Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline, WestNet Energy
Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline
Client
WestNet Energy, a division of Alinta Asset Management, is a leading provider of asset management and project management services to a wide range of critical infrastructure clients in both the gas and electricity fields in Western Australia. The business provides comprehensive, safe and reliable end-to-end support including engineering, procurement, project management, operational and maintenance services.
Alinta is Australia's leading energy infrastructure company with operations and investments that span across Australia and New Zealand. An ASX Top 100 company with a market capitalization approaching AU$3 billion (US$1.93b), Alinta manages, operates or owns a diversified portfolio of energy assets worth AU$8 billion (US$5.16b).
Project
The Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline (DBNGP) extends almost 1600km from the Pilbara region to the South-West of Western Australia. It is one of the longest and largest capacity natural gas pipelines in Australia, supplying natural gas to industrial, commercial and residential customers in Perth and major regional centers along the pipeline route.
The pipeline is owned by the Dampier Bunbury Pipeline (DBP) group of companies: DUET (Diversified Utilities and Energy Trusts) with 60% ownership, and Alcoa and Alinta each with 20% ownership. In addition to the DBP companies, there are more than 50 other organizations involved in the project including GHD, Mitsubishi, Multiplex Engineering, Tyco and WorleyParsons.
The first two stages of the expansion, representing more than AU$1.2 billion (US$774m) of work, were successfully completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Further expansion plans have been undertaken and the AU$660 million (US$426m) stage 5A expansion, which involved 570km of looping, has recently been completed. DBP plans to spend AU$700 million (US$452m) on its stage 5B expansion, which will involve installing a further 440km of parallel pipe. The project is currently in the design phase of the 5B project, with construction due to start in 2009.
Challenges
Over each phase of the project, a large volume of documents and correspondence is generated that need to be accessible for the whole project team. Using a contractor’s self-hosted document management system wouldn’t provide the transparency of information required across the project or the capability for external organizations to track the status of documents. In addition, there wasn’t a platform for managing formal correspondence, and email would not have provided the sophistication required for managing approvals.
Brad Sayer of WestNet Energy is the Senior Pipeline Engineer on the DBNGP project. He said, “Taking into account all the drawings, vendor documents, specifications, reports, and so on, there is constantly a huge amount of documentation to manage. At each stage of the pipeline, there is another set of documents.”
Due to there being hundreds of team members, the project required a central repository for storing, sharing and tracking documents and correspondence that was accessible to everyone. It was also important, going into the handover phase, that there was a complete archive of documentation with previous revisions, that is up to date and has the correct numbering and meta data.
“With so many parties involved, it’s important to standardize information management processes across all organizations so that we don’t have unregistered documents flying around,” said Sayer. “With companies always joining and leaving the project, there needs to be transparency and continuity of information.”
Solution
WestNet selected to use the Aconex online information management solution to manage their documents and correspondence. Aconex is a web-based system, delivered as a service for the life of a project, that enables team members to manage their information using one central platform. The system allows internal and external participants to view, distribute and track their files electronically at any time and from any location.
Results
Since implementing Aconex in mid-2006 and using the system on its Stage 5A and 5B projects, 870 participants from WestNet and its project partners have used the system to manage more than 160,000 documents and project mails.
When documents are stored on Aconex, authorized team members, from any location, can quickly retrieve their files by searching on criteria such as date ranges, sender and recipient details, document types, status and keywords. Files can then be distributed electronically using the system.
Aconex maintains a complete archive of documents and project mail, with an audit trail of every transaction detailing ‘who did what and when’. As well as reducing risks such as information loss and working from outdated documents, this supports continuity of information.
Brad Sayer said, “With Aconex, information such as documents, drawings, schedules, specifications, vendor docs are all in one system. On a day-to-day basis, I can check transmittals when they come in, look for documents, check mails, find vendor documents and search data records. The indexing makes it easy to find what I’m looking for.”
With more than 800 team members from 50 organizations needing to correspond and access and share files, having a central depositary for managing information helped streamline the collaboration process.
“We have a highly integrated project and Aconex provides a central system that can link parties and everyone can access. All emails can be seen, which is good for tracking information, and helps data continuity,” said Sayer.
“Document controllers use the system the most and derive the most benefit. They can track and control documents between the various stakeholders.”
The system standardizes procedures such as document numbering, submissions, approvals and formal correspondence, so that they are consistent across the project.
“In-house tools are controlled by personnel and procedures, which allow people to not conform, and can be easy to corrupt. Aconex provides a regimented system that everyone has to comply with, resulting in good integrity of data. This makes project communication better than in the past.”
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