At CERAWeek 2018, Emerson’s systems and solutions business president Jim Nyquist shares ways to improve capital project performance
Capital projects over a billion dollars fail more often than not. Over budget, over schedule—projects cannot be done the same way since these failures impact the overall financial performance of manufacturers and producers.
Jim noted that the traditional projects processes needed to be reworked. Best practices can make incremental improvements, but the projects need a reset with technologies and changed workflows. By working with the industries, Emerson created Project Certainty. The four pillars are eliminating costs, eliminating complexity, expert partnering and accommodating late project changes.
He explained that more than 50 technology enablers contribute to these four pillars. One example is the wiring from the instruments in the process back to the control system. Electronic marshalling streamlines the process and eliminates work. Another example is smart commissioning, where each loop between must be manually checked out. Smart commissioning automates the workflow and reduces the commissioning time for each loop from 140 minutes per loop to 10 minutes per loop.
Cloud-based engineering is another example where the entire control system is virtualized and project teams from across the globe can work of the control system configuration and perform a virtual factory acceptance testing to remove time from the project schedule. Using these digital technologies, costs and schedules are being significantly improved.
The documented savings have been significant. Engineering hours reduced 30-40%, wiring and installation costs reduced, faster commissioning and startup time.
Visit the Project Certainty area on Emerson.com to learn more about how these technologies and streamlined work practices can improve your capital project performance.
