|
|
|
Order high-quality repints of any articles on this website
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Intelligent 3D Portal
|
Nelia Mazula
Technical Manager
Andre Colin
Vice President, Business Development, VRcontext
|
In the face of increasingly complex challenges, oil and gas operators are not only launching multiple initiatives to systematically increase operational efficiency across their entire organisations, they are also hyperfocused on increasing safety awareness and safe work practices. Disastrous decisions can be made in emergency situations if relevant support data are not quickly accessible. The consequences for human welfare and business continuity could be catastrophic, increasing both risk and the costs of operations.
The Intelligent 3D Portal developed by VRcontext supports operators by providing a unique way to access and manage the vast knowledge base connected to any production asset. The Intelligent 3D Portal is a new paradigm with the 3D model as its primary interface, through which users are able to quickly access and update engineering, maintenance and operational data, as well as plan and simulate work activities in an exact replication of the real work environment.
By placing the 3D virtual plant on the desktops of operations, maintenance and engineering staff, owners and operators can federate activities across a broad range of user communities focused on specific aspects of plant operation. Everyone can share the same continuously updated model, thereby enabling full and effective collaboration between members of the same user community, as well as between user communities.
Philosophy
Through a game-inspired navigation interface, users simply ‘walk through’ the virtual plant to reach a plant area, ‘jump to’ a specific element, ‘extract’ data and documents connected to the 3D model through smart links to external databases or, conversely, ‘update’ data and documents relevant to an element or area. Realtime dynamic tessellation for large asset models in virtual reality is part of a patented VRcontext technology that allows graphical objects to be managed so that models are continuously rendered in realtime on low-capacity computers. This technology enables life-like visualisation of large process facilities in which avatars can interact. Graphical interfaces linked to the virtual plant allow data interrogation, extraction and updates from intelligent process and instrumentation diagrams, engineering databases and electronic documentation through a seamless process that is transparent to the user (see Figure 1).
Given the current shortage of experienced personnel, the 3D virtual plant is the ideal environment for contextual training of field support personnel. Employee safety can be enhanced through health, safety and environment (HSE) training, i.e. familiarising site personnel with escape routes.
Situational Analysis
To remain competitive in a business environment in which there is constant pressure to tighten schedules, reduce costs and increase reliability, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractors have been investing substantially in data-centric business processes. It is essential that owners and operators leverage this valuable intellectual asset they receive at handover. Owners and operators will inherit vast amounts of design, engineering, maintenance and operations data from the EPC contractors. This knowledge base has to be easily accessible to field personnel and accurately maintained to reflect the technical integrity of the facilities at any moment.
VRcontext applications deliver to owners and operators the technology to access and manage such a knowledge base efficiently. The Intelligent 3D Portal is a quantum leap from the traditional ‘document-centric’ process, employing a more user-friendly and cost-effective ‘tag-centric’ approach. A typical production facility costs billions of dollars. In this context, investment in an Intelligent 3D Portal is a relatively insignificant cost, yet through this incremental investment in operation and process improvement initiatives the following major benefits can be achieved:
• well-documented handovers by the EPC contractors of all of the as-built virtual plant model and engineering data;
• development of graphical user interfaces and integration with existing applications based on best practices documented by the operations, maintenance and engineering user communities; and
• extension of the usability of the virtual plant to realtime applications including, but not limited to, distributed control systems (DCS)/supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Handover When all of the design and construction data related to an asset are imported to the virtual plant, a smooth transition to the operational phase is achieved. It is essential that this information reflects any last-minute changes during the erection phase. To maintain the value of this intellectual asset, a set of procedures must be prescribed for constantly updating the knowledge base to reflect changes in the plant.
User Interfaces – Database Integration
Most users are familiar and comfortable with their current operational applications. Therefore, the Intelligent 3D Portal is built on top of those applications by customising the graphical user interface so that the information in those applications can be accessed and maintained. Once the basic design of the facility has been captured, it can be kept up to date and maintained in a format that is suitable for use in the engineering environment.
Duplication of data is greatly reduced as the Intelligent 3D Portal stores and manages data, applying the ‘store once, use many times’ principle. Data developed and held in an engineering system are available to other systems, eliminating the need for data reloads and duplication, as well as the potential for integrity and data-versioning errors. Once the graphical interfaces are in place, operations and maintenance efficiencies are improved because relevant and accurate information is available through a single point of access. Data are visible to all users, both experienced and casual. To federate all of the operational applications being used, the architecture of the navigation application – and the application transparently connecting elements of the virtual plant to the operational applications already in use – are built on top of state-of-the-art technology for ease of integration and global data access. From an externally hosted website, asset managers can access a specific 3D model wherever the original database for the viewer is located. The openness of this solution makes data accessible through enterprise systems and eliminates the disconnects in the flow of overall plant information that often lead to prolonged decision cycles and response times, as well as other inefficiencies. VRcontext customisation tools are based on the .NET framework, which is rapidly becoming a standard for developing specific, robust and userfriendly solutions. The compatibilities between .NET and languages such as XML follow industry standardisation roadmaps and enhance the suitability of VRcontext solutions in both engineering and operations environments. With the introduction of .NET came the development of XMpLant conversion functionality for VRcontext. XMpLant is based on XML schemas of 3D computer-assisted design (CAD) models in line with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 15926 standard. These standards have been developed to facilitate communication between applications and to foster seamless data transfer between phases in the life-cycle of an asset. In the long term, this will allow the 3D virtual model to be synchronised with the physical plant in order to reflect ongoing modifications to the plant’s life-cycle.
