Technip Contract Award

As a world leader in the fields of project management, engineering and construction for the oil and gas industry, Technip has carved out an impressive reputation for the safe execution of projects.

The company’s subsea division specialises in underwater pipelay, subsea construction and diving services, in support of the global oil and gas industry. These services are delivered by a fleet of 16 vessels.

As well as specialist pipelay and construction equipment, these vessels are equipped with numerous Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), whose software controls a wide range of engineering processes and equipment. Managing and tracking changes to this software is a complex process, made all the more challenging as the vessels are at sea, making it harder for shore-based engineers to keep in touch with the latest software status.

However, this is about to change. Technip is working with Livingston-based Elite Control Systems to implement a Software Configuration Management package called Asset Guardian. Initially designed for their own use by an in-house ECS team of automation, process control, and software risk specialists, it proved remarkably popular and is now used in a wide range of industries around the globe. Asset Guardian simplifies even the most complex tasks in software configuration management, reducing risk in process-critical software development and operation in high-value production environments. It is also a highly flexible online system that tracks, backs up, guards and protects every aspect and change within an organisation including software, documents and hardware configuration.
Normally, in the event of a simple component breakdown or loss of a document, it could take days or even weeks to trace all the changes that have been made - software or hardware – from its original form. But with Asset Guardian, all changes are recorded and held at a central point, allowing for quick and easy access to restore the system.

Not only is it useful for disaster recovery in terms of software recovery and recording hardware configuration, it also has uses as a quality assurance tool in that it makes for straightforward, semi-automatic tracking of revisions to documents and correspondence. In addition, Elite Control Systems can provide personnel training if required, although the system is highly intuitive.

Sam MacKay, MD of Elite, says: “What makes Asset Guardian so powerful is that it has a number of features, but you can use it in a number of different ways at the same time.” He explains, “The software is all there, so if you have a mishap, you have a disaster recovery plan. But you can also use it as your quality control tool for tracking numerous different aspects, which is necessary under ISO9001:TickIT.” Asset Guardian meets Technip’s controls management requirements on several fronts and has now been installed on the pipelay vessel “Deep Blue” - the largest, and one of the most advanced, ultra-deepwater reeled pipelay and subsea construction vessels in the industry. By using satellite broadband connection, security control and servers based in Aberdeen, the onshore engineers now have central access to all the data onboard the vessels.

The system will also be employed on the brand new dive support vessel, Skandi Arctic, the first ship to have a computer-controlled diving system. Russ Prevett, Controls Engineer, is responsible for controls engineering across the Technip fleet. Prevett said: “A central configuration management and database system is key to maintaining accuracy of information in our offshore work environment. Asset Guardian meets our needs by enabling information to be updated simultaneously both offshore and onshore, and giving us real-time visibility of the data. It also complies with IEC standards 61508 and 61511". Prevett continued, “Controls Engineering is not a discipline that you can simply ‘manage’. It’s something you need knowledge of. You need to own it… but you also need to really understand it.” And that’s where Asset Guardian comes into its own.

Some major users of Asset Guardian in the Oil and Gas and Power industries are:

• BP Angola
• BP Azerbaijan Operations (Onshore & Offshore)
• BP Azerbaijan Projects
• BP Pipelines (Tulsa and Alaska)
• Technip (Subsea pipe laying)
• ScottishPower (all 12 UK generation plants)
• AMEC NNC (AMEC’s nuclear services business)
• British Energy (Torness Nuclear Power Station)
• Scottish and Southern Energy (Peterhead Power Station)

“A central configuration management and database system is key to maintaining accuracy of information
in our offshore work environment. Asset Guardian meets our needs by enabling information to be updated
simultaneously both offshore and onshore, and giving us real-time visibility of the data. It also complies
with IEC standards 61508 and 61511”.