Jay Schwartz with Hexagon ALI

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

project, brown field, Hexagon, epcs, work, call, digital, pnids, facility, conversation, jay, turnaround, handover, information, capture, talk, big, engineering, number, gaps

00:03

Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go.

00:21

Hi, there. Once again, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for joining. Have you ever wondered, you know, I've been a part of a number of large projects, and it the challenge, outside of the simple fact that the project is challenging, but the management of the information is every bit as challenging and keeping that continuity in the hot seat, Jay Schwartz, Hexagon, and we're going to talk about digital projects, because you need to hear about it. Let's get cracking. Yeah, it's gonna be a quick intro, because he was just a meaty conversation. And I know if you're listening out there, and you've been a part of projects, you're saying, oh, man, where's the PNIDs are things change, and it just, it just goes on and on? And if it's a greenfield location, challenges, if it's a brown field location challenges, how can we simplify these project documents, this information, and keep it evergreen? Because you know, as well as I do, I've been on a number as I said, and it's as if you get the PNIDs. And then the next day, they're just out of out of sync with what's happening out there in the physical world, just because well, things happen. You need to get that project up and running, you need to make that transfer. Anyway. Great conversation engaging. So if you're in this is a paper and pencil conversation. posit, learn more, get this information, because Jay just delivers the lumber on this particular conversation. Enjoy it. Jay, welcome to industrial talk. How are you doing today?

02:08

Hey, I'm doing great. It's really good to be here. I've been looking forward to this session now since we set it up here a bit back. And so I'm excited about us talking today.

02:16

I'm excited because I'm not talking to Kevin price. Because now I get to talk to you. And now you're part of my, my stable, my posse of conversations around asset management projects, things like that. So I'm pretty jazzed and jacked about the whole thing too, as well. Before we get into this conversation, for the listeners, give us a little 411 little CV about Jay so they understand why you're such an incredible professional.

02:45

Well, thanks. I'll tell you, I am an electrical engineer by degree I am a licensed engineer and practiced a number of years ago, I started my career out in the instrumentation and controls area. And from the very beginning, I was always interested in how technology could help us do things quicker, better, faster, all of that. And

03:06

actually, by the way, Steve Austin, stronger, better faster. That was

03:12

yeah, yes, yes, yes. And I created this, this. We called it loot gin. And we were using VT 100 alphanumeric terminals. And I had a little graphic display on there of kind of sort of maybe what a loop sheet looked like. And people were plugging in textual data, pushing a button, and we were taking templates, and popping out loot sheets just super quick, rather than actually drafting him up back in the days on the old CAD system. So I've known from my very early days as a young engineer that I was always in pursuit of something new and different, different ways of doing things, improving things. So then along comes the opportunity to come to work for what was in Intergraph in 1992, and have been here every since now, we're Hexagon, of course, acquired by Hexagon, which is a great thing. But I've had the opportunity to be customer facing throughout that entire journey and to apply what I experienced back in the day of doing engineering and projects to apply that within various customers, both EPCs and owners and I had the opportunity to work with small companies as well as global companies, digital transformation efforts with companies and have had the opportunity to play a part in new technologies that Intergraph now Hexagon have been coming out to market with them today as with Kevin price, my counterpart, we both sit in this P S E organization portfolio strategy and enablement and it is exactly what it says it's about the portfolio of the division, the entire portfolio of Hexagon ALI. And it is about the strategy associated with that portfolio, both the internal development strategy that we do with our development teams, as well as the m&a strategy to help us accelerate our journey. Ernie looking out into the marketplace to see if there is leading edge technologies that we can acquire, to fill gaps in the portfolio in a in a more quicker way to a more comprehensive solution out to the marketplace. So, I am responsible for what we call digital projects, whereas Kevin is digital assets. So the two sides of the equation, those are the two major themes of the AI division projects and assets.

05:27

So is it is it the strategic focus of Hexagon ALI, given the fact that you have this PS? E focus is to be able to like you said, find the gaps, technology gaps, fill it with some solutions. So that me as a customer, me as a, a user of your tools. I just I have a one stop shop, but it's it satisfies all aspects of my business as that as opposed to trying to, Hey, over here, I'm interested in this, I'm interested, let me see if it bolts up together is that what we're trying to accomplish? That is

06:05

correct. But with a caveat within our lane, there are always lanes that we don't do at Hexagon ALI, okay. And so let's be really, really good at our line, and example in the project space. So something that we don't do in aeoi, is we, we don't do that front end simulation work. That process plants do their technology suppliers out there that are superior at doing that. And so we partner in those cases with those suppliers, because that front end conceptual design is critical to a project. But we need it to play happy inside of the Hexagon environment inside the Hexagon suite. So we have partnerships for those types of areas. So I'm going to give you that caveat

06:52

when it's good. Yeah, that makes sense. All right. Before we let's let's dive into this particular conversation. For the listeners out there. Tell us about digital projects, what would tell just lay that foundation give us an understanding what you're talking about when we start talking about digital projects.

