Streamlining your operations

We hear from Bentley Systems’ John Sanins on how an integrated data-managed engineering solution can help meet the demands of the global oil and gas sector.

“The scope, nature, and complexity of today's current and planned capital oil and gas projects present additional challenges to plant owners and engineering contractors”
-John Sanins

Today's global energy business environment faces significant challenges in the wake of downturns in major industrial economies. Fluctuations in oil and gas prices have changed the scope and amount of investment in capital projects. Consequently, owner-operators now put more emphasis on increasing operational efficiencies using existing infrastructure while maintaining operation and production margins during low market demand. Paradoxically, worldwide demand for energy is projected to increase as much as 45 percent by 2030, led by emerging economies. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that these economies will account for nearly 90 percent of the world's energy demand over the next two decades. The factors that will drive this demand are population growth and mass industrialisation. Estimates project global population will increase from the current 6.7 billion to more than nine billion people by 2050. It is also predicted that millions of people in emerging economies will move from the countryside to urban centres.

The scope, nature, and complexity of today's current and planned capital oil and gas projects present additional challenges to plant owners and engineering contractors. Owner-operators' capital project timelines continue to shorten in an effort to speed time-to-market. At the same time, engineering contractors must reduce overall project costs and meet reduced project schedules with fewer skilled resources. To accomplish this, they must increase productivity while maintaining high engineering integrity and quality - all without compromising safety and environmental considerations.

These challenges can be addressed by employing an integrated data-managed engineering solution specifically designed to meet the demands of the global oil and gas sector. Bentley Systems' oil and gas solution offers a data-centric environment in which evolving plant and related data are properly managed throughout the plant lifecycle, eliminating data re-entry, avoiding duplication, and improving overall engineering data quality and integrity. This new approach to managing and reviewing lifecycle data can eliminate unnecessary documents during the engineering phase, shorten timelines, enhance the level and quantity of data during handover, and improve access to the right information for operations.

Bentley's latest OpenPlant applications are the core set of applications in Bentley's oil and gas solution addressing the growing demands of today's highly distributed oil and gas projects. By adopting the ISO 15926 open information model as its core data model, together with a dynamic collaboration platform, OpenPlant enables plant owners and engineering contractors to capitalise on their investments in plant data without the constraints imposed by current propriety third-party applications and associated closed data formats. Bentley's OpenPlant ensures interoperability with third-party software and open and easy access of information to all parties.

Bentley's oil and gas solution applications continue to be used and successfully deployed by major participants in the oil and gas industry worldwide. Plant owner-operators using Bentley's oil and gas solution have virtually eliminated unnecessary or redundant project documentation, reduced expenditures in managing and streamlining multiple data sources and, in many cases, are now seeing and capitalising on an immediate return on their software investment. Engineering contractors who have deployed the interoperable applications have completed major capital projects within agreed upon project schedules, and often ahead of schedule. They have seen significant improvements in end-user productivity, design quality, and overall project execution as a result of their integration between Bentley's design authoring and analysis tools coupled to Bentley's document and engineering content management systems.

The Bentley oil and gas solution offers both plant owner-operators and engineering contractors a comprehensive, scalable environment to create and manage project data and associated deliverables more cost-effectively. In addition, it helps them achieve on-time project delivery with lower costs in application deployment, data creation, management and handover.

John Sanins is Solutions Executive for Process Manufacturing at Bentley Systems. His prior experience includes Technical Director for Global Business Development at Intergraph; Head of Plant Design Products, at AVEVA; and Senior Business Consultant at IBM Global Services. Sanins holds a master's degree in Business Administration and an honour's degree in Mechanical Engineering.