Introduction

A client faced a significant challenge after decommissioning an outdated cooling plant from their remote utilities facility. The cooling plant was previously connected to the Emerson Delta V Distributed Control System.  Some of the system’s inputs and outputs, (I/O), were removed without first disabling the channels. Other I/O settings were properly disabled, but the corresponding Control Modules were not removed.

The lack of planning resulted in numerous operational issues for the control system.  After the chillers, cooling towers and all associated devices were removed from service, the network was bogged down with traffic and the graphics were cluttered with errors. The customer’s Delta V System was operational, but without easy access to the information and equipment status needed to operate the facility. It is not hard to perceive the impact of these issues, considering that essential equipment at the facility still relied on this Delta V system for safe and reliable utilities.

The Challenge

The improper decommissioning of the equipment created a risky situation for the engineer tasked with completing the removal process. The engineer was forced to establish a comprehensive understanding of the status quo and efficiently identify and remove all unnecessary channels, code, and graphics without causing a plant shutdown.

It was crucial to identify all control system aspects affected by the decommissioning, and to implement the necessary corrections. This extends beyond I/O and control modules, to include interlocks, alarms, and graphic displays.

Solution

A site survey was scheduled to review the situation with the plant staff and to collect system data, including:

• The Delta V Configuration (.fhx file)
• Graphics; the Pic folder with all (.grf files)
• A system scan from the Delta V Diagnostic Application.

Using Bravura AI’s Process Plant Unity (PPU) solution, a detailed plan was developed to centralize and standardize the identification and removal of all affected system objects.

Step-by-Step Plan Summary:

1. Step 1. Identify I/O for Removal: Present a table of system I/O candidates to the owners, so they can identify easily what to mark for removal.
2. Step 2. Identify Control Modules: List Control Modules and identify modules that reference the tags to be removed, so they can also be evaluated and marked for removal.
3. Step 3. Remove Dead Code: Show code referencing modules to be identified and marked for removal, as they will become “dead code or dead references” once the Control Modules are removed in step 2.
4. Step 4. Update Graphics Package: Remove all items in the graphics package that reference Control Objects to be removed.

This step-by-step approach ensures that risks were identified and mitigated, particularly for cards sharing channels that could cause plant disruption during the download procedure. It will help everyone involved to follow the plan, where every step is directly related to the identified risk of errors and malfunctions including avoiding an unscheduled  plant shutdown.

Project Alternatives without Process Plant Unity

The standard practices in the situation presented by this case study can be considered alternative approaches to the challenge. Common scenarios are as follows:

• Alternative 1: Senior Engineer on-site demand service
  • Approach: Send a Senior Engineer to the site
  • Time and Cost: Likely spending > 50 hours (1 man-week) billed at $200/hr
  • Risks: High-risk situation where the Senior Engineer could cause an upset or shutdown with a single mistaken keystroke or mouse click.
  • The customer must attend to the Senior Engineer’s rolling requests for information (RFIs), causing delays and inefficiency  on both side

• Alternative 2: As capital project approach
  • Approach: Treat the effort like a capital project with Design/Build and Implement/Test phases.
  • Time and Cost: This has proven to be extremely labor and time intensive.
  • Risks: The amount of manual interaction with the data in the design/build phase would introduce significantly more opportunities for human error, in turn increasing risk in the implementation/test phase.

The Process Plant Unity Business Case

An overview of the time and costs required to reach the desired solution is shown below:

Importance of Microsoft Solutions

Our team relies heavily on Microsoft Solutions for internal collaboration, ensuring seamless remote work despite being spread across vastly different time zones. This robust setup minimizes the impact of working independently and maintains high productivity levels. By leveraging Microsoft Teams, we can conduct virtual meetings, share files, and communicate in real-time, which fosters a collaborative environment even when team members are miles apart. SharePoint serves as our central repository for documents, making it easy to manage and access information securely. The integration of these tools ensures that everyone stays on the same page, reducing the risk of miscommunication and enhancing overall efficiency.

Our Azure and SQL-based cloud environment is the backbone of our operations, offering scalable and secure solutions for data storage and processing. This setup allows us to handle large volumes of data with ease, perform complex queries, and generate insights that drive our decision-making processes. The cloud infrastructure also provides the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on our needs, ensuring cost-effectiveness and optimal performance.

In summary, the combination of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Azure, and SQL has been instrumental in enabling our team to work effectively and efficiently, regardless of geographical barriers and noting there is an extensive list of other Microsoft tools we deploy as we need for different occasions. This integrated approach not only supports our current operations but also positions us well for future growth and innovation.

Conclusion

Major benefits in using Bravura AI’s Process Plant Unity solution has several key aspects:

• Work was reviewed at each level, (engineering, operators, and management) minimizing the chance of operational errors
• Reviews were conducted using detailed spreadsheets, facilitating clear communication
• Overall cost for the solution was <55% of the conventional alternatives
• System modifications were performed with minimal operational risk, including  instructions easy enough for a junior engineer to implement.

Introduction

Client is a Petroleum On-Shore midstream operating company.  They deployed 4 systems in the Permian Basin from 2022 to 2024.  Each deployment was successively improved by integrating the DeltaV System’s design data with the commissioning system.  