User Interfaces – Maintenance
Maintenance is key to the ongoing operation of an installation. The most important considerations are human safety and preservation of the external environment. The ability to navigate to, then interrogate, a physical asset in the 3D virtual plant enables the maintenance staff to visualise the site configuration at their PCs. This facilitates more effective and safer task planning, and alows experts to perform needed tasks remotely and continuously.
The Intelligent 3D Portal significantly reduces job preparation times without compromising safety and enables multidiscipline incident scenarios to be enacted right through to their logical conclusions. Offshore installations whose equipment maintenance strategy is conditions-based can be monitored from land. A shift from preventative to conditions-based maintenance can certainly reduce the cost of transporting maintenance workers and accommodating them at sea, and it makes it easier to compare similar problems on different platforms. When the 3D virtual plant is smart-linked to an asset management and service management system, not only can remote experts be involved in the assessment of the equipment conditions, but also maintenance scenarios can be rehearsed without having to be physically on-site. Efficient use of information technology can also prove beneficial in maintenance planning through better prioritisation of tasks and optimisation of offshore staffing levels. Remote monitoring of offshore equipment by a supplier can help to determine the best preventative measures and when to perform maintenance operations.
User Interfaces – Contextual Training
The 3D Virtual Plant is an ideal environment for training field support personnel to respond to emergency and non-emergency situations, with a navigation interface that includes a fully functional avatar for third-person visualisation (see Figure 2).
The benefits of this include:
• familiarisation of field support personnel with the site at an early stage of design;
• development of procedures for best practices;
• regular practice in start-up and shut-down procedures, enabling reductions in downtime;
• prevention of the loss of materials and unwanted environmental impact because training is performed away from the actual plant; and
• realistic procedures for plant simulations that do not require the investment of valuable resources or involve safety hazards. Compared with conventional training, VRcontext training has been proved to be more realistic, more memorable, more motivational and capable of delivering higher employee skill levels.
Realtime Applications – Integrated Operations
Through integrated operations, IT enables realtime data to be employed to achieve better and quicker decisions. Remote and field personnel have access to data that are updated the moment they are generated. Because everyone has the same information simultaneously, the remote organisation can give platform personnel rapid and efficient support. The introduction of interaction rooms is part of this development. Different specialists ‘sit’ together, whether they are in the same room or geographically separated, by virtue of their computer systems. ‘Here’ they discuss problems and resolve them quickly and correctly. An efficient digital infrastructure offers many opportunities for better utilisation of available data. The combination of access to realtime and historical data, an ever-increasing capacity for data processing and visualisation and new working procedures offers possibilities for optimising field operations.
Total Asset Life-cycle Information Management
The Intelligent 3D Portal delivers increased efficiency by permitting users to significantly leverage 3D design investments, typically initiated by contractors, deep into life-cycle asset management phases. Where 3D offers users the ability to see the design during project engineering phases, an Intelligent 3D Portal extends the uses for a 3D virtual plant to engineering, operations and maintenance, and to non-conventional areas such as training and HSE planning. Coupling the 3D virtual plant with an integration platform, the philosophy of the Intelligent 3D Portal is particularly beneficial to owners and operators. It permits direct and bi-directional integration through customised graphical interfaces to the operational database, and in control room environments it provides bi-directional interfaces to realtime production data systems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nelia Mazula is Technical Manager for North America
at VRcontext. She has over nine years of experience in
oil and gas operations and information management.
Her career includes plant operations, control systems,
project management, business development and
software development for the oil and gas sector.
Ms Mazula has presented several projects for gas
condensate optimisation and utilisation in remote
locations, and was an advisor for the National
Institute of Petroleum in Mozambique as well as a key member of condensate task
force teams in Africa.
|
|
|
André Colin is Vice President for Business Development
at VRcontext. He joined the company in 2005 after
spending more than 25 years in the software industry.
He started his career as a Consultant in Structural
Analysis with Control Data Corporation. He then joined
Computervision, a historical leader in the computeraided
design (CAD)/computer-aided manufacturing
(CAM) industry, where he held several International
Sales Management positions. After spending five years
as General Manager for Europe with CADSI, he worked as Vice President for Europe for
Rand Worldwide. Dr Colin holds an MSc in mechanical engineering from the University
of Louvain and a PhD in engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.
|
|
|
|
Download PDF
