Pemex Engineers Save Time with
Instant Access to Online Standards Library
Engineers and technicians at the Exploration and Production Division of Pemex are saving considerable time in accessing industry standards information by using an online library with an interface customized to their needs. In the past, engineers had to access standards information from a number of different paper and electronic sources that were hard to use and took a considerable amount of time to maintain. In order to reduce the standardization process time in Pemex, they designed an online retrieval system with aids to search and apply industry standards. To develop such a system, they selected IHS Enterprise Solutions, Englewood, Colorado, as a partner, because of its extensive library of petroleum standards and extensive software development capabilities. Today, more than 3500 Pemex employees access the system over the company intranet from five servers strategically located throughout Mexico. "Our engineers and technicians save large amounts of time by being able to access complete standards information from their desktop or laptop", said Silvano Torres Xolio, Auditor of Industrial Safety and Environmental Protection for Pemex ExPro. "Another important benefit is that each person has access to more complete and updated standards information than was available in the past."
Pemex is the largest company in Mexico and one of the five largest petroleum companies in the world. With proved crude oil and condensates reserves of 30.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent and a mean annual crude production of 3.3 million barrels per day, Pemex accounts for about 8.0 percent of Mexico's export revenue. The company enjoys a solid oil and gas reserve position, which allows it to generate high levels of production required to support domestic and export growth. Through the main corporation and its four subsidiaries -- Exploration and Production, Refining, Gas and Basic Petrochemicals and Petrochemical - Pemex works to maintain a strategic direction for Mexico's petroleum industry.
Importance of Standards Information
Pemex Exploration and Production manages petroleum facilities all over the United States of Mexico. Engineers and technicians at this Pemex division always require access to internal and industry standards in order to produce oil and gas in safe, efficient and environmentally responsible manner. High quality standards promote safe and proven engineering practices in the design, fabrication, installation and maintenance of equipment in petroleum operations and facilities. As a result, they can improve safety, ensure environmental compliance, reduce engineering costs, improve equipment interchangeability, increase product quality and reduce equipment costs.
In the past, Pemex maintained this information in central libraries located in the company's main engineering centers. One problem with this approach was that a considerable amount of time was required in order to maintain these documents. Updates were received on a regular basis from the companies and organizations that supplied them and clerical staff had to quickly update the binders to avoid the possibility that engineers and technicians might use out-of-date information. Another problem was that it often took a considerable period of time leafing through the standards binders before the users were able to find the information they needed. Finally, users who did not work close to one of these engineering centers used to spend extra time either traveling to the nearest center or waiting for the mailed information.
Mr. Torres vision was to develop an easy-to-use online system that would put all of the necessary specification information at the fingertips of the company's engineers and technicians. A critical requirement to achieve that, was that the new software be available 365 days a year in every single workplace where standards were required. Another requirement was that it incorporates all standards information used by the company including Mexican national standards, international standards, internal standardization documents and specifications developed by Amoco Corporation. "We set out to develop a state-of-the-art information retrieval system that would allow provide powerful online access to information documents, browse or search for engineering specifications and guide users in the standards applications process without attempting to replace engineering judgment," Torres said.
Selection of Development Partner
Torres said that selection of a development partner was critical to the success of the project. Pemex selected IHS Enterprise Systems Group for several reasons. First of all, IHS is a leader in delivering standards information to other exploration and production companies. IHS already gathers, standardizes, manages and reports information that is obtained from multiple sources, including operators, governments, agencies, public documents, customers, its own extensive, global network of in-country experts and reports. Petroleum Information/Dwights, Petroconsultants, IEDS, PI (ERICO), MAI Consultants and, most recently, QC Data's Petroleum Data Services Division, including AccuMap, have joined forces under the IHS banner to provide a single, convenient source for global energy solutions. As a result, IHS already owned rights to most of the petroleum industry standards needed by Pemex engineers and technicians and was able to offer them at a very attractive price because the company spreads the cost of obtaining the information among its many petroleum industry customers.
Another reason for selecting IHS Enterprise Solutions is the company's experience in building links between different information resources to create an integrated chain of data, including both internal documents and materials extracted from IHS technical databases or other sources. The company specializes in creating full function, integrated search, retrieval, and workflow systems that streamline information access for remote locations. Before the project even began, IHS had already developed a wide range of components that provide features such as document collections, document conversion, portals, electronic libraries, linking, universal search, custom indexing, table of contents, document management, automatic ordering, administrative access and other features. These pre-built components substantially reduced the development cost and lead-time. "Our conversations with the company let us know that IHS could provide professional software development services with a very high level of quality control and they did not let us down," Torres said.
Information Access Plus Workflow
Pemex specialists designed a graphical interface for the online system, and worked together with IHS developers to achieve it. Such a powerful tool guides engineers and technicians, through the upstream petroleum workflow processes, to a set of specifications and standards applicable to a specific process phase, facility or facility component related task. Typical tasks in the system are design, construction, procurement and maintenance. In order to guide trough the standards application process, engineering specifications, technical guides, recommended practices and other useful documents and regulations are hyperlinked for easy access.
The evolution capacity is one of the most important characteristics of the system. An administration module was developed to have the ability to easily add additional documents with search options and hyperlinks, modify libraries and extend the graphical interface. "This new information retrieval system, called GAASPARING, has played a critical role in defining a simplified set of Mexican, international and foreign standards applicable to Pemex Exploration and Production and has been selected to play a very important part in our new Safety Management System," Torres said.
Pemex Exploration and Production is divided into four geographic regions and corporation headquarters. Each of these entities has its own server to run the GAASPARING system in order to supply standards information to the employees working in its jurisdiction. If a server were to go out of service or have to be taken down for maintenance, the next closest server is able to deliver information to users with no interruption in service.
Citrix Winframe server-based computing software is used to allow multiple concurrent users to log on and run the application in separate, protected sessions on a single server. This approach separates the application's logic from its user interface so only keystrokes, mouse clicks and screen updates travel the network, providing bandwidth independent application performance.
The benefits derived from the GAASPARING implementation have been enormous. "First of all, we can ensure that the standards that are supplied to our engineers and technicians are both appropriate and updated, which was impossible with the older system," Torres said. "On the other hand, our people save huge amounts of time in searching and consulting industry standards. Because of the breadth of standards information provided by the new system and its user-friendly interface, we are confident that the recent projects on which it has been used are much better documented than was possible in the past. We have also been able to achieve a higher level of safety and environmental protection by providing improved access to and application of the relevant industry standards. At last, we are able to optimize our new designs to a higher level than was possible in the past, which let us save money in procurement, construction, operations and maintenance of our facilities."
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