07:10

Okay, it digital projects handles our deals or addresses every phase of a project, okay, like I said all the way back up to conceptual, actually, prior to conceptual, you have the actual planning phase, where you're trying to determine which project I'm really going to do, which one makes the most business sense, then we move into the conceptual phase, then we move into basic design, detailed design, all the way through to supply chain management, into fabrication construction. And then at this point, we're looking at the handover into an operating facility, digital projects is covers that entire suite, that entire set of lifecycle phases of a project, completely integrated together. So we don't want there to be individual silos, we want it to be an information continuum, if you will, okay. And so this is all in pursuit of delivery of that digital twin, without extra work process is being invoked to produce and deliver that digital twin. Now, that's really, really key right there. Because you can deliver a digital twin today, but in most cases, you have to put extra effort in to do that. We're actually doing the reverse in digital project, we are removing human cycles out, I call it engineering administrivia. I want to remove all of that. But digital projects is about the digital execution of a project through all of those lifecycle phases, applying latest cutting edge technology in an integrated are connected, if you will, environment. So there's this seamless flow of information, as I said this information continue on all the way through those phases.

08:59

What's the what's the problem outside of the obvious? So what you're saying is that these projects have gaps. So I've been a part of projects, yes, there are gaps there's so the solution to digitize this whole process is to eliminate as much as you possibly can those gaps within each phase of the project is that right? And so I can go into a system into a technology and be able to get the latest on it, please crystallize that, that that after like from a use case.

09:44

So so if you take for example, let's let's look at a big part of a project which is called detailed design. Okay, this is where all the disciplines are working collaboratively together. They're producing logical definition of the design PNIDS instrument electrical schematics. They're also producing the physical design, which we coined today, the 3d model, if you will, all of those are various disciplines. So even in the 3d model, you have piping, you have structural, you have equipment, you have a track, you have all the disciplines. In the schematic side, the logical side, you have all the disciplines also. So what we're doing is bringing all of that collectively together seamlessly. So all of those people are working together collaboratively, right, and the system is taking care of making sure that we don't conflict. Now let's talk about what I mean by all right. Historically, everyone knows in a 3d model, we trust that we can find everywhere the pipe hit the steel, interference detection, or clash management, as we call it, we all trust that no engineering firm checks that anymore, okay. The computer can also check data collisions, the computer can check the logical against the physical. Does the piping system, for example, in the 3d model? Does it really represent what you see on the PNID? I'm gonna topology perspective, how about the land sizes, specs, okay? All of these types of changes be done. Within the computer system, which we're doing inside of digital projects. This is part of that engineering administrivia. Lots of cycles are spent today, to try to make sure that we don't have those collisions. Right. And we asked for that.

11:35

Yeah, and here's, here's a real life example. I know that I've got this physical asset out there, and this physical asset is, is, you know, I got the piping, I've got the electrical, I've got the pumps, I've got all of this physical stuff out here. And I guarantee you that back then, maybe, maybe less today. But you know, in one hour, the PNID don't match that asset. Right. It's like all of a sudden, somebody goes out there changes this thing, runs, runs a different pipeline, they never go back to the PNIDs that the the two just by virtue don't don't even work, right. And

12:13

that's right. And when you're in a project, you think about progress today, these are massive, right? 10 billion 15 billion 20 billion, globally executed by a team of engineering companies working follow the sun in engineering, meaning 24 hours a day around the globe, they're working. So how do you keep all of that synchronized? It is a Herculean task to do. And a lot of energy is spent by engineering firms to do that today, okay. And what they do is they put enough money in their budget, that they feel that they check, point that it's acceptable, okay, we're not going to end up in a difficult situation with our client. Well, what we're saying is, we're gonna let the computer check that a lot of this stuff for you. So let's talk about the net result of that. Just real quick, because what do you really want to do? Why don't we reduce the time it takes to deliver a project? Let's don't reduce it. 3%, or 5%? Let's do something really big and interesting. Let's talk about 25 30% reduction in project schedules. And when you say that to people, people's eyes,

