Keywords: Risk Management, Asset Information Management (AIM), Enterprise Asset Information, Mission-Critical Assets.
Summary
The seventh annual CIO Workshop on Infrastructure and Asset Management was recently held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The invitation-only event brought CIOs from asset-intensive industries, such as transportation, energy, oil & gas, utilities, and building and construction to a highly interactive, professionally facilitated multi-day event. The agenda focused on the difficulties in managing IT functions related to the uncertainties associated with projects and the lifecycle of critical assets. The CIO Workshop provided a collaborative forum environment for executives to exchange ideas on how to mitigate risk, embed new technologies, and develop actionable strategies to increase value for stakeholders.
CIO Workshop, "Coping with Risk while Delivering Value"
The CIO Workshop was held at the same venue as Bentley Systems' Be Inspired event, with Bentley sponsoring the workshop. The proximity of the events worked to everyone's advantage due to a number of synergies between the two forums, particularly for those stakeholders who are responsible for managing asset information, such as those at the CIO level.
The workshop, which focused on enterprise-level global solutions, is a by-invitation-only event for executive IT management in the infrastructure, engineering, and construction fields.
The perennial theme of the workshop - collaboration and interoperability - certainly parallels Bentley's themes of information mobility, intelligent infrastructure, and integration of projects to maximize return on talent and investment. Deliverables from the workshop include white papers that capture the essence of the topics discussed at the event. The papers are only available to those attending the event.
The agenda for this year's CIO Forum agenda focused on the theme of "Managing the Infrastructure: Coping with Risk while Delivering Value." Forum discussions centered on three areas. The first, technology, dealt with the adoption of emerging technologies into the enterprise and the associated impact of social networks and ad hoc infrastructure. The second theme, management, addressed risk-based investment and decision making as a model for risk minimization for the CIO, supply chain, and other enterprise workflows. The third area, lessons learned, reviewed programs utilized in other sectors and ways to leverage solutions across differing arenas, resources and infrastructures.
The principal sponsor for the CIO forum event was Bentley Systems. As Bentley Systems CEO Greg Bentley states, "Bentley sponsors the CIO event in Europe for four main reasons:
To hear from the CIOs of engineering and construction firms and heads of IT from owner-operators in our target infrastructure solutions communities about their key business drivers,
To foster cooperation and collaboration on like issues and problems among the European engineering and construction firms, as well as owner operators,
To provide input into our development and commercial strategies from the above, with the objective of always improving our software applications and solutions,
To develop senior management relationships to facilitate business relationships between Bentley and the leaders of the European infrastructure community."
Charles Rowney, an independent consultant who has been involved with the CIO Workshop since its inception, opened this year's event, joined by Greg Bentley. Bentley started the discussions by commenting on global IT trends from the perspective of a leading global software supplier. The keynote address by Clive Deadman, Chairman, Investment Forum EIC, presented some of the lessons gleaned from 37 case studies of the utilities industry. The presentation "Enterprise Asset Information and Information Management-Exploring Models for Success" outlined how utilities can define the proper goals and organizational structure, and adopt engineering tools that enable utilities to manage complex assets and deliver optimal performance to all stakeholders.
The afternoon sessions continued with a series of presentations that provided an overview of how powerful new information technologies offer increasing opportunities to integrate projects and resources across and between enterprises. At the same time, social networking technologies, mobile solutions, and leading-edge technologies - such as augmented reality - are being used with greater frequency and ways must be found to incorporate these approaches with established enterprise management paradigms. Presenters included Matthew Kyte, Corporate Director of IT, Arcadis; Steve Dunwell, VP Oracle; and Graham Young, Head of Information & Design Systems, Foster and Partners.
CIO attendees then broke into focus groups and participated in a series of structured discussions that led to the development of potential strategies and solutions to common problems. Several focus groups brainstormed the concept of the "perfect project process." ARC's ALIM model, encompassing the entire lifecycle of asset information management from portfolio and project information management to the operate-and-maintain phase, was also reviewed.
The central issue focused on during the second day of the forum was risk-based decision making in the enterprise. CIOs routinely balance potential negative and positive consequences for decisions made in good faith. In today's fast-paced business environment, these management decisions are often made under the pressure of imperfect data, limited time, and stressed resources. Increasingly, these consequences are across the supply chain as well as within the enterprise, and often involve the responsibilities of the CIOs and their staff. The session explored strategies for investment that deal explicitly with risk and uncertainty. Also discussed were various methods that provide valid support mechanisms for decision making that enable CIOs to make informed and effective selections. Discussion leaders and presenters included Andrew Marks, CIO, Tullow Oil; Anders Thostrup, Senior Manager Information Management & Asset and Infrastructure Group, Accenture; William Bootsma, Manager Asset Management, Vitens; and Michel Luypaert, Director of Information, Alluris.
After the presentations, breakout sessions were held to collaborate regarding the various decision-making approaches in the targeted industries of construction, transportation, oil & gas, energy, and water.
During a private buffet lunch, Bhupinder Singh, SVP, Bentley Systems, addressed the CIO attendees about the company's new technology initiatives and business partnering. This included discussions on the expansion of its strategic relationship with Microsoft Corporation for Azure–based cloud services to architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) globally. Singh also discussed Bentley's new agreements with Adobe Systems and Bluebeam Software that enable the inclusion of PDF workflows and thus strengthen the integrity of re-purposed information that can be exchanged among the design, construction and operations phases of the asset lifecycle. Also announced was the acquisition of Pointools Ltd., a leading software supplier for managing point cloud information. As the use of laser scanning is rapidly advancing, the creation of pervasive data sets of point clouds must be addressed, and this acquisition enables Bentley to use point clouds in their offerings for 3D modeling of infrastructure assets.
The afternoon session dealt with cross-sector synergies in identifying problems for managing information and potential solution approaches. Advisory panel members gave opening presentations, and set the stage for a second round of breakout discussions. These IT executives from oil & gas, utility, and transportation industries offered varying perspectives on emerging solutions and potential pitfalls of managing information at the enterprise level. Presenters included: Jim Conlin, Head of Water Assets, Scottish Water; Neil Farmer, IT Director, Crossrail; Adrian Goulding, CIO, IM IT Manager, Major Capital Projects, Chevron; and Henk Van Oostveen, Manager Asset Information Projects, ProRail.
These presentations set the stage for deeper discussions into defining the role of the CIO in project-focused organizations, the impact of distributed intelligence in mission-critical assets, the impact on the enterprise of data quality, the potential benefits of BIM on risk management, the role of project commissioning on operational readiness milestones, and defining the CIO's role in the transformation of asset information from reactive to proactive posturing.
Greg Bentley's closing remarks drew parallels between managing the infrastructure asset lifecycle issues discussed at the CIO event and Bentley's vision for the future of intelligent infrastructure and information mobility.
Last Word
The annual CIO Workshop is a unique event for a number of reasons. Attendees bring to the table actual real-world problems and provide feedback by exchanging ideas among information management executives. The differing perspectives each CIO brings from various industries create a broad array of approaches to problem solving, with each CIO attendee having a unique set of corporate needs. The participation by real-world decision makers allows viable insights and practical solutions to be generated at a tactical level.
CIOs all are linked by the demands of increased regulation, growing complexity in asset lifecycle management, and continued competitive pressures in the face of growing risk uncertainties. The issues discussed at this CIO workshop underscore the need to raise the awareness of risk management associated with mission-critical assets over the entire lifecycle to the executive CIO level.
The CIO workshop event demonstrates that it is possible to join together and seek common ground to identify best practices and leverage solutions across the boundaries of industries and individual enterprises.
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