6 Goals of Asset Document Management for Operation and Maintenance

Operation Excellence requires up-to-date Asset Documentation

The overall goal of Asset Document Management (ADM) for Operation and Maintenance (O&M) is to keep all technical asset documentation up to date so that it is available in the latest approved revision whenever and wherever needed in O&M processes.

The asset documentation can only be up to date when kept in one single repository regardless of the type, discipline, and format of the documents. And it can only be available to O&M personnel when interconnected with the technical objects and O&M processes which are managed in Asset Management Systems.

That sounds simple but is already difficult enough because of continuous changes in facilities and plants. However, the biggest challenge is the handover of all technical documentation from the engineering project into the O&M phase.

Information and Processes

Asset Document Management for Operation and Maintenance (ADM for O&M) of large facilities, plants, and grids is document control of technical as-built documentation and its change in engineering projects.

ADM is a major part of Asset Lifecycle Information Management. Both are aiming to:  

  1. Structure asset and engineering INFORMATION as effectively as possible and

  2. Organize asset and engineering documentation PROCESSES as efficiently as possible.

Across all phases of the lifecycle of a plant.

Owners and operators of facilities and plants have 6 major goals when introducing ADM for engineering and maintenance documents:

Goal 1 – Central Repository

Being compliant with regulations makes it unavoidable to have a central repository for controlled engineering documents. ADM Systems can enforce data integrity and liability. Only with a central repository, it is possible to establish a company-wide standard for asset documentation regarding

  • Document naming and numbering

  • Categories, attributes, and classification standards

  • Version and Revision control

  • Review and approval processes

  • Relationship of assets, tags, and equipment to documents

  • Change Management

  • Roles and access permissions

  • Restricted access to confidential documents

  • Viewing and controlled printing

  • Collaboration with external partners 

ADM Systems can ensure that all documentation is up to date, correct, and reliable by giving guidance to the users to find and use the right documents, but also to add and change what they must change. As a result, maintenance personnel are only provided with the latest approved and released revision of a document. The system ensures that all changes are made in a pre-determined and structured way.

ADM Systems support the redlining process for engineering documents, provide digital viewing of all formats, compare, annotate, and controlled download and printing with PDF rendering, watermarks, and stamping to ensure that controlled hard copies can be supplied to remote areas.

Goal 2 – Consolidating document silos

Due to historical reasons, we usually find several ADM systems in use at companies in the process industry. None of our new customers have no IT solution for ADM in place. The problem is that most companies have too many of them which results in many disconnected repositories or simply information silos of engineering information in one company, site, or even for a single plant.

For most organizations, documentation on their assets has built up over decades. The information for any specific asset is distributed between document management systems, shared drives, and paper archives (scans). On top of that, Asset Management systems like SAP PM or IBM Maximo, Engineering data management systems like AvevaNet or Hexagon and Geo information systems have limited document management functionality as well.

Worse still, different departments, sites, and disciplines have maintained their own information stores. With so much information held in various silos throughout the organization, O&M staff are faced with documentation that is incomplete, inaccurate, or out of date.

One of the reasons why these diverse repositories exist is that EPCs hand over all project documentation in bulk but not indexed for seamless import to existing repositories of the owner/operator. Another reason is that repositories are simply taken over as part of an acquisition of plants from other companies.

We believe that the consolidation of multiple information silos into one central repository can only succeed if the ADM System has strong bulk import and migration capabilities. The other success factor for introducing one single repository is that the ADM system is tightly interconnected with the leading asset management system and the leading Engineering Data Management tool. These integrations are synchronizing tags/equipment and asset information (such as tag/equipment metadata) into the ADM System. As a result, you can derive strategies to migrate and integrate as shown in the diagram above.

Goal 3 - Streamlined O&M processes

The next benefit of having ADM in place is that documents are accessible and easy to find for the users who need them to get their work done. The access must be quick wherever and whenever needed, even for service contractors or suppliers.

Asset Document Management (ADM) for operation and maintenance cannot disregard the fact that most of the engineering and O&M documents are related to technical objects on the asset. The information for any specific asset is managed in asset management systems like SAP PM or IBM Maximo. These systems have a technical object register, a tag library, and manage the asset breakdown structure. They also manage maintenance notifications, work order planning and execution, manage spare parts and procurement.

Engineering data management systems like AvevaNet, SmartPlant, or Hexagon manage process data, instrument data, electrical data, 3D spatial layouts, and performance data.  Not to forget Geo information systems which manage engineering information as well as geo information for all assets across the map.

Change  projects can be governed by project management systems like Oracle Primavera, MS Projects, or SAP PPM. Project work packages, tasks, dates, status, and project metadata are those data objects to navigate an engineering project to successful implementation.

