Interoperability Needs & Data Standards (INDS)

Project Manager: Tom Teague, (713) 728-9140 or teague@eplantdata.com

Benefits: Provide business focus and online information resources to help industry incrementally capture $15.8 billion/year interoperability benefits identified by NIST.

Overview

This project combines two existing FIATECH projects (DSC and IRR). The focus of this project is the first step in the FIATECH Interoperability Work Process (see below) to identify high business value usage scenarios and project opportunities. While this project has a long-term goal to identify all high-value opportunities across the facility life cycle, it uses an incremental approach, and so high business value projects can be started at any time.

Second, a number of interoperability data standards efforts exist, and so this project provides an online information resource to learn about existing industry interoperability data standards activities that may be relevant to the identified use cases and roadmap elements. To learn more about the basics of software interoperability and the classification system used for the interoperability data standards clearinghouse, download this pdf report.

FIATECH Interoperability Work Process

  1. Business needs
    Identify high business value industry use cases and define data subsets that cross organization and software boundaries to support industry work processes.

    Identify existing industry data standards that are relevant to high value subset industry needs.

    Identify and define high priority software interoperability deployment projects.

  2. Software deployment
    Adopt, adapt or develop XML schemas to meet high-value business needs.

    Collaborate/consult with industry partners, including relevant standards efforts.

    Deploy XML interoperability solutions in industry software to address high-value needs.

  3. Commercial practices
    Industry use and validate interoperable software on commercial projects.

    Validate business value and share industry best practices to capture value.

  4. Industry standards
    Feed commercially-validated industry practices into relevant industry standards efforts.

  5. Repeat while business results obtained

Project Status

Consult the FIATECH Interoperability Project Status Roadmap, which shows how current FIATECH interoperability projects align with the overall interoperability work process and to see key project activities for 2005 and 2006. The following has been completed or is planned for the INDS project.

  • 2002: Completed and published initial interoperability data standards survey
  • 2003: Completed initial version of data standards clearinghouse web site
  • 2005: Redesigned/redeployed data standards clearinghouse web site
  • 2005: Identified initial set of high-value usage scenarios for Automated Design (Element 2)
  • 2005: Produced elaboration of Element 9 interoperability technical framework
  • 2005-2006 Document and publish the high business value use cases for Element 2
  • 2006: Identify/document/prioritize the high business value needs for Elements 1,3,4, 5 and 6.
  • 2006: Identify/describe project proposals for follow-on interoperability deployment projects that meet the high-priority, highest business value needs
  • 2006: Draft/issue initial version of the FIATECH Interoperability Needs Report that incorporates all key project deliverables (see activities section)

Business Case

Focused Interoperability Needs: This project is the essential first step to achieving the FIATECH Roadmap vision of seamless interoperability: "Where information is available on demand, wherever, whenever and to whomever needs it." The interoperability problem for the capital facilities industry is enormous, and so industry cannot afford to develop interoperability solutions to "anything and everything” without a laser-like business value focus on projects which will deliver high value results. This project provides the means to identify, describe, focus and prioritize industry interoperability needs and benefits, and to describe potential high-value follow-on interoperability deployment projects.

Shared Information Resource for Data Standards: It is important to leverage existing interoperability standards work and so maintaining an inventory of available standards work as matched to the roadmap elements and the high business value use cases is essential to avoid duplicating work. By understanding and capturing the current state of industry standards efforts in a consistently formatted framework, industry technology users are better able to assess their technology choices and make more informed decisions about when to implement technology that is 1) more interoperable with others in the supply chain, 2) more likely to be supported by technology suppliers in the future, and 3) less expensive. By working collectively and sharing the costs to maintain information on evolving standards, participants have access to more complete information at a fraction of the cost of developing and maintaining the materials individually.

Project Activities

Business-driven Interoperability Needs Report (evergreen): An incrementally produced and evergreen report for project participants and FIATECH members. For each Roadmap element with identified interoperability projects the following activities are anticipated:

  1. Review the Roadmap project definitions with roadmap element champions to understand previously identified needs from a FIATECH Roadmap vision perspective.
  2. Conduct confidential interviews with project participants and survey them and other FIATECH members to understand and document overall work processes, software systems used, and to identify high-value opportunities. This activity will leverage prior work such as the FIATECH LCDM Information Flow Map, the PISTEP Activity Model and the AEX project information flow model for equipment life cycle.
  3. Project participants will prioritize identified opportunities in each roadmap element to screen the large set of opportunities into the few that will deliver highest business value.
  4. Identify and document relevant existing data interoperability standards efforts and learn what work processes, software data transactions and use cases have been previously identified by industry in those efforts that are related to the high priority use cases. Adopt/adapt previous work to identify needs and data details from these efforts as available and appropriate.
  5. Document standard use cases for high priority opportunities, including documentation of the industry work process, the software systems used in producing and consuming data, the data transactions and the data flows. Review by email, telephone and web conferences to reach consensus among project participants.
  6. Produce detailed data definitions for highest priority data transactions. Review by email, telephone and web conferences to reach consensus among project participants.
  7. Prepare project plan proposals for the highest priority (top 3-4 use cases overall) as a basis for conducting future industry software interoperability deployment projects.
  8. Incrementally produce a written report, titled "FIATECH Interoperability Needs Report," This document is intended to be evergreen, like the FIATECH Roadmap, with the industry consensus high-value opportunities, workflow maps, software data flow maps, a description of relevant existing industry standards, a list of high priority data transaction use cases and detailed data definitions for those transactions and use cases for use in defining deployment project opportunities.

Information Technology Interoperability Needs (evergreen): In parallel to business needs, this project will maintain an evergreen draft of the Interoperability Technical Framework for Element 9 to capture the information technology interoperability needs in parallel and in combination with the business-driven interoperability needs listed above.

Data Standards Clearinghouse (evergreen): Existing interoperability data standards efforts are presented both by high priority use cases and by Roadmap Element. We continuously inventory the various standard organizations, identify others, and seek their input in identifying relevant standards for our industry. To contribute content to this clearinghouse, please fill out this data standards input form and email it to FIATECH.

Project Participants

Project Deliverables

The deliverables from this project are:

  1. Demystifying Interoperability - introductory paper about interoperability and data standards classification characteristics
  2. FIATECH Interoperability Projects Status Roadmap
  3. Interoperability Technical Framework Requirements
  4. High business value use cases and data subsets for the facility life cycle.
  5. Interoperability data standards web site (by usage scenario and roadmap element)
  6. The FIATECH Interoperability Needs Report includes work process maps, software information flow maps, use case summaries, detailed data definitions to support high business value use cases, and high-priority interoperability deployment project proposals

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