Digital transformation is the topic du jour across the industrial landscape. While most of the focus and attention has been on the owners and operators of industrial facilities, there are other business segments going through their own transformations.

 

At Hexagon’s HxGN LIVE event in Las Vegas, Antonio Pietri, AspenTech’s president and CEO, joined Mattias Stenberg, president of Hexagon PPM, to announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding detailing a range of initiatives the two companies will work on to help accelerate our joint customers’ digital transformation journeys.

 

AspenTech is the No. 1 provider of process simulation and engineering software. Hexagon, formerly known as Intergraph, is the No. 1 provider of software for detailed design and engineering, and they have solutions that help manage the construction process.

 

Together, we can provide a data-centric workflow supporting the flow of digital project information from conceptual design and front-end engineering design (FEED) to detailed design and, ultimately, into the systems that operate and maintain the plant.

 

Additionally, through the connection of our estimating software and Hexagon’s project controls software, we can also provide a fully digital design and engineering process with integrated economics — the first such offering in the market.

 

We believe that this collaboration with Hexagon can enable our customers to deploy best-in-class integrated solutions from the two leading software providers for process plant design and operations.

 

And by “customers” I mean all our customers, including the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms that service the owner-operators. As evidenced at our recent OPTIMIZE 2019 conference, EPCs have their own initiatives geared towards digitizing their design and engineering workflows. And they need support from their software providers to help them create, use, manage and share the digital information they generate on a project.

 

 

The Benefits of Collaboration

 

With this new Hexagon partnership, we can break down the barriers between conceptual, basic and detailed engineering, helping to enable a fundamental change in the approach to managing project data from document-based to data-centric. We estimate that streamlining the transition from basic to detailed engineering can help our joint customers reduce the effort required during FEED by as much as 30%.

 

We can also connect our cost estimation software to Hexagon’s project controls software, for more informed and consistent decision-making from the beginning of the project through construction.

 

While this can help EPCs streamline their processes, share data across offices and more easily accommodate the inevitable project changes, ultimately, many of the benefits from a data-centric approach will also flow to the owner-operators. Data-driven projects can assist owner-operators by providing project deliverables in a digital format for use in running and maintaining the plant.

 

Up-to-date P&IDs and 3D models of the physical asset, provided by Hexagon, can provide the latest information about the physical assets to our Engineering, Manufacturing and Supply Chain, and Asset Performance Management solutions.

 

In turn, our products can provide the latest information about asset performance, which can be reflected in the P&IDs and 3D models, allowing customers to better sustain optimal performance.

 

Overall, bringing together Hexagon’s leading products that define the physical plant with AspenTech’s deep process knowledge and operational insights can provide superior solutions for our customers to accelerate their digital transformations. This is true for our operating customers, but I’m especially excited about how this partnership has the power to transform the way EPCs create, use and manage project data as they undertake their own version of a digital transformation.