Toward productivity improvement in electrical engineering documentation

The purpose of this paper is to determine the unproductive time and additional cost to re-engineer a safety control system for a Floating Production Storage Offloading vessel that was originally engineered and documented in computer-aided design (CAD).

The “As-Built” drawings contained numerous errors and omissions, which resulted in a “requests for information” being raised and productivity rates reduced – these costs and productivity losses are quantified. The use of CAD to originally engineer and document the safety control system was found to be inefficient as a 1:n relationship existed. Systems Information Models (SIMs) presents an alternative method to produce engineering documentation for the safety control system; where a 1:1 relationship is created between the model and the real objects. By constructing a 1:1 model, information redundancy can be eliminated, which reduces the propensity for errors and omissions to be made by engineers.

The use of a SIM to re-engineer and document the new safety control system resulted in significant productivity benefits being achieved. Consequently, it is proffered that a paradigm shift from a 1:n to 1:1 perspective is required for engineering electrical and instrumentation systems so as to ameliorate the quality of documentation produced and productivity.

The paper concludes by suggesting that future research is required to examine how processes and procedures can be re-designed to accommodate the use of a SIM.