Objective:
Assist U.S. industries in developing and implementing interoperability standards and work process improvements that reduce the life cycle costs and risks for the design, purchase, fabrication, installation and operation of equipment for capital facilities. Investigate other types of construction supply chains where innovations and interoperability could reduce the life cycle costs and risks and improve project performance and the performance of capital facilities.

Background:
U.S. industries seek to improve the design, delivery and operation of capital facilities through advanced uses of information technologies, e.g., CADD, CAE, CAM, ERP, SCM and eCommerce (computer-aided design and drafting, computer-aided engineering, computer-aided manufacturing, enterprise resource planning, supply chain management and internet enabled commercial transactions), and the integration of the information systems, e.g., automation of the exchange and sharing of information among systems. Although many of the leading engineering organizations have adopted 3D modeling, project web sites, and information integration technologies in the design and initial documentation phases of capital facilities projects, the capabilities and benefits of these technologies are not being exploited in the procurement, fabrication, inspection, materials management and construction phases. Additionally, the use of engineering and construction information for facility commissioning, maintenance, repair and operations is restricted by the lack of effective information sharing and re-use capabilities.

The design and construction of buildings involves the collaboration of many different companies and individuals. These include architects, civil engineers, procurement contractors, equipment and materials suppliers, project managers and building trade general and sub-contractors. These companies and individuals collaborate in a very complex work process that typically relies on numerous software packages from different software vendors over a lengthy design, approval and construction cycle.

In most cases today these collaborating parties share this vast quantity of information through the exchange of traditional paper documents. Electronic documents may be shared in some cases, however this generally occurs only when two or more parties use the same version of the same software with which the information was initially created. The electronic exchange of design, construction and related documents is in most cases prevented by the absence of a consistent format and syntax for data descriptions used by the firms involved. As a result the same information is often manually interpreted by humans and re-entered into one or more different software systems. This practice, which is often repeated over and over again by each participant in the design and construction work process, is very labor and time-intensive, error prone and costly.

The electronic exchange of design, procurement, installation, operations, maintenance and related equipment information is often prevented by the absence of a consistent format and syntax for data descriptions used by the firms involved. As a result the same information is often manually interpreted by humans and re-entered into one or more different software systems. This practice, which is often repeated over and over again by each organization in the design and construction work process, is very labor and time-intensive, error prone and costly.

There are numerous overlapping and incompatible project delivery and eCommerce systems related to engineering and construction, repeating electronically the chaos of the paper-based work processes. There has been minimal convergence on nomenclature, information exchange standards and improved work packaging to support collaboration, automation and integration for the design, delivery and operation of capital facilities.

The Capital Facilities industry formalized the critical need for interoperability standards in the FIATECH Capital Facilities Technology Roadmap Initiative (2003) with the recommendations for action on the Critical Capability: Integrated and Automated Procurement and Supply Networks. The Construction Industry Institute (CII) Project Team 180, eCommerce for Construction, reported at the August 2002 CII Annual Conference that leading adopters of eCommerce for capital facilities projects have not succeeded in exploiting this technology for the design and delivery of equipment. The lack of interoperability standards is a primary barrier. The 2004 NIST study, “The Cost of Inadequate Interoperability in the Capital Facilities Industry”, estimated an annual cost burden of $15.8 billion due to inadequate interoperability, with $2.2 billion for the specialty fabricators and suppliers.

In FY2004, the AEX project developed and released draft versions of the initial AEX schemas, conducted industry reviews and validation cycles, developed trial implementations, and published the AEX XML Schemas, Version 1.0 in July 2004. With the publication of AEX ver.1.0, many news publications reported on the success and importance of the AEX project. This included Engineering News-Record, CADwire, AEC Automation News, XML Cover Page, XML Mania, and others.

In FY2005, we expanded the participation in the AEX Project to include all stakeholder groups and strengthened the partnerships with industry associations. The Hydraulics Institute, the association of pump manufacturers and related equipment and software suppliers, agreed to work with AEX and established an Electronic Data Exchange Work Group for this purpose. Based on the demonstration of a prototype AEX implementation with a Process Industry Practices (PIP) pump data sheet viewer/editor, presentations at PIP meetings and web meetings, the PIP Steering Team agreed to expand their collaboration with AEX. We have initiated discussions with Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA) to extend the AEX schemas to support instrumentation and controls equipment.

During February – July 2005, the AEX project developed software implementations of the AEX schemas and conducted the AEX Pump Interoperability Demonstration across all stakeholders in the pump supply chain from initial design requirements to completing mechanical design, procurement, request for quote, quote, quote assessment and supplier selection. Eight organizations participated with nine applications demonstrating implementations of the AEX schemas. These interoperability demonstrations were presented at numerous industry conferences and proved to industry that the use of the AEX XML schemas can automate the information exchanges among all participants in the equipment supply chain, with significant savings in cost and time and improved quality.

In FY2006, the AEX project assessed the lessons from:

• working with various equipment supply chains
• the range of equipment information requirements and interoperability priorities among the different industry sectors
• the varying degrees of implementation, adoption and deployment of the AEX schemas, and
• investigating other initiatives developing interoperability standards, and conducted a major revision of the AEX development process, the schema development guidelines and the AEX schema architecture.

In FY2006, the AEX project worked with DuPont to complete a pilot project using AEX implementations with the software applications of their strategic suppliers for centrifugal pumps and for software tools for designing and simulating pumping systems. The AEX project worked with the Hydraulic Institute (HI) to develop the baseline specification for the required AEX data structures for the request for quote and quote transactions for centrifugal pumps. These results will be presented to the HI Standards Committee at the October 2006 meeting of HI for approval to develop an HI/ANSI standard based on the AEX results.

The AEX project collected and analyzed the information exchange requirements for additional types of equipment and developed extensions to the AEX schemas to support new types of equipment: centrifugal fan, air cooled heat exchanger, and a number of valve types: ball, block, butterfly, check, control, diaphragm, gate, globe, needle and plug valves. The AEX project started investigations of the information requirements for different types of compressors: centrifugal, reciprocating and scroll, and of additional usage scenarios during the equipment life cycle, i.e., “Care, Install and Spares” and “As-Installed”.
 

Page created October 2006

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