At DaratechPLANT2001, this discussion group included an audience much larger than the show's organizers wanted to allow, a testament to this topic's popularity. Ian Bishop, Business Systems Manager for Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd led a panel of industry experts featuring Richard Brod, Manager of Design and Construction for Texas Operations and Global Engineering Technologies for Dow Chemical Company, and Dr. Thore Langeland, Senior ICT Advisor for The Norwegian Oil Industry Association.
Industry standards are the subject of great interest among plant owner/operators, engineers, contractors and software vendors. Standards like ISO 10303, otherwise known as STEP (Standards for the Exchange of Product model data) are being developed so that information pertaining to process plants can be exchanged between different data warehousing systems. By sharing a common data model, system upgrades will be possible without adversely affecting other systems sharing the same data. This effort is principally intended to enable owners to reduce costs, compress project time scales and maintain the integrity and portability of their data assets.
The STEP initiative would standardize virtually all data associated with a project. In the process industry, all plant asset information could be integrated, from business development documentation, engineering, construction, operations and maintenance, to purchasing and supply chain management. This plant "asset information" may include documents like manuals and contracts, design data and drawings, equipment specifications and operational data. Worldwide, there are dozens of research and development projects and organizations that either use STEP technology or otherwise are in collaboration with STEP. Many of these projects serve the process industries, including PIP (Process Industry Practices), PIDX (Petroleum Industry Data eXchange institute), PISTEP (STEP for the Process Industries), and PROCESSBASE (Data Management and Exchange for Process Plant Design, Construction and Operation), among others.
