Engineering Solutions Center Launched

DHAHRAN, August 16, 2009 --Teams of engineers will be able to improve plant performance and reliability in Saudi Aramco’s new Engineering Solutions Center (ESC).

The ESC is a collaborative environment that provides an integrated information center for multi-disciplined engineering teams from Engineering Services and operating facilities. The center initiates a new era of integrated solutions, allowing real-time data to stream from the plant to engineers and other experts using the latest visualization technologies.

Experts from different engineering disciplines can work together across geographical borders and time zones on the same information. The ESC enables assistance to operating facilities, maximizing their performance, efficiency and reliability.

The Process and Control Systems Department recently launched the ESC, located in the core area of company headquarters in Dhahran.

Isam A. Al-Bayat, vice president of Engineering Services; Omar S. Bazuhair, chief engineer; Saleh A. Zaid, department manager; and Engineering Services managers attended the opening ceremony that was followed by the center’s introduction and a demonstration of its abilities.

The center uses a variety of engineering tools to enhance collaboration. Three-D virtualization has already been applied in some facilities, which allows visual fly-throughs of any plant, 360-degree rotation of any piece of equipment or piping and zooming in or out to view individual pieces of equipment or the entire facility.

A key objective of the ESC was accomplished by using the 3-D virtualizations as anchors for important engineering data.

With a few mouse clicks, users can get all the data associated with any piece of equipment directly from the integrated systems, which include the Plant Information System, SAP Plant Maintenance, Engineering Drawing and P&IDs database (iPlant), System Assurance, and Inspection of Facilities and Risk-Based Inspection.

In addition, the physical distance between assets is available within the 3-D presentations, which is useful for maintenance and scaffolding requirements. The integrated infrastructure provides piping volumes and surface areas that can be used in the event of pipe flushing, coating or purging.

The center is equipped with the latest communication technologies, allowing experts from Engineering Services to communicate with their customers regardless of their location. The communications technologies provide instant messaging, audio and video conferencing and desktop-application sharing. That improves the experts’ productivity, allowing them to serve several customers at the same time.

The center extracts its data from the engineering databases and shortens the time engineers usually spend trying to extract data. It also fosters collaboration among engineers from multiple disciplines.

Work is conducted in parallel by engineers at a state-of-the-art center, equipped with large multimedia screens. The multi-discipline environment is aimed at generating wiser decisions, quicker actions and collective ownership of recommendations.

The ESC is a prototype of a more advanced center that will be built at North Park in Dhahran. The new center will be larger with the capability to integrate with more plant data and engineering application packages.