Version 22 (modified by lhella, 13 years ago)

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Sponsorship Prospectus

POSC Caesar Association & FIATECH

JORD (Joint Operational Reference Data) Project


Executive Summary

The audience for this prospectus is any organization invited to sponsor the JORD project. There is minimal historical and technical background for this audience. Included are business justification for business-like scalable and sustainable ISO15926 reference data service operations and the need for the JORD project to deliver these. The focus is sponsorship requirements and benefits specific to sponsors.

The plan for the project and the business model for the deliverable reference data services operation are outlined. This includes technical and organizational scope breakdowns, project and operational funding aspects, as well as proposed operational management arrangements. (Additional definition of these is provided by reference to the JORD Project Definition.)

The operational services delivered by the JORD project are also described. This operation is fundamentally not-for-profit, with copyrights & licensing to guarantee free-read-access to the reference data. These core services support not only the needs of the Owner-Operator, Contractor and Supplier operations, but also enable other specialist interoperation and integration consultant service providers. The business model includes subscribers to normal operational services and additional fee-based services, as well as the proposed sponsorships.

Sponsors are invited to fund the project cost and the operational funding shortfall in the first three years. Sponsors benefits include: Achieving the necessary reference data services by the most economic and timely means; Receiving enhanced subscriber services, over and above normal subscribers, with no subscription fee for the first three years, and; Representation on the project and operational management committee. This committee controls long term planning and resolves deliverable priorities in the project and core operational services.

The full text follows. A pdf copy is also available.

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Why the JORD Project ? A Little Background

ISO15926 “Integration of Lifecycle Data for Process Plants including Oil & Gas Facilities” was first drafted by POSC Caesar Association (PCA) in 1996 as “Snapshot C/D”.

With a very generic information model, practical use of ISO15926 in any business domain is entirely dependent on shared reference data. By the sharing of references to common vocabularies and common definitions of all information resources:

  • The ambiguity of information within and between interoperating organizations, business operations and software applications is minimized,
  • The exchange, mapping and integration of information between these are simplified such that the cost, effort and complexity of maintaining those mappings are minimized.
  • The potential for interoperability and integration are therefore maximized, whilst
  • The consequential risks of suboptimal operations (or worse) are greatly reduced.

PCA has continued to develop ISO15926, develop reference data and operate the PCA Reference Data Services (RDS) that support the use of ISO15926.

FIATECH and its members took an interest in ISO15926 as part of its Element 9 “Lifecycle Data Management and Information Integration” activities since FIATECH started in 2000. In 2005 FIATECH member DuPont hosted the “Wilmington Workshop” that confirmed FIATECH’s focus on ISO15926 for information integration and interoperability.

In 2006 both PCA & FIATECH members initiated projects to extend practical ISO15926 use. These were FIATECH’s “Accelerating Deployment of ISO15926” (ADI) project and PCA’s “Intelligent Data Sets” (IDS) project. Members of both IDS and ADI projects recognized their overlap, and natural collaboration between these generated a succession of multiple new projects and ongoing collaborative initiatives in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

Recently, the architectural principles of ISO15926 and the reference database management procedures of the PCA RDS operation have also been adopted higher within the ISO hierarchy. PCA’s collaborations with other industry initiatives continue to broaden and deepen.

The net result has been an exponential growth in ISO15926 usage across industries globally, increasing recognition of the dependence on reference data and ever growing demands on the PCA RDS services. In addition there has been evolving definition of those service requirements as a result of the learning and experience of those wider ISO15926 implementations.

In 2009 PCA and FIATECH individually and then jointly committed to enhancing the RDS operational services available to industry. The joint commitment became the JORD project, first publicly announced in February 2010. The JORD Project Business Definition and this Sponsorship Prospectus are deliverables from the front-end “Phase F” of the JORD project.

What Is The JORD Project ? An Outline

JORD is the project to deliver an enhanced RDS operation as a scalable and sustainable business operation, and a full description of the project and business model are found in the JORD Project Business Definition. In summary, the project is in two phases (Phases 1 & 2), and the first phase is in two parts (Scopes 1A & 1B) as indicated in the outline Gantt chart in Figure 1.

Scope 1A involves creation and consolidation of the technology-neutral resources necessary for the RDS Operation, including: core procedures & content, organization & human resources.