We see asset management systems as well as engineering data management systems as the leading applications to manage the information of technical objects while ADM systems manage the lifecycle of engineering and O&M documents. Most engineering documents have a relation to one or many technical objects. This relationship should be managed by the ADM system if the information on the technical objects is synchronized with an ADM Technical Object Workspace to which engineering documents are linked to (handover process). As a result, maintenance engineers are provided with the latest, approved revision of documents of a related technical object, equipment, or tags when accessing them through the asset management system.

Usually, it is the tag/equipment number that is the unique identifier to relate the technical object to the asset documents. Once a document in the Master Document Workspace is deemed to be relevant for operation and maintenance it can be handed over to the related technical objects.

Managing the change of engineering and asset documentation as part of an engineering project requires the integration of ADM project workspaces with project management systems to synchronize project information. We recommend creating an ADM project workspace at least for each supplier contract or each internal project work package. While the project management system manages the project progress, the ADM system manages the documents that are subject to change. That includes sign-out to the project workspace with revision request for documents to be changed, revision management, collaboration with suppliers and contractors, roles and permissions, review and approval process, progress reporting, etc.

Goal 4 – Controlled Access

The ADM System facilitates efficient and secure collaboration within interdisciplinary teams and with suppliers and contractors.

All access permissions to engineering and O&M documents are granted to a role at the site, plant, or area level. For example, a user who is assigned to the role of “Reader” of a particular plant can view the documents, download, annotate, redline, and request a new revision for documents related to that plant. In compliance with ISO standards, it is not allowed for users to edit documents or add versions directly in the Master Document Repository.

Being assigned to the role of the “Responsible Project Engineer” in a project workspace, allows the user to edit documents, add versions, and even new documents. In Review & Approval state flows, users are getting assignments according to the role they are assigned to.

On top of role-based permissions, there is another layer of access limitations by classifying single documents as confidential or even strictly confidential. Viewing documents with such a classification requires the user to be at least assigned to the role of “Reader” of that plant but also to be eligible to see confidential documents.

Goal 5 - Traceable documentation of change

This is all about the management of change. Needless to say, that plants and facilities change a lot over the course of their lifecycle. Engineers and technicians must be provided with the latest approved information to run and maintain the plant securely and efficiently. For the operations team, it is of utmost importance to get the most recent documents of the assets to work on.

As a result, managing the change and the traceability of all changes is one of the key components of ADM software solutions. The features that ensure traceability are:

  • Revision history

  • Audit trail

  • Revision sign-out for change to one or multiple project / WIP workspaces simultaneously

  • Revision sign-in with notification and acknowledgment

  • Review and approval state flows to comply with SOPs

  • Change request approval workflow

  • Redlining

  • Controlled viewing and printing

We are using the term Asset Lifecycle Information Management (AIM) to scope the traceability of changes and the organization of the plant documentation from design and construction throughout handover and operation to decommissioning. It is subject to multiple ISO standards like (ISO 19650 – BIM standard, ISO 15926 – AIM in the Process Industry, ISO 81346 – AIM in Power Plants). I have dedicated 2 articles to Asset Lifecycle Information Management which will be published later.

Goal 6 - Handover from Projects to the O&M

The investment into a capital project should return revenue as soon as possible after the completion of construction and commissioning of that investment. A prerequisite for a swift return on investment is a complete and efficient documentation handover of all relevant documents from the engineering project to the O&M phase. Hundreds of thousands of documents must be transitioned from the project organization which is discipline and project-phase oriented to O&M which is asset and system-oriented. As a result, the documentation handover process must connect the engineering and O&M documentation to the technical objects (equipment and tags) on a plant.

When maintenance engineers plan or execute maintenance, inspection, repair, and operation activities on assets and equipment they must have awareness and access to all relevant engineering documents for those assets. This is only possible when Asset Management Systems and ADM Systems are tightly integrated in a way as described in goal 3 – Streamlined O&M processes.

The handover can only be complete and efficient if planned from the beginning of the capital project. Each document that is created over the course of the capital project must carry information on whether it is relevant for O&M and if so for which asset, equipment, or tag class.

Owners and operators have a strong interest in standardizing the handover process and therefore organized themselves in industry committees. Quite a few standards have been established over the past 100 years to organize the handover of engineering documents and data from design and construction to O&M. I have dedicated the next articles to those standards which are relevant for document handover in the process industry.

Summary

In this article, you have learned that there are 6 good reasons why it is paramount to have a proper ADM in place when planning, investing, operating, and maintaining large facilities or plants. It begins with the document handover planning already at the beginning of the capital project. But also, over the course of the operation time of the plant, management of document change is the precondition for effective and secure plant operation.

 

Author: Jens Friehmelt is a Senior Manager in OpenText Professional Services EMEA leading an international team that combines multiple OpenText technologies to serve customers with best-practice solutions for Engineering, Construction, and Maintenance processes.

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