13:19

yeah, even even, you even saw my eyes roll back of God. I've never been a part of a project was never

13:28

let me tell you, when you take the the the work processes, each disciplines, work processes, and you map those out. And that's what we've done. We've mapped those out, right? We call it a universe map, we've got all those work processes for each discipline, then we dive into each one of those work processes. Since I can we eliminate that work process with technology? Can artificial intelligence can machine learning can GPG? Can the combination of those things eliminate completely that work process? Can the computer just do it for us? And in many cases? The answer is yes, it can. And in other cases, it can't completely eliminate it. But it can greatly reduce it so that now me as the engineer, as a Cognizant decision maker, I'm presented on a dashboard with the things that are issues. So I'm in issue management. I'm not spending my time on the things that are good. I'm only looking at the things that are not good. So there's more value engineering going into that. I'm telling you, it's going to be interesting to see, but I believe we're actually going to be able to tackle that we're going to be able to slay that dragon of reducing those project schedules that

14:36

might come on What am i What about EPCs? Well, you're you're saying well, hey, we budgets.

14:44

Yeah, there's so there's a contracting strategy that goes along with this, right? There's no longer this time and material discussion, right? Or this reimbursable discussion, and collaboratively the owner in the EPCs have got to work together you because just because you're carving all that out For the project, you can't tell the NPC we're just going to take that amount of money away from you, you just can't do what work. So there's a lot of work to be done that I'm telling you, when you look at the advancement, just take an AI, for example, look at what we're doing with artificial intelligence today. And the rate at which it's moving forward is scary. Garry, right. So I'm telling you, if you harness that power and use it for good, it is amazing what you can do in a project environment. When you've got all of that content connected, right? You've got it all in this environment. So you can apply those advanced technologies to it. Really, really powerful.

15:43

So let's let's I see it really working well, in a greenfield capital environment. It's like Yuck, yeah. Here's its Greenfield, we're going to be building this from the ground upwards, design it from the ground up, all of this is great, fantastic. And if I was an EPC, it's like, yeah, great. That's good. Right about something a little bit more brown, like a brown field and saying, I mean, where do I start?

16:07

Well, you got a very similar situation in the Brown field, but in order to make the Brown field work, the very first thing you have to do is you have to capture the informational assets that that represent that physical thing that you see out there. So the way we say it inside of Hexagon is we have to make it insanely cheap and insanely simple to get capture the informational assets. Now, those informational assets are not intelligent. In many cases, they're PDFs, they're Visio, they're Word or Excel, whatever. So we are now working with with advanced technologies, so that you can in essence back the truck up with those those informational. Notice I'm saying informational assets, I'm not talking about the physical asset capture that scanning, that's a different discussion. You capture those informational assets back the truck up, dump them in the hopper, and let this this intelligent environment go through and sift through them determine what they are, classify them, dive inside, once you classify, find the document number drawing Number, find the title, find the revision information, find the tags, hotspot, the tags, and then feed that in now, smarter FIDE, we call it smarter, find another one of our fancy term. Next, we're infusing intelligence into those otherwise unintelligence informational assets, then we feed them up to an engine that is our data consolidation engine, which connects the dots. Okay, so that's the first step for Brown field, you have to do that to support your browser

17:39

you have to that's but every, every technology and I guess it's changed dramatically from is that it's, it's it's woefully ill equipped to be able to handle the the legacy documents, the legacy PDFs, the legacy, whatever information out there and put it in a way that doesn't just absolutely suck the life out of your your workforce. Because you're doing you're too busy cleaning it all up. And it's like, oh, I don't know, I have no, and then you end up with gaps anyway.