Scope 1B involves maintenance fixes to legacy RDS publishing and content management tools & technologies necessary to support the enhanced operation, plus the creation of a specification and invitation to bid (ITB) for upgrade to scalable and sustainable tools and technologies.

Phase 2 involves the supply and implementation of the enhanced tools and technologies, and the migration of content, operational processes and procedures to those enhanced technologies.

Note that in general, all resources are to be provided competitively for a globally sustainable business operation. All processes and procedures are designed to minimize the dependency on scarce core skills and to spread those capabilities throughout users and other service providers. Architecture and organization to support multiple federated and competitive RDS operations, and additional value-adding services, with the core services limited to those necessary only to coordinate the whole.

The Deliverable RDS Operation

The deliverable operation will be :

The enhanced PCA RDS Operation created in partnership with FIATECH

That operation is defined in terms of the services and service levels it provides, as well as the resources, organization and management to deliver those services.

The services are summarized in Figure 2.

Substrate services and infrastructure resources are provided on a globally competitive basis from the outset, as in fact they are in the current PCA RDS Operation. Initial core ISO15926 content and modeling resources include those used by the existing PCA RDS Operation, diminishing proportionately as they are supplemented and replaced by those developed by the project.

As well as operational services and resources, the RDS Operation will include normal business marketing, sales, planning and financial functions. This core business operation itself is not-for-profit, and the principal deliverable is reference data content freely accessible to any user, protected by appropriate copyright and licensing.

Revenue generation is via the subscription and fee-based services which are described more fully in the JORD Project Definition. Compliance certification services are one such revenue generating fee-based service, whereby any tool, interface, information-set, organization or individual are certified according to the compliance checklist. Within that checklist, different transaction interface scopes are defined according to the Business Interfaces Definition Guide.

In addition to operational and technical management, these will report to an Operational Management Committee representing the interests of PCA, FIATECH and sponsors. Interests of subscribers will be handled through normal customer relationship management as well as through member voting rights for PCA & FIATECH representation.

Why you should sponsor the JORD project?

As a potential sponsor of the JORD project, you have already been involved in some level of ISO15926 implementation activity for your own business needs justified by your own business case for standards-based interoperation and lifecycle integration.

You have already made internal investments, and contributed both in-kind and financially to collaborative projects of PCA, FIATECH, iRING and other interested groups.

For you, the JORD project coordinates and consolidates those early project investments, so that they can be leveraged to support the sustainable business lifecycle and supply-chain expectations beyond those immediate project successes. Scalable, sustainable and cost-effective reference data management is the component needed to provide that leverage.

Read access to the reference data content is free. All subscribers to the RDS operation and the industry supply-chain as a whole will benefit from the enhanced operation, but sponsors gain additional benefits.

  • By sponsoring the JORD project, you establish commitment to timely delivery of the sustainable and scalable RDS operation your business needs, rather than waiting for other organizations or groups to make alternative plans and commitments.
  • By sponsoring the JORD project, you will receive additional subscriber benefits in enhanced SLA’s with no subscription fee required during the sponsorship period.
  • By sponsoring the JORD project, you will have direct representation on the Operational Management Committee, controlling the ongoing planning of the operation and resolving priorities within the project and the operation.

What are the financial commitments of sponsorship?

Sponsorship is intended to finance the project itself and the operational shortfall in service income in the first three years. The project budget is 1.47m USD and the initial operating budget is 1.06m USD annually. Figure 3 shows the financial profile projected to sustainability.

What should you do next?

If your interoperation and integration strategy supports use of ISO15926 and recognizes the dependency on enhanced scalable and sustainable core reference data service operations you should sponsor the JORD project and the initial operational funding shortfall. Sponsorships are proposed at:

  • 250K USD lump sum (or 100K UDS annually for 3 years) for Owner-Operators
  • 100K USD lump sum (or 40K USD annually for 3 years) for Contractors & Suppliers

If you are considering a sponsorship, please send your proposal to:

  • Ian Glendinning JORD Project Manager (ian [at] glencois [dot] com );
  • Nils Sandsmark PCA General Manager ( nils [dot] sandsmark [at] posccaesar [dot] org );
  • Ray Topping FIATECH Director ( raytopping [at] comcast [dot] net ).

We would like to hear:

  • Expression of interest in sponsorship.
  • Expression of intent to sponsor from existing or 2011 budgets.
  • Firm confirmation of offer of sponsorship.
  • Any specific basis, amount, timing or other conditions relevant to the above.

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