Aperture

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What Does Aperture do?

Aperture uses alarm and event data to calculate the movement time of subsea valves and highlights valves that are operating outside of their expected times.

What's New?

To find out about recent updates to Aperture, view our release notes

Release Notes

Case Study: Optimising Safety Valve Testing with Aperture

Overview

Safety valves are crucial for maintaining the integrity and safety of industrial processes. Operators must regularly test these valves to ensure they function correctly and meet regulatory standards. Traditionally, testing safety valves often required costly shutdowns and manual verification, which could disrupt production and consume significant engineer time.

Intelligent Plant’s Aperture app was deployed to streamline this process by leveraging historic valve movements as a proxy for real-time testing. The app not only facilitated easier compliance but also integrated client feedback to enhance its functionality further.

Challenges

The client faced several challenges with safety valve testing:

Compliance Requirements:

Safety valves must be regularly verified to comply with industry regulations. Proving that these valves are functioning correctly often necessitated planned shutdowns, which are both costly and disruptive.

Manual Verification:

Traditional methods of valve verification by searching historical alarm and event logs was time-consuming and required significant engineer resources. Typically, each valve would take 20 minutes of data extraction and checking using Microsoft Excel, with hundreds of valves to be checked.

Operational Disruption:

Planned shutdowns to test valves interrupted normal operations, impacting overall production efficiