ENGINEERING DATA MANAGEMENT FOR CONCURRENT ENGINEERING GLOBALLY

D W Cockshoot

It has long remained a dream of Process Plant design and engineering companies to have a Project Engineering Database spanning all technologies from the P&ID through to the detailed procurement and construction documentation. The John Brown development "ENGINES'u @ is a comprehensive relational, ENGineering INformation Expert System, project based and accessible by all engineers and designers working on the project.

ENGINES has a data management and control system to ensure that access to the data is properly governed. Data is defined as Working, Issued or Superseded, with access controlled according to the project configuration. If an engineering discipline owns a block of data, they are able to create and update the working copy, and initiate the issue process. The issue process may include a checker and approver and once data is issued it is readable by other disciplines. It can not be altered, any change occurs via another issue. Changes between issues are seen as changed colours of attributes - any adjacent issues may be compared. A full history of who issued, checked, approved or received what data, its purpose and the date is available.

P&IDs drawn in CAD are linked for bidirectional data transfer with ENGINES, providing a powerful validation mechanism, together with an integrated Line List, Connection List, Instrument Index, Equipment and Valve List.

ENGINES shares Process Data with all technologies who create purchasnng data sheets using a word processor as the output mechanism for Mechanical Equipment, Instrumentation, Vessels, Heat Exchangers, Piping, Electrical and Architectural. ENGINES is linked to the Materials Management modules of the John Brown Project Management system - providing complete equipment and material control right to the construction site.

Schematic output in the form of Instrument Loops, Electrical Motor Control Diagrams and Vessel Data Sheets are produced from a merge of the engineering data and CAD, all under ENGINES control.

Data reports of every imaginable complexity are achieved using an object based reporting tool to assist engineers with the creation of SQL reports.

Process simulator data is imported to ENGINES to avoid re-keying the information.

D W Cockshoot is with John Brown Engineers and Constructors, Portsmouth

@ ENGINES and AutoFLOW are Registered Trade Marks of John Brown Engineers and Constructors Ltd

ENGINES provides data to a 3D modelling package - in line data for instruments and a check that the pipe line connectivity shown on the P&ID and the model are in harmony. The system ingredients are:

Relational Database Management System PC Clients 2D CAD Word Processor

UNE Server

Object orientated reporting tool

The ENGINES development has followed the Information Engineering Methodology, using a CASE tool. It has taken two years to complete this formal analysis involving engineering staff from nine operations worldwide, and including all engineering disciplines.

The first release for project execution was provided in August 93 and covered Process Engineering, Instrumentation and Control, Projects, Utilities and Administration. The Electrical module was added in November 94. All other disciplines come on board during 1995.

A simplified context diagram of the system is printed below.

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ENGiieering INformation Expert System

Process Specs Instrument Data sheets Electrical Data sheds

3D Model

The system comprises more than 15,000 data fields or attributes, and uses 450 access screens, with all data categorised as Working, Released or Superseded, and it is obvious from these simple statistics that extremely close Data Management and Control is essential. The features of the data management system provided within ENGINES are summarised in the following :

Data Management and Control Requirements :

Configurable, managed, issue cycle for CAD and data

Change highlighting - "Clouds and Triangles"

Change reporting - the who, what and why of Change Management reporting

Access control differentiating between access to issued data, work in progress data and superseded data : CRUD

Messaging to announce events, including requests for checking and approval '

With this powerful tool in place John Brown are able to share work between its many Global operations - engineers in the USA can work concurrently with colleagues in India or Europe accessing the same database real time and each being fully controlled with regard to access, issuing o f data, review of changes etc. All John Brown operations now use the same system, so it is entirely possible and indeed already occuring, that a project starts off in a location close to the Client's Front End design team, and then migrates to another part of the world where the plant is to be constructed, for local Detailed Engineering. Throughout this, both John Brown locations can access the data together and permit access to the Client. Several major client organisations have seen the benefit of retaining the use of ENGINES once the plant has been completed so that any changes over the lifetime of the plant can be fully documented and the maintenance or safely requirements can be met.

The ENGINES data model is being made available to the PISTEP consortium - it covers a very significant segment of the Process Industry scope and has the benefit of having been implemented into a practical system in use, currently on 21 projects in Europe and the USA.

ENGINES Sites

Shemeld

9 1995 The Institution of Electrical Engineers. Printed and published by the IEE. Savoy Place, London WCPR OBL. UK.

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