BP Refinery Rotterdam

Files & Drawings, the registry office of the installation goes digital

Challenge/ambition
BP Raffinaderij Rotterdam B.V. (BP RR) invests a great deal in its installations. The size of projects more than doubled between 2003 and 2007. To be able to handle such enormous growth, an investment was made in better cooperation with the engineering contractors (EPCs).

Carrying out new construction and renovations of a factory produces a number of necessary, but time-consuming by-products, namely the final results of the engineering process: design documents and data. This item takes up between 10 and 15% of the entire budget for the project.

BP RR and the EPCs need to exchange a lot of information with a project. Tag numbers have to be issued and information on existing equipment must be enhanced. If this process involves a lot of manual processes that lead to delays, these delays are circumvented with temporary solutions such as temporary numbers. The problem is that the information set for the safe and efficient operation of the refinery, has to be tidied up afterwards.

What does not help in this process is that BP RR and its EPCs have different information requirements. BP RR uses information to run the plant, whereas EPCs use information for building or renovating the plant. This means that each party has a completely different view of what is required.

iBanx approach
In 2003 and 2004, iBanx, together with BP RR, worked on an Information Transfer Specification (ITS). By working out the requirements in detail, and by including the information transfer in the relevant procedure, it became clear what BP RR needed from its EPCs. These items have been implemented in a collaborative project with the EPCs.

At the same time, iBanx started developping the EquipmentCliq™ software application. EquipmentCliq™ supports the issuing and changing processes of tag numbers and the transfer of equipment data from the EPCs to BP RR and vice versa. The application has been developed in such a way that every step in the workflow is taken one at the time by an authorised person, is registered and, if necessary, is approved by a person who is authorised to do so. Only after all steps have been completed correctly, will the new or amended details be made available to all those involved. This ensures the availability and integrity of the equipment data. The ITS will be integrated into the application. The order that initially proceeded laboriously, then moved forward quickly and unambiguously.

The result achieved in the words of a user
In addition to removing many frustrations, such as not having information available, a number of remarkable commercial results have been achieved. The following are the top three.

1. A significant reduction in the Reworking of Engineering Because it was a personnel intensive activity, the provision of engineering data by ‘Files & Drawings’, sometimes took up to two months. What was actually happening, was that the projects simply proceeded without the information. The result was that engineering documents and data (including drawings) were not in order when the projects were handed over. Since this information does need to be in order for the proper operation of the plant and because of regulatory requirements, the EPCs still had a lot of re-working to do afterwards. The re-working amounted to a significant portion of the engineering budget. For example, a lot of temporary numbers were issued, which all needed to be changed again afterwards. Nico Spierings, team leader of the ‘Files & Drawings’ department at BP RR: “With EquipmentCliq™, we have automated the personnel intensive activity of providing data. In fact, we really built an electronic engineer who can apply our rules and conventions in naming equipment. This makes the information available immediately, and a lot less reworking needs to be done. The reworking of engineering is practically zero at this point in time, and it saves many millions per year.”
2. Strong productivity improvements in technical administration. The total value of projects increased from over 35 million Euros in 2003, to over 150 million in 2007. In the meantime, the number of staff in the ‘Files & Drawings’ department declined from 14 to 6.5. Nico tells us: “We have been able to automate a large number of manual tasks involved in the management and provision of information. Engineering contractors now have access to information they need in a controlled way, without creating a lot of work for our department. This new way of working means an enormous productivity increase for our department. If we included in the calculation the fact that we now have relatively more changes to the existing installation (which is more work) than the improvement figures would be better still.”
3. Quality of the information, and thus of safety “From 2003, we have chosen a path on which we were increasingly better able to meet the BP RR Safety Standards, which by definition set the bar higher above the regulatory requirements. Step by step, we have added information to EquipmentCliq™, and where possible, verified it with automated controls based on our situation, operating procedures and rules. We now see a clear path to meeting all requirements. We believe we can complete this by 2008. Something that seemed impossible before, has now become possible”, according to Nico.