The following transcript is taken from a session at the daratechPLANT2006 conference titled “Vision, Policy, Reality” that featured a debate between the top executives from the leading providers of asset lifecycle IT solutions.
The participants were Mr. Greg Bentley, CEO, Bentley; Mr. Richard Longdon, Chief Executive, AVEVA; and Mr. Gerhard Sallinger, President, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine Division. The moderator for the debate was Mr. Charles Foundyller, CEO, Daratech, Inc.
Watch: Video of the daratechPLANT2006 Debate
The excerpts below feature Mr. Greg Bentley's responses to the debate questions and comments during the debate.
1. Standards are key to improving the overall economic efficiency of your customer’s data exchange, data handoff and interoperability. Now these are separate but related high-cost, high-value issues for EPCs and OOs. The three questions are: Has your philosophy changed in this regard? What progress did you make in 2005? And what is your roadmap for 2006 and 2007?
2. Why don’t you publish your native data formats? Why don’t you open up your data format?
3. Everyone is complaining about the scarcity of skilled engineers. So there are three questions that I’d like to put to the panel here: One: What have your companies done in the past year to facilitate increased engineering productivity? Two: What areas of engineering productivity improvement are you focusing on? And three: How much additional productivity can you deliver with your solutions going forward?
4. There is supreme irony that we have this question [above] here becuase I remember when this industry got started, you gentleman were going around to the EPCs saying, "We can improve your engineering productivity." And the EPCs were sitting back and saying, "I don't think you get it. We sell engineering hours."
5. Global 7/24 work sharing and collaboration is a fact of life, but licensing and security policy—especially the granularity of the licensing and the security policy and system inter-version interoperability are lagging behind—or at least that’s what the EPCs and OO users are telling us. What have you done to address these issues and what are your plans in these domains going forward?
6. Process plants attract regulatory scrutiny and consequently so do their IT management systems. We’ve already got software tools that have to have ISO 14001 compliance with respect to the plant environmental issues. What, if anything, are you doing to provide regulatory certification for your systems and make it easy to administer as your upgrades are released?
7. I think the sense of the question is not so much about standards as it is about regulation. As you start to take responsibility for plant lifecycle, issues such as safety, environment, and so on, start to take on a certain importance with respect to regulation. If something happens we need to go back to that information and, in fact, be able to track it. And what the trend is for the regulatory authorities to require that software meet certain regulatory standards in order that you’re in compliance. And I think that’s the sense of the question. Before you were responsible for lifecycle information it wasn’t an issue. And it’s not so much standards, it’s regulation.
8. You have your own ecosystem of companies that want to partner with you and they always bring you new and interesting technologies. You’re in a great position to see these. What are some of the most promising technologies and solutions or work processes, other than your own and your partners of course, that you’ve become aware of in the last 12 months and have perked your interests?