Project collaboration in the cloud

Recently, there has been a rise in owner-operators outsourcing their engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance (EPCM) activities to external contractors and suppliers.

The outsourcing of EPCM activities causes several challenges for owner-operators to keep track of critical asset related information in engineering projects.

Outsourcing activities causes a diversion of ownership, fragmented responsibilities and uncontrolled engineering data. As a result, asset data integrity is at risk and inaccurate information leads to poor decisions. Incomplete and inaccurate engineering documentation can cause catastrophic accidents to occur, causing health, safety and environmental issues as well as unplanned shutdowns.

Owner-operators and contractors need a system where internal and external participants can contribute, deliver, review and approve asset information throughout the project lifecycle.

Meridian Portal is a system that provides a globally accessible and centralized source of technical information for extended project teams, increasing engineering, operations, and maintenance staff productivity. Meridian Portal facilitates the controlled exchange of document deliverables between all internal and external stakeholders, while improving the data quality by providing full project control and document compliance.

Additionally, Meridian Portal lowers the total cost of information management and distribution, so owner-operators achieve added savings through enhanced productivity and search time reduction. The availability of up-to-date operating procedures and accurate engineering documentation is crucial to improve safety and minimize the costs of outsourced engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance activities.

Single Source Of Truth For Project And Asset Documentation.

Managing your project and asset documentation in a single source of truth is one of the most important components of efficiently managing engineering projects. Meridian Portal increases efficiency through time saved on document control, project management review and validation of project delivery, while eliminating lead-times due to offline or paper-based communication processes. A single user interface allows both engineering contractors and owner-operators to review, verify, and accept data.

Accelerate Project Execution

Meridian Portal is a multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, managing your engineering project performance entirely in the cloud. Using Meridian Portal improves collaboration, helping to focus on delivering the project on time and on budget with the correct data needed to operate and maintain your facility. Users are able to exchange work packages, review and approve documents online and offline; increasing productivity, improving data quality, and lowering document handling cost. By using an automated system like Meridian Portal, users can track deliverables and due dates properly to maintain control of their document flow throughout the project ensuring that nothing gets overlooked.

Internal And External Stakeholders Stay Informed At All Times

The automatic checks functionality within Meridian Portal helps organizations become more efficient and feel more confident about their data quality because nothing is lost or exchanged incorrectly. Automatic scans for matching documents, alerts due to missing or changed references and the addition of new documents helps facilitate engineering information handover process.

Predefine Project Roles With Associated Privileges

Meridian Portal allows users to set predefined project roles with associated privileges. A contractor shouldn’t be able to define project configuration and a document controller needs to be able to efficiently manage the flow of documents throughout the project.

• Project Owner – defines the project configuration and overall administration.
• Document Controller – manages the flow of documents through the project.
• Contributor – creates and modifies documents.
• Reviewer – participates in collaborative document reviews (‘squad checks’).
• Contractor – sends and receives documents via formal packages (transmittals).

Document Exchange Process In Meridian Portal

Step 1: Owner-Operators initiate and setup engineering, construction, modification or expansion projects with role-based access for internal project members, external contractors and vendors.
Step 2: All users connect the projects with secure authentication and strong encryption end-to-end.
Step 3: Contractor(s) gets access to specific projects.
Step 4: Contractor(s) retrieve work assignments through Meridian Portal and completes task.
Step 5: Contractor(s) uploads the new and updated document deliverables to the Portal.
Step 6: Meridian Portal automatically checks for matching documents, missing or changed references of CAD documents, and new documents.
Step 7: Project owner or document controller receives a notification and a link to the transmittal package in Meridian Portal.
Step 8: The documents are collected in review packages and shared with multi-disciplinary teams for approval and consultation.
Step 9: Reviewers review PDFs then upload the reviewed PDF; automatically merging comments.
Step 10: Project leader consolidates and finalizes any comments.
Step 11: Document controller returns rejected documents with comments and follow-up action to the contractor in a transmittal package.
Step 12: Approved documents are released for the master data environment.

Also read: Vector Eyes | Engineering Document Management software – Vector Eyes