System #2 was a good baseline as it had several Senior DeltaV engineers on the team, but the commissioning effort was managed by a collection of Excel sheets that were not well-integrated to a central location.

System #3 utilized Hexagon’s Smart Completions package to manage the commissioning effort.  The schedule was trending to be behind schedule, so adjustments were necessary.  This is where Process Plant Unity (PPU) by Bravura AI was introduced.

The Challenge

In order to recover from the slipping schedule, a modification was made to the commissioning procedure.  Where the prior procedure was very data-intense and thus overly burdensome to the technicians and engineers.  The pace can be increased, but at the sacrifice of all the valuable data collection.  So how can the schedule be recovered without loss of integrity in the commissioning practices?

Solution

Process Plant Unity was introduced to handle all data handling associated with collection and reporting.  This relieved the technicians of these tasks, which accelerated the pace of commissioning by well over 2X.

The commissioning activities were converted to a procedural script, which was executed by the technicians and engineers in the field.  Upon successful completion, the document was signed for that device/loop/module/graphic.

Since the data for all steps in the commissioning are collected by various servers in the Plant Web Ecosystem, we were able to collect all the data from their respective repositories.  At the end of the project, we were able to load all the data into the PPU database and create reports for each device.  

Each report included the values configured for the following components of the overall loop:

1. From the AMS Database
   1. Selected data for the device configuration
2. From the DeltaV Database
   1. The I/O addressing and assignment
   1. The Control Module Top Level configuration
   1. Selected parameter values from the control module
   1. Alarm Configurations
3. From the DeltaV Live Database
   1. The details of the graphical representation of the Control Module

Project Alternatives without Process Plant Unity

The standard practices in the situation presented by this case study can be considered alternative approaches to the challenge. Most commonly, these scenarios are encountered:

• Alternative 1: Add Human Resources
  • Approach: When a schedule is at risk, additional resources can be added to accelerate the pace and attempt to “catch up”.
  • Constraints: The number of engineering seats is limited to the number of licenses available.  Also, physical space is at a minimum in a small control room or utility area.
  • Risks: Additional cost is incurred, additional capacity may not be completely realized due to other limitations and learning curve.  The recognition and adjustments need to be made at least 2 weeks, usually 4 weeks, in advance.  Often, commissioning schedules are only 8-12 weeks total, not leaving many weeks to recognize and adjust.

• Alternative 2: Sacrifice Integrity
  • Approach: Upholding high standards can be adjusted.  In this case, we could have eliminated the reporting component of the commissioning.
  • Constraints: The time and cost would have recovered and we would have likely met our time and budget goals.   
  • Risks: The obvious risk in making this compromise is that any mistake could go unnoticed and unreported.  

The Process Plant Unity Business Case

Since the outcome of this business case is that the goals were met, any savings must be reported as cost avoidance.  There are two dynamics that could be measured to estimate the value of cost avoidance:

1. The addition of human resource, if it were possible to, could be estimated at $1000/man-day if direct cost.  Overhead burden, training, and transportation are in addition.  Single technicians are not even marginally valuable, only pairs of technicians translate to a capacity improvement.  Thus, expenses can be estimated at over $10K per week of over-run.
2. The risk of schedule overrun is far more costly.  It is estimated that production from the facility is a direct revenue impact of $2MM per day or more.  Securing the goals of the project is easily justified at this level of revenue risk.

Importance of Microsoft Solutions

Our team relies heavily on Microsoft Solutions for internal collaboration, ensuring seamless remote work despite being spread across vastly different time zones. This robust setup minimizes the impact of working independently and maintains high productivity levels. By leveraging Microsoft Teams, we can conduct virtual meetings, share files, and communicate in real-time, which fosters a collaborative environment even when team members are miles apart. SharePoint serves as our central repository for documents, making it easy to manage and access information securely. The integration of these tools ensures that everyone stays on the same page, reducing the risk of miscommunication and enhancing overall efficiency.

Our Azure and SQL-based cloud environment is the backbone of our operations, offering scalable and secure solutions for data storage and processing. This setup allows us to handle large volumes of data with ease, perform complex queries, and generate insights that drive our decision-making processes. In this case, Power BI played a huge part in the final solution as well due to all built-in reporting capabilities. The cloud infrastructure also provides the flexibility to scale resources up or down based on our needs, ensuring cost-effectiveness and optimal performance.

In summary, the combination of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Azure, Power BI and SQL has been instrumental in enabling our team to work effectively and efficiently, regardless of geographical barriers and noting there is an extensive list of other Microsoft tools we deploy as we need for different occasions. This integrated approach not only supports our current operations but also positions us well for future growth and innovation.

Newfound Insights

Several lessons learned on this project are noted below:

• Progress tracking is a very important part of keeping management aware of our activities.  Integrating our commissioning system with Power BI will be a valuable improvement to be developed for the next project.
• Building the reports in a class-based modular fashion was found to be a very helpful leverage that will be used on subsequent projects.
• Managing the commissioning directly from the Emerson Plant Web Ecosystem databases, rather than loading a commissioning system using other engineering documents that are only indirectly related to the I&C system, will improve the fidelity between the commissioning progress and the integrated automation system.