. The Spine project is a ‘digital improvement project to replace document flow with machine readable data to increase quality, HSE, productivity and reduce risk for projects and assets’. Larsen described the undertaking as ambitious and of ‘huge scope’. ‘While management expects us to deliver, working with in-kind resources is hard, everyone has a day job’. But the market really needs what has been done in READi. ‘We have an enormous amount of documents in a project and we can’t read them all’. End-user alignment is another issue, ‘do you really want to take new way of working on board?’ Equinor used to be afraid of sharing data with contractors. Today, while ‘every door is not open, but more are opening!’.
Milenija Stojkovic Helgesen (Equinor) presented the first READi deliverable, TIRC, a standard technical information requirements catalogue. This work was in response to a 2015 report from PTIL, the Norwegian safety authority, that concluded that ‘Norwegian safety standards were not fit for purpose’. READi also set out to respond to the 2018 KonKraft ‘competitiveness’ report that called for increased digitalization, standards and industry collaboration.
Developing the TIRC proved difficult with different forces pulling in different directions. The group had to balance ambition with what is achievable with a common standard for data-centricity. There is still a way to go. The work has integrated with the UK’s JIP33 and CFIHOS programs with the expectation of future collaboration. The TIRC will potentially become a part of the ISO 81355 standard for the ‘Classification and designation of documents for plants, systems and equipment’. The READi work had also been submitted to ISO as 15926 Part 14, which is to adapt the standard data for ‘OWL2 direct semantics’.
Arild Waaler (University of Oslo)
presented the information modeling framework and guidelines for
developing models for digital representation of asset information,
another READi ‘deliverable’. Waaler’s work combines the systems
engineering concepts of in ISO 81346-1:Aspects
with the semweb approach of ISO 15926:14. He acknowledged that the
‘ontology world is more demanding for engineers to really get into’.
Ontologies can grouped as ‘aspects’, a ‘useful’ approach that ‘needs
more work’. Many challenges remain in this complicated process. There
is a huge gap between standards and a detailed discipline knowledge.
Using a team of IT consultants ‘does not scale’. It is better to
provide experts with tools to let them generate the information model.
The central idea is to ‘replace formats with information models’.
Waller invited interested parties to consult the Reference Designation System for Oil and Gas.
Johan Klüwer (DNV) presented another deliverable, a common vocabulary for building the asset information model (a.k.a the POSC Caesar PLM RDL/ISO 15926 Part 14). Again, the difficulty of the task was emphasized, this is a ‘challenging and exciting place to be!’ We need an asset information models in a common format. But should this be based on practical usage or ‘normative’? The PLM RDL is ‘online, modular and in OWL’. This was developed in a collaboration between READi and AkerBP’s Krafla and NOA development projects. Klüwer stated that OWL is used worldwide and is supported by many vendors. Here the aim is for a ‘contradiction-free’ RDL to support duplicate-free, constrained relationships conformant to the upper ontology of Part14. Klüwer concluded showing how the CFIHOS equipment type class can be ‘ontologized’ with Part14.
For more on this work see for example the joint POSC Caesar Readi workshop on a MEG (Mono Ethylene) injection use case and the corresponding OWL code illustrated with ‘Gruff’ graph technology from Franz.
Helge Schjøtt showed how Aker BP has operationalized the outcome of READi in its major NOAKA area development. Noaka is being developed via a Fixed Facilities Alliance, a joint venture between Aker BP, Aker Solutions and Siemens Energy. A new digital platform combines the Aize Workspace and Cognite’s Data Fusion platform. The intent for the group is to have a common information model and digital language that can be shared between contractors and operators. READI is, we are assured, ‘on the agenda’. The group is starting to scope use cases and expects to have a proof of concept before year-end 2022. Schjøtt wound-up presenting AkerBP CEO’s ‘digital transformation check list’ observing that without this, ‘the risk is that folks will still use PDFs and Excel in two years’ time’.
Yngve Nilsen Norway’s oil and gas association NOROG compared the Technical Information Requirements Catalogues (TIRCs) from READi, EPIM and the EqHub RDL. These need to be combined into a single portal for operators and suppliers. As READi deliverables are handed over to NORSK the TIRC functionality will merge into EqHub. At the same time, the CFIHOS equipment class structure will inform a ‘future TIRC’ plugging many currently missing equipment types.
Jann Slettebakk (Aker Solutions and PCA
chair) focused on the future of READi and ISO 15926:Part14 and the
development of a semantic RDL endpoint. ISO 15926 was ‘revolutionary’
when it started out in the 1990s Today the Parts are already ‘widely
used’ and the new Part 14 is set to meet tomorrows expectation for
digitalization and digital twins and to ‘support Equinor’s new way of
working’. More from PCA.
In the Q&A the team was quizzed on a possible READi collaborating with OSDU to further the development of the OSDU Energy Platform which ‘includes engineering data’. The answer is that OSDU has until now been working with subsurface data and applications. Recently, a new OSDU working group related to engineering data has started. This group is looking at extending the OSDU concept to provide a ‘data warehouse of engineering data’ along the same lines as for subsurface data. The group is collaborating with CFIHOS and DEXPI to identify and propose demonstrations of interoperability in engineering work processes. The READi group ‘sees OSDU as complementary to READi’ with an IT platform on which READI’s deliverables can be implemented.
Oil IT Journal asked the following: ‘Norway has a rather long history of trying to apply the W3C semantic web technology in various initiatives from PCA and the IHON ‘semantic oil and gas platform’. What went wrong with the previous attempts and why will things be different this time around?’ The response was that ‘Since the IOHN project, two of the major EPCs in Norway have successfully implemented large scale solutions based on semantics and parts of ISO 15926. Learnings from these implementations have led to ISO/TR 15926 Part 14, a version of ISO 15926 which is fully compliant with W3C’s OWL2 and provides full semantic reasoning capabilities. Even though the technology and the standards have evolved and matured the last decade, a sustainable financial model for PCA needs to come in place.’
More from the READi home page. View the presentations here .
Comment: One of the most stubborn errors in IT projects is to put the IT cart before the business horse. This means deciding on a technology at the project outset. READi, like much earlier Norwegian work is predicated on the use of semantic web technology, notably OWL. We have been tracking this now for over 20 years and have seen how a) OWL has proved good at spinning-out academic projects in Norway and the EU, b) its use in oil and gas, notably with the introduction of ISO 15926 ‘Facades’ (and maybe READi’s ‘Aspects’) did not meet with the approval of the W3 RDF purists, and c) the technology is often perceived as too abstract for the engineering community, hence perhaps, the stickiness of PDF and Excel!
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