Process Plant Lifecycle Information Management

Book excerpt: Process plants produce products and perform functions through some processes. There are many types of process plants covering a wide spectrum of industries from chemical, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, food, power generation, water and waste water treatment, nuclear, to specialized government plants. From engineering, procurement, construction to operations of process plants, the key elements of lifecycle operations are essentially generation, manipulation, and management of information. In addition to documents that are the traditional way of representing information, the trend now is to emphasis on usage of data, databases, and 3-D models. Efficient plant lifecycle information management has to satisfy three basic requirements of what, when, and how information to be managed. Information integrity that means accuracy and currency is another key element of management consideration. Use of information data warehouse is an effective approach to store and control just one single source of information to be used throughout the plant lifecycle. Plant lifecycle information management is to increase productivity at the project level to reduce capital cost and time to market. At the plant level, the goal is to minimize plant operational expense and to maximize time in market. With proper information and information management, the plant owner/operator now has the tool to optimize operating parameters so both quality and quantity of the plant products can be improved. This book shows the basic principles and approaches of process plant lifecycle information management and how they can be applied to generate substantial cost and time savings. Thus, the readers with their own knowledge and experience in plant design and operations can adapt and implement them into their specific plant lifecycle applications.