PROJECT SCOPE & TIMELINE

A major North American midstream and utility company contracted Vintri Technologies (Vintri) in 2020 to examine and enhance data traceability for five new compressor stations (valued at $500,000,000) as part of a pipeline enhancement project based in British Columbia. The scope of this project was broken into three phases.

Phase One: Cross-verification of Material Take-offs (MTOs), Bills of Materials (BoMs), and Expeditor reports

Assets examined included:

•     30,000 lines of compressor and turbine components, totaling more than 500,000 pieces.

•     1,050 spools, consisting of approximately 6,500 pieces.

Phase Two: Crate Inspections

•     Examination of approximately 800 crate records, which included more than 31,000 associated photos of parts and certificates.

•     Development of a client-specific form, designed to effectively capture data from crate inspections at outdoor warehouses.

Phase Three: Spool Traceability Cross-Verifications

Assets examined included:

•     80 large component spools, each consisting of approximately 500 components.

•     Digital inspection and cross-verification of MTRs, fabrication receiving documents, and spool as builts (aka “mud books”).

Vintri efficiently completed all three phases of this project over a 6-month period as supplier data was made available. The client soon introduced Vintri to other internal project groups, as Phase One of the project alone accomplished months of traditional manual review in less than two weeks. This was a direct result of using Vintri’s platform (vintriCORE) and processes and contracting Vintri as a single capable resource (as opposed to a combination of multiple providers).

CHALLENGES

In engaging Vintri, the client sought to overcome the following primary challenges associated with the five new compressor stations in question:

•     Establish records and document management through all stages of the infrastructure’s lifespan.

•     Confirm that material traceability is adhered to within each asset’s physical and digital representation.

•     Ensure that material records are accessible to the project and avoid opening “preservation” packaging, which has warranty or guarantee implications.

•     Enable the efficient comparison of each individual project stakeholder’s record of materials to ensure alignment.

THE SOLUTION

To achieve enhanced data integrity and data traceability, and establish adherence to regulatory requirements, Vintri’s solution for this project included the following sequential components:

Discovery

Organized kickoff meetings and communicated project deliverables. Identified and gathered all available relevant data and documentation pertaining to the new five compressor stations.

Cataloging

Reviewed material documentation and construction as-builts to confirm completeness of data and to identify data anomalies and the sources of these differences.

Curation

Uploaded available data and documentation into vintriCORE and created contextualized relationships between these assets and their critical Traceable, Verifiable, & Complete (TVC) documents—producing a common data model for the project.

Integrity

Delivered examples and a roadmap for data mining of all related material and construction data; provided enhancement of data formatting pertaining to traceability and cross-verification such that engineering conformance, procurement compliance, and regulated traceability can be achieved.

KEY FINDINGS & OUTCOMES

Vintri’s engagement with this client successfully enhanced the data integrity and traceability for the five compressor stations. Specifically, the following key findings were discovered for each project phase.

Phase One: Cross-verification of MTOs, BoMs, and Expeditor reports

•     One-hundred-and-twenty-six line-items from the MTO review were identified as surplus materials, based on design changes following long-lead ordering.

⮞ The client confirmed that this analysis identified the surplus materials at least 18 months earlier than their status quo process would have permitted.

⮞ The surplus material was identified in a near-new state permitting redistribution or sale as opposed to the material becoming damaged as a result of sitting for a lengthy period at a laydown yard and being exposed to moisture.

•     Twenty-eight items were found to possess conflicting procurement product codes, which would have negatively impacted the eventual upload of data to the client’s ERP system of record.

      ⮞ Conflicting issues were identified prior to project mobilization and therefore readily addressed.

      ⮞ Commodity code best practices were identified for future projects.

Phase Two: Crate Inspections

•     Client-specific crate inspections forms were created the same week as requirements and supporting details were provided.

•     As a result of Vintri’s work, the client was able to efficiently verify the identity of each crate and eventual jobsite destination, verify if supplier-recommended storage conditions matched each actual location, geo-tag each crate location, update preservation details and dates, and instantly access photos of the components contained within each crate.

•     This newly determined set of capabilities immediately came in handy, as one supplier at the time had supplied two tablets with crate photos but lacked accessibility best practices and did not account for variances in user experience.

•     Prior to engaging Vintri, the client had initially forecasted five full days for crate inspection. This was decreased to four days after the company’s custom form was created and shared. Vintri accompanied the client to one of their laydown yards and outdoor warehouses, and 786 crates were fully inspected in only 1.5 days—only 40 percent of the budgeted time.

Phase Three: Spool Traceability Cross-Verifications (Compressor #4)

•     Vintri was tasked with conducting spool traceability cross-verification for one compressor of the five new compressors. The Operator selected only one compressor for this phase in order to pilot this service; timing did not permit for this solution to be rolled out across the remaining stations.

•     Two months prior to construction mobilization for this compressor station, Vintri identified that the project was missing 60 percent of large spool turnover packages.

•     Thirty days prior to mobilization, the project was still missing 14 percent of the required turnover packages.

•     Of the documents and data received from suppliers, 43 percent of the spool packages had at least one traceability issue requiring physical inspection and resolution.

•     Of these identified issues, 71 percent were critical enough in nature to warrant non-conformance reports (NCRs), each of which would have halted workflow if discovered during construction.

Overall, the client’s project team was thoroughly impressed with their first experience with proactive data preparation. In fact, this team elected to immediately introduce the Vintri team to another project team within its Major Projects Group with the intention of applying Phase One and Phase Three services for this group’s project needs.