Solutions Portfolio Reduces CAPEX Costs by Two to Five Percent

Dec. 15, 2008
Intergraph releases SPO Project Execution

Intergraph has released the third solution of its SmartPlant Enterprise for Owner Operators (SPO) portfolio, SPO Project Execution. Complementing the SPO Core and SPO Operating Plant solutions, SPO Project Execution provides processes for the successful execution of greenfield/brownfield capital expenditure (CAPEX) projects by Owner Operators and Project Management Contractors. 

The SPO solutions portfolio enables plant owner operators and project management contractors to create and maintain the engineering design basis, optimize plant operations, increase productivity throughout the plant life-cycle and shorten project schedules. SPO Project Execution builds upon the SPO Core solution, which manages core work processes and is a prerequisite for implementation, and includes out-of-the-box business packages for managing project changes, non-conformities and technical queries.

SPO Project Execution can also reduce CAPEX costs by two and five percent. These savings result from improved management and visibility of project change, as well as schedule reduction and earlier production by avoiding project delays brought about by late responses to technical queries. Additionally, the handover of non-conformity data related to affected plant assets can result in annual operational expenditure savings of $2-3 million per $1 billion CAPEX investment. This comes from reducing the probability of plant incidents and, where incidents do occur, enabling documentation to be rapidly presented to allow the plant to be brought more quickly back into production.

The SPO Project Execution Solution provides a unique level of change control within plant engineering and design projects reducing the risk of cost and schedule overruns. It ensures auditable traceability through the review, approval and implementation cycle for changes using automated workflows and adherence with owner operator project authorization matrices.

The SPO non-conformity process is closely linked and integrated with other SPO project execution processes, such as technical queries or management of change, and demonstrates compliance with regulatory requirements for managing non-conformities. The SPO non-conformity process provides auditable traceability of the process of reviewing and approving non-conformities and facilitates linking them to affected parts of the plant, such as area or system tag.

The technical query process in SPO simplifies the administration and processing queries. Consistent handling and follow-up will be ensured by flexible workflow templates and management reports. Monitoring technical queries through SPO provides plant engineering project managers with an overview of the state of design and construction on a project.