CEO Raymond Weeda, who started Silverhorse in 2002 as Luceo Systems with two others as a firm that publishes business process initially targeted at management of risk, has created an enhancement to its Connect technology that allows companies to run operations from a visual interface so they're looking at it from a 3D model perspective.

 

Since switching to Silverhorse in 2014, the technology has been used across a number of infrastructure projects including power, utilities and desalination plants. Other projects of note include the Wiggins Coal export terminal and the Brisbane Airport Link and Northern Busway, Devil Creek Gas Plant and the Ravensthore Nickel Mine.

 

The technology is a publishing tool, with a new model effectively published each time anew for clients which can become the standard way a company does things, "sucking up" corporate knowledge as projects and companies develop and grow.

 

In oil and gas, the technology is suited for both brownfields maintenance and expansion and greenfields projects, avoiding the knowledge drain that occurs with workforce churn.

 

"If you get churn on people the corporate process is still sitting there to deliver a standardised approach for a project," Weeda told Energy News.

 

"This is a way of embodying the process which is more tangible."

 

While one of Silverhorse's streams looks at construction, commissioning and maintenance for subcontractors or EPCs, the firm is now suggesting to major operators that they can better manage the process if they own the data.

 

"You can reduce your risk by instructing your EPCs and subcontractors to subscribe to your process as opposed to losing sight of the data as it goes down the supply chain," Weeda said.

 

"You can see the risk reflected in the 3D model and create inspection campaigns directly from that, which then drops down into the Connect technology in the Cloud, creates the maintenance, work packs or job cards," Weeda explained.

 

"The data is then pushed onto our mobile device which is Inspection Connect, then we have 3D models on that so they can orientate themselves. Then when you're finished you synchronise it back to the Cloud and on to the 3D model. 

 

"So it's a nice, simple integrated model that gives them their BIMS (Building Information Management Systems) technology - driving things from a visual perspective as opposed to from drawings.

 

"If you can overlay things happening in the field into a visual model you don't need to task a person with collecting all the information from all the disparate systems and presenting it to a meeting."

 

This is a big shift for industry, Weeda said, as people have a natural bias in collecting data if they're used to doing it in a particular way, then their presentation is biased, albeit not necessarily wrong depending on how good they are.

 

Silverhorse is suggesting to oilers that if they're pulling all that data into a model on a screen, they can see past inspection information and even drill down into specific equipment, all at their fingertips so subject matter experts can offer alternatives.

 

"We're running a pilot with an operator, it's looking pretty promising," Weeda said.

 

Ideally, data ownership should occur as high up the supply chain as possible, hence why Silverhorse is targeting operators, to make it the most efficient.

 

The technology appears to have been timed well for the operations and maintenance phase of Australia's $200 billion LNG boom.

 

"Every operator needs to reduce costs and are moving their models from a decentralised model, outsourcing everything, to bringing things back in-house again, and this is a neat way of achieving that," Weeda said.