The Paperless Project

When did you first hear of the paperless office? Why has it never happened?

With smartphones and tablets available to improve on the portability laptops brought to digital interfaces why do we still use paper? Aren't diagrams better than text for communication? Perhaps it will be generational; where our generation has used digital tools to do more of the same a new generation of people who grew up in a digital world will bring new habits.

Perhaps it will be an environmental imperative as the energy used in paper production and the carbon sinks (trees) consumed in the process represent a significant contribution to the emissions equation.

Wasted Time, Money and Resources

Another way of looking at documentation (and even text itself) as waste is in engineering projects. Despite the plethora of digital tools available to us we persist in communicating with text. How many billable hours are generated by the fixation with producing project documentation? How many hours are billed when all we are doing is recycling documentation from previous projects?

Lets take the argument further and say with the current state of digital technology why do we write documents to describe concepts, why don’t we just model the concept digitally? If you can't model it with numbers or diagrams do you really understand it?

If we can simulate a process plant mathematically and 3D visualisation is available why do we need to describe it with text? Hell, we can even print the model in 3D today.

Many of the tools we use to monitor and control the asset are already digital, take a plant control system for example. These systems can be interfaced with the simulation and they would know no difference between a simulation and a physical asset. We do this already when building training simulators.

Everything we need is available in existing software, no bespoke programming is required to change the way we work, only the selection of the appropriate digital tools. In fact, the deliberate selection of the digital tools will also eliminate current inefficiencies associated with using individual software packages in isolation.

From an Australian perspective surely everyone would agree that we need to change the way we do projects or we face real problems in attracting future investment given our recent track record?

The Digital Twin

It has been interesting in recent years to take part in the debate of big data’s relevance to oil and gas. I understand the need to store large amounts of data and provide ready access, I have no problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with the application of predictive analytics, where appropriate, but I have always had a problem with the use of large scale unstructured data regression analysis on an industry based on the laws of physics.

I understand it based on domains where we do not have a first principle understanding such as human behaviour, but not in an industry where the data can be correctly structured and analysed at conception and in real time (or as close to real time as the speed of the processing allows).

Hence, it is unsurprising that the debate has now come around to the concept of the digital twin. A digital model of an asset, for example, that allows us to visualise, analyse, predict and optimise performance. Utilising data available in real time rather than regression.

The Digital Project

So why design the asset using text based communication? Why not build the digital twin first? Wouldn’t it be far cheaper to build the digital versions of the asset to test different concepts? Is there any aspect of an asset that can’t be modelled today? The reservoir or formation? No, we already do that. The business processes that support the asset? No, they can be designed and pre programmed. We can have a fully functional digital model of the whole business, not just the physical asset.

With my operations hat on, imagine the value in being able to walk through maintenance and operations at the concept and design stages, to model reliability and availability, to finally be able to represent the impact of design decisions on operations and maintenance as those decisions are being considered.

We would then have the digital twin available to evolve with the asset as it moves through the stages and gates of project development. All with the added advantage that our control and analysis systems would be pre built and available to quantify decisions in all dimensions and not just through a project cost and schedule lens.

Those of us who have been modelling digitally for some time, will talk to you about fidelity. You don’t need high fidelity models to evaluate concepts. Only as you narrow down the options do you need to increase fidelity of the models, meaning that the modelling process remains affordable and a lot cheaper than the conventional design process.

Not until you settle on your final design do you need to increase the fidelity to its highest achievable level, and then there is plenty of justification to do so as you will be finishing off the digital twin that will be used for the life of the asset.

Why Resist?

In todays world of low commodity margins surely every opportunity to reduce project cost must be seized? Doubly so if you are creating the platform to optimise operations at the same time.

We bang on about ‘beginning with the end in mind’, ‘a picture being worth a thousand words’ and the ‘digital age’. Perhaps we should finally replace outdated practice with these digital tools and create not just the paperless office, but the paperless project. If we can save money, energy and a few forests in the process, we should at least try.