Offshore Energies Magazine - Issue 55 Spring 2023

landscape. All the project design and instrumentation documentation is to hand, in any format desired, from Excel spreadsheets and circuitry to 3-D models, and sitting in life-like landscapes. The viewer can virtually inspect and walk around them, depending on where he or she clicks. Conversely, images of new plant can be uploaded and they, along with all the relevant metadata, instantly also form part of the users’ experience and its digital twin. ‘Single source of truth’ Used at scale, Aize enables its clients to collaborate without geographical or organisational borders. The same information is accessible to everyone involved without carbon-emitting, expensive and time-consuming trips offshore or to vendor/fabrication locations. Those virtually present can discuss, configure and reconfigure, experimentally or not, all the aspects of a plant using two and three-dimensional modelling. They can also invite third parties, such as those who charge by the hour, to "drop in" and give their advice from their own office, again with full access to all the information needed as if they were on site. According to one energy major in the North Sea, Aize helped it to do in three months what we had been trying to accomplish for 17 years: "Now we can ask the crew: So you want to go offshore –why? Have a look in Aize first and see if that’s actually needed." The results can either be discarded, or kept for as long

"Now we can ask the crew: 'So you want to go offshore –why? Have a look in Aize first and see if that’s actually needed." – offshore operator There are therefore what Mr Brun calls "a single source of truth," with no time-wasting or fraught discussions about which is the latest version and no documents circulating with missing or inaccurate data. And because of the ease of working in the virtual world enabled by as needed, allowing a future engineer to revisit and see what equipment – every item may be tagged – has been used and where. This allows its performance to be logged and monitored and improved as appropriate, reducing shut-ins and improving integrity.

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