Roadmap Home

Element 1: Scenario-based Project Planning

Element 2: Automated Design

Element 3: Integrated, Automated Procurement and Supply Network

Element 4: Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site

Element 5: Intelligent Self-maintaining and Repairing Operational Facility

Element 6: Real-time Project and Facility Management, Coordination and Control

Element 7: New Materials, Methods, Products & Equipment

Element 8: Technology- & Knowledge-enabled Workforce

Element 9: Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration

Definition of Key Terms

Participants

Project Deliverables

Technical Framework for Lifecycle Data Management & Information Integration

Based on prioritized requirements of the other Elements and a consensus defined timeline develop a schedule of framework development and deployment and maintenance. Develop or adopt data management standards, structure, models, classification, language (an ontology or grammar), and automated information exchange standards as industry-wide standards for the capital projects and facilities industry that must be applicable for all capital project functions and facility lifecycle phases. The Technical Framework will enable different companies to seamlessly share information and data and interface as "modules" of an extended enterprise for any project and throughout the lifecycle of a plant, in support of the vision for interoperability.

A deployment of the Technical Framework will result in the creation of an Asset Lifecycle Information System (ALIS) (see Key Terms).

A technical framework is currently in development, and will be further developed in the Focus Area and Projects detailed in Element 9 of the Capital Projects Technology Roadmap. The following is a preliminary technical framework, and is intended to stimulate discussion and interest in this focus area of this Roadmap Element and its projects.

Technical Framework (preliminary)

The Technical Framework consists of three elements: the Smart Container, the Architecture, and the Ontologies (see Key Terms). The Framework is not just theoretical idea, but will be demonstrated as valid and useful to the industry when it has been deployed by multiple software owners in an open interoperable environment.

Smart Container

High fidelity container of Knowledge, Information, Data. A Smart Container is a container that could contain other Smart Containers. The goal of a Smart Container would be to provide a container rich in metadata and history without any loss of information during any transactions or transformation. A Smart Container would consist of the following properties:

  1. Content - The payload that represents the Knowledge, Information, Data being conveyed. The content would be associated to ontologies that would provide data models, classifications and definitions for the attributes, commodities and containers. The content can be in three hierarchal forms:

    2. i. Low Level - Atomic - Indivisible values associated to an attribute like: Temperature, Diameter, Shipping Date, etc.

    ii. Middle Level - Molecular -Aggregation of atomic data associated to a commodity like: Pump, Valve, Building, etc.

    iii. High Level - Compound - Aggregation of molecular data associated to a container like: Piping and Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID), Equipment Data Sheet, Plot Plan, etc.

  2. Modes - Defines the global state of the container. The two modes would be:

    3. i. Immutable - Read only and unchangeable by any stakeholder including the owner. Used to capture a moment in time of the contained data. Would have a document level Lifecycle State association like "Released for Construction", etc and could be used in a legal context.

    ii. Active - A work in progress and could be changed by an owner. Used to convey preliminary data to support concurrent business processes.

  3. Meta data - Information about the content. Meta data can be associated to ALL LEVELS of the content and can include:

    4. i. Effectivity - A set of dates that would be used to identify the start and stop for a data element, commodity, or container. This feature combined with the fact that all data entered in the container would not be deleted, would provide the mechanism for full change history.

    ii. Access Control - Security feature to control who has access to consume or change the data within container.

    iii. Lifecycle State - A series of milestone for a data element, commodity, and container that facilitates the interpretation of the values which associates it to business process states like Issued for Review or Issued for Construction.

    iv. Ownership - Defines the source of the data and what the primary entity is that could determine the existence of the data. Ownership can be dynamic and changed via Lifecycle State values.

  4. Associations - Linkage between the content to internal and external sources. The linkage can be in two forms:

    5. i. Implied - Via the ontology's data models and classifications.

    ii. Explicit - Via reference pointers to other instances of content.

  5. Medium - Defines the technology medium used to persist the content. The de facto standard for the medium would be XML due to its wide acceptance in all industries and relative ease of use and consumption.
  6. Protocol - Set of standards used to define and specify the interpretation of the container and its content. The Protocol would also specify the ontologies used by the container and the rules for Effectivity, Access Control, Lifecycle State, and Ownership.

Architecture

The Architecture of the Technical Framework would be divided into three layers:

  1. Application Layer - Functional applications that author Lifecycle Data content. This layer could also include Knowledge-bases and Lifecycle Data systems. This layer generally has functional scope.
  2. Interchange Layer - The inter-application medium traversed by Smart Containers that convey content between the applications, Knowledge-bases and instances of facility Lifecycle Data systems. The Smart Containers in this layer would generally have global scope.
  3. Consolidation Layer - A centralized storage service that primarily provides consolidation and ownership resolution services and cross functional/entity reporting. The centralized storage would contain all of the characteristics and behavior of a Smart Container. This layer would have global scope.

Ontologies

ISO 10303, ISO 15926, ISO 12006, IAI/IFC, FIATECH/cfiXML Schemas

  1. Data Models
  2. Reference Data Libraries

Guiding Principles

The following are some of the guiding principles for the Technical Framework:

  • Supports the integration of data, independent of the source or destination applications.
  • Improves the efficiency of the lifecycle for the asset owner.
  • Is not a 'mother-of-all-databases', but rather is a federation of individual systems, or a collection of tools that allows the users to get the job done.
  • Is a platform or foundation for the applications in the application layer, providing services that enable consolidation of data from disparate sources.
  • Includes the definition of performance standards and criteria, thus allowing users or vendors to test individual components against those criteria to see if they will work with other components in the whole federated system.
  • Includes use-cases and business requirements definitions, as there has to be a business case for vendors to create applications that are in conformance, and for owner/operators to use the technical framework within their organizations.

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