Designing even a moderately sized process plant is a complex endeavor. Managing the design, construction, handover and ramp-up to minimize cost, confusion and the time to plant profitability requires an improved way of tracking all of this information. ISO 15926 is a globally recognized standard for data integration that improves the interoperability of design applications. This white paper highlights a number of users who share their thoughts about OpenPlant and ISO 15926. 

Highly engineered infrastructure assets are unique due to their scale, complexity, and life expectancy. This white paper discusses the unique information technology requirements needed support decision making in highly regulated nuclear environments. The key to managing changing information, not only across the lifecycle of these assets, but also across information silos and disparate functional groups, is an interoperable platform that includes information modeling, change and relationship management, and permissions rights.

Among the thousands of structures, systems, and components (SSC) that comprise
a nuclear power plant, the component class relied upon most for protection, control,
monitoring, and supervision is instrumentation and control (I&C) components and
systems. A typical unit has approximately 10,000 sensors and detectors and 3,000
miles of instrumentation cables. In total, the mass of I&C components averages
approximately one thousand tons. Next to buildings and structures, I&C represents
the heaviest and most extensive infrastructure in any plant.
While statistics that detail the number of fully analog, digital, or hybrid are unavailable,
approximately 40 percent of the world’s 439 nuclear power plants have made some level
of digital I&C upgrade to important safety systems. Ninety percent of all the digital
I&C installations performed were modernizations of existing reactors, while 10 percent
were at new reactors. Moreover, all of the 34 reactors currently under construction
worldwide have some digital I&C components in their control and safety systems.1

Within the oil and gas industry, stakeholders associated with a given organization require a secure information modeling platform for asset lifecycle information management. The platform should be delivered via a suite of interoperable applications and services designed to improve the management, operational performance, efficiency, safety, and compliance of oil and gas-based infrastructure assets, while readily handling any number of variables created by handover and change.

The mission of Bentley Systems has long focused on helping our users improve the world’s infrastructure. We do this by providing software solutions, products, and services that improve the productivity and quality of the work performed by infrastructure professionals through the lifecycle (design-build-operate) of infrastructure assets. Given the fundamental importance of services provided to society at large by infrastructure, this mission is certainly a worthy and significant endeavor.

The interoperability platform described in this white paper is a strategic component of any infrastructure project by creating an interoperable project environment and enabling true interoperations among the diverse software applications applied to the project. 

Solving the Nuclear Industry's Brain Drain:  How to Capture and Manage your Company's Institutional Knowledge for Immediate Action

Striving to maintain the nuclear design basis: What to look for in an electronic design engineering solution.

Nuclear power plants in the United States have continued to improve their performance steadily over the past decade.  In 2007, according to industry data, these plants achived a record-low production cost of 1.68 cents per kilowatt hour and a record-high level of electricity production.  This is a result of many high-performing nuclear fleets that have evolved since deregulation in 1997.  What has helped maintain and improve industry results has been the performance improvement (PI) process.