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A Hyper-Active Market: How Can Industry Respond?
By Joe Morray
It is common knowledge that the level of capital spending in most major plant-oriented markets is at record levels. While this has resulted in excellent growth opportunities for everyone in the facilities design and construction industries, it has put significant visibility on technologies solutions (good news). But this has also revealed certain limitations. We must look to our industry (EPC’s, owners, and suppliers) to determine the actions that can be taken now, as a collective group, to increase the speed and effectiveness of technology assimilation in this hyper-active market.
- In order to simultaneously increase work throughput, ensure a quality product, and deliver an economical process, we increasingly see the ability to transfer digital information (not only drawings) as critical. One of the universal roadblocks to this seems to be the supplier organizations, where delivering not only fit-for-purpose components, but also fit-for-purpose information, is perceived as too expensive. We spend so much time and money “converting” information; someone will inevitably realize a competitive advantage by offering to deliver this information in a form specified for the project. As an industry, we need to start expecting it.
- At a recent conference of very successful and prominent EPC and owner companies involved in plant design technologies, I went around the room asking how many people on their staff were dedicated to creating electronic catalogue and specification data. The number averaged a minimum of 5-10 people per organization. It turns out that everyone is working on basically the same thing. Further, it was recognized that the competitive advantage around these activities were virtually nil (although exceedingly important). It is time for owners and EPC’s to come together and create a set of standard catalogue/specification data that is shared by all users of a given technology.
- With larger project size comes multiple organizations sharing work scope. This has put not only a burden on the integration of data, but also the task of finding qualified personnel in each organization who have requisite training to work on a common system. This becomes a major limitation when hiring local companies that have not been exposed to the newest technologies. I am puzzled that vendors, including Intergraph, have not set up broad industry training and certification capabilities to unify practices around their products.
- The scarcity of qualified human resources is common knowledge; the result of an uneven and unpredictable market over the past twenty years. I won’t go into the hand wringing that we are all doing around how to solve the problem, but I do want to reinforce the need to attract young minds coming out of college to the world of plant and project engineering. I want to particularly recognize the work being done by the ECC organization to reach out successfully to a number of academic institutions and establish a presence related to our industry. And always remember, our kids our largely technology savvy.
I have come to the conclusion that each of us need to evaluate what the competitive advantages are within each of our companies (and to be highly critical). If an activity isn’t delivering a competitive advantage, seek the most cost effective way to realize the task. Collectively, as an industry, we need to step forward and deliver some of these solutions that can be shared globally.
Joe Morray is president of Trinity Technologies Corp., a process and power industries consulting firm that helps owner/operators and EPC firms succeed in the use of information systems. The company specializes in driving companies to align work processes, technology, and organizational change requirements for the plant environment.
EMC/Documentum
