Session: 01-10 Digital Transformation in Inspection, Compliance, and Engineering Management

Paper Number: 174696

174696 - Modern Approach to Managing Specifications: From Fragmented Document Systems to Data-Driven Governance 

Projects in the oil and gas industry are large, complex and multi-year. Most companies in the industry today manage their project technical specifications as documents. As a result, processes for maintaining and applying these specifications can be slow, inefficient, and manual, and this can negatively impact project outcomes.

Moving specifications from fragmented document systems to a digitized requirements management tool and applying AI can enable a shift to data driven governance. This can transform project execution in terms of safety, reliability, and capital efficiency, and help companies remain competitive.

Examples of issues with a document centric approach include:

·       Efficiency

o   Engineers spend time on non-technical and repetitive processes to maintain specifications (formatting; publishing; managing reviews, deviations and learnings).

·       Requirement visibility

o   Lack of visibility of changes between versions.

o   Deviations and exceptions managed separately to the project specifications.

o   Documents in supply chain may be written as overlays, requiring two documents to be open at same time.

·       Requirement quality

o   Lack of requirement traceability between companies in the supply chain, potentially leading to unnecessary requirements.

o   Potential for duplication and contradicting requirements, and a lack of requirement synchronization.

o   Inefficient processes to capture learnings on published content, and increased cycle time of document updates, potentially leading to out-of-date requirements.

·       Verification

o   Manual verification.

o   Lack of direct links between requirements and corresponding reviews and inspections.

Implementing a requirements management tool will eliminate the need for multiple collaboration and document management tools and automate some of the manual and routine tasks. This will allow engineers to focus more on improving the quality of requirements.

However, requirements management tools will also enable the change to a data centric approach, and by embedding requirements management in the supply chain and applying AI, project execution can be transformed. Potential benefits of a data driven approach include:

·       Improving the repeatability and quality of product supply, while reducing cost.

·       Reducing the potential for design vulnerabilities being passed to the operate stage.

·       Faster incorporation of learnings into specifications, ensuring the specifications are more up to date and relevant.

·       Enabling a more accurate assessment of project cost, schedule and resources earlier in the project lifecycle, reducing overall project cost and identifying competitive projects sooner.

Presenting Author: Catriona Shepherd Jama Software

Presenting Author Biography: Catriona Shepherd MEng, CEng, MIMechE

Catriona Shepherd is the founder of Bannock Technical Consulting, an independent consultancy specializing in digitized requirements management. Currently, Catriona is supporting Jama Software.

With international experience across the energy sector, Catriona has successfully led large scale initiatives to modernize the development and application of engineering standards. This includes spearheading the implementation of a digitized requirements management tool at a major global corporation.

Catriona has also collaborated with the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) to establish best practices for digitizing engineering requirements across the sector.

Catriona holds an engineering degree from the University of Strathclyde and is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.