18:12

Well, you're not you're not talking about converting the content. Right. So we're not taking we're not talking about taking a pick up an AutoCAD file, we're not talking about taking an AutoCAD file and making it something other than AutoCAD. We're saying, let's infuse intelligence into that AutoCAD file that's not their hotspot, the tags, so that when we put it in the system, now this drawing has all these tags on it. And it is now programmatically connected to all the tag objects in the system that is representing, you do the same thing with all the vendor information, the same thing with all the procedures. But you've got to have an intelligent environment, which we've been working on for a while now a number of for quite a while now. So that it is that insanely simple and insanely cheap to do that. That's been the issue in the past. Because if you're going to apply any of these advanced practices on brown field projects, you must have the information captured in a way so that I could go to the system and say, I'm going to do something with p 100. And the system comes back and tells me everything about P 100. The logical definitions, the PNIDs, the electrical information, the piping information, the vendor information, all of that. And if I'm in an operating plant, if Kevin was on here, he would say Oh, and by the way, we're also going to connect to the operational systems like the historian, the data historian, the maintenance management system and all that. But in projects, you want to bring all of that together so that you're looking at a comprehensive view of in my example, p 100. Right. And then all of a sudden now I can begin to apply more acceleration two modifications that I want to do in the plant. Now where this really picks up in our talking about a capitalized project which is turnarounds what our turn arounds, they are individual mods that have been stacked up, they've been engineered, they've been approved. And they've been stacked up to say, when we take this unit offline, we're going to dive in 24 hours a day, seven days a week for X number of days, because we're given an outage window, we're going to dive in. And we're going to do all this work, right. So we believe that by collecting that informational asset the way I talked about by also capturing scanning the facility, so we have that 3d representation, because they don't have 3d models out in those facilities today. But the capture using one of our sister divisions, that Hexagon which is the Geosystems division, which were the Leica scanners come from, which you've heard about, I believe, we can quickly capture the physical facility to augment our planning to augment the planning of this turnaround. So we know where to put where to where to put our pieces and our parts without blocking your access as an egress. While it's still running, getting ready to go. I'm telling you it when you really get down into the individual work processes, it is amazing what you can do with the right set of technology

21:16

in in in the case of an outage or a turnaround. to dovetail with your I guess efficiency benefits. There, you're still looking at benefits associated with that turnaround, because here's the way the turnarounds happen. All right, we planned it out. All right, here we go. All right here, we open it up. All right, and it's just sort of, it's a very reactionary type of you try to plan as much as you can. But it's very reactionary. But you're saying that if I, if I went through the process of being able to capture that information, then my, then my planning of those turnarounds are improved dramatically, I would imagine.

22:00

And our smart digital reality is the vision that you heard at hex labs, SDR. Martin is a reality. That is the the vision of how we're going to do that for both projects. And for digital assets. If you look at just making a quick modification to the facility, not even a big turnaround, or shut them, right, just a quick modification, how long does it take a person have to go and find the information? You've heard that forever? Takes forever? Right finding? And if you question whether it's the right information, whether it's the right information. So what we're saying is give us your poor, you're tired, you're hungry, right? Just give it to us, we're going to dump it in the hopper, we're going to put it all together, we're going to find all those conflicts, right, we're gonna fight Oh, you gave me 2345 copies of the same drawing number. And I've examined each one of them. And oh, by the way, they're different, even though you call them the same revision. In the body of the drawing, it is different. Now the computer can't say which one's right. But he can say, hey, here's five that are different. You tell me, right? So we can start that cleansing process. But you'd have to burn the ships? Won't you collect that and get it into the system? Delete that get rid of those sources, right, furnish ships, then it's a closed loop system. So when I go out to do some work, or do some work in the facility, if I find something that's not right, we all have these little smart devices that have fun did have cameras, and I can quickly capture a 15 second video and say, Hey, Jay, I'm out here working on P 100. In this, look at what it shows me is this, this is this, and the document doesn't show me that something's wrong. You need to get the document updated. Hey, call me if you got any questions, right? 15 second video boom. So that drops automatically, because when you come back into earshot of the network, okay, it sees it I've got that capture, I've got this this commentary, we call it captured, drops into a workflow automatically comes to the appropriate system engineer P. 100. Who owns B 100. Well, a system engineer Bob over here. So Bob's got it, he goes to Bob, Bob, here's the video little recording, and determines whether he can respond without talking to me, or maybe he needs to call me either way. But the key thing is the next time I go back out there to work on P 100. Guess what, oh, Bob's fix that. So it's converging on accuracy through you because it's closed loop system.

24:25

So I have a business and this sounds great. That sounds wonderful. I can't I can't whether a Big Bang type of approach, can I whether an incremental approach and achieve certain benefits? Will you be able to target like, this is where you really want to focus right now this whatever this is, do you approach it? Can you approach it that

24:48

way? Absolutely. For your brown field for sure. Because you want to pan critical pieces, right, the things that are threatening, that can really hurt people if you make a mistake, right? European IDs are obviously quite quite, quite critical in process facilities. Also your your relief systems right are also quite critical. So you there's a prioritization that you can go through working your way through that helps you mitigate the risk. So that's one set of discussion, then the next discussion is, what area can I focus on that I think could net me the biggest return on increased productivity in that facility? So then, so you kind of look at the opposite side of safety is number one, risk is first. And then second is what are the big rock items to help me get more yield out of the facility. And those will be those little engineering tweaks that, again, they're changes in the facility, we kind of call it sustaining engineering, but it is still an engineering process, it is a micro project, if you will, Every change you do in the facility is like a micro project. But if you go back to those big, big Greenfield and big brown field brown field could be, I'm adding a new LNG train. Right, big. Yeah. And we see that there is an opportunity to do some really, really great things there with with technology in this smart reality,

26:15

but the reality is, is that get up and get get ahead of it beforehand, it will probably make it more difficult. If I'm, you know, 75% down the track, and I'm trying to build it going backwards, it is something that has to be a part of that planning, and discussion up front, it just makes complete sense. And then all of a sudden, this is where we're going. And it is painless. It has to be painless, because I guarantee you somebody's gonna say, I don't have the bandwidth to be able to do that and then plan this out. You can hear you can hear him in the background. Oh, yeah.

26:48

And we're working with the, you know, with the transformational efforts of some of the large events, but at the same time, you're working on the owner side, because the origin of the financial food chain is the owner. So if the owner is not in the loop to say, hey, that makes perfect sense. I want you to deliver that digital twin. Let's, let's talk about the end of the project handover. Big deal, right? How do how? Yeah, how do I take all that goodness that those EPCs have put together and bring it into my world so that I can do something with it. So we've addressed all of that in the Alright, we have a vision for how we're addressing all of that. So as you do your contracted handover packages of the digital projects, we are we are taking that packaging it in a certain way. All right, the 2d or 3d the vendor information, everything packaging in a certain way, sanitizing it, so we remove any information that the PC put in there is proprietary for them. Then we're taking that well documented known package structure and we're sending it over to the owners system. And if the owner is running the Hexagon, ALR SDR, it is like a fastball down the center of the plate, right, bam, we can pick it right into their SDR instance, we can programmatically unpack it, so we can build the digital reality of that new facility. One handover package at a time. And so at the end of the project, when all the handovers are done, now that owner has the digital reality inside of their instance of the SDR of that project. Okay, that's how we're handing handling at the end of the of the project, the handover. That's been a huge dragon.

28:33

Right? Yeah. That's when everybody starts complaining about the EPC. And it said it didn't work. And it doesn't. That handover Yeah. Been there done that. This was a meaty conversation, my friend.

28:47

Yeah, it's a lot. It's, it's it. We're clipping it at 50,000 feet. I mean, it's really high. Oh,

28:55

boy, you've brought back some memories of going live, you know, turnarounds, handoffs, you know, from oh, gosh, wow, that's this is fantastic. How do people get a hold of you? J they're saying, I want to know more about this. How do I get a hold of J?

29:12

Oh, yeah, please do so. It's Jay.Schwartz@Hexagon.com. Please do send me a note. Love to speak with you.

29:24

You are wonderful. Thank you so much. This really appreciate you being on industrial talk. That was a meaty conversation. You know your stuff, Jay. Well, I think you're, you're smarter than Kevin. I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna agree with that. But

29:41

Kevin's a great guy. He's a great colleague and I Kevin and I have tag team doing a lot of things. Yes, he's a super guy. So you

29:48

guys got some horsepower over there. I'm gonna tell you that Hexagon, and Hexagon live was a lot of fun Boy, talk about it. Well, for the eyes, I'm telling you candy for the eyes. I was like wow. back, right,

30:00

come back again. Right? Please do.

30:03

Yes, absolutely. I was dazzled. All right, listeners. That's Jay. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side, we're gonna have all the contact information out on industrial talk. So stay tuned, we will be right back.

30:19

You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

30:27

Clearly, we just scratched the surface, Jay was delivering some real truth bombs in that in that chit chat, you got to admit it. And again, if you've ever been a part of any capital projects, you know what I'm talking about. And here's a solution that's been delivered by Hexagon. And it's exciting. Quite frankly, it's exciting just because, well, I've lived that hell, and it's not fun. So reach out to Jay reach out to those team Hexagon. Find out more. And we're going to have more of this conversation. I think we need to begin building that whole dialogue that that information to help us succeed. And here is a platform here is a solution to help you succeed in expanding your project. You know, Greenfield Brown field, whatever it might be, here it is. Alright. People be brave Daring Greatly hanging out with J hanging out with Team Hexagon and you'll change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation with Hexagon shortly so stay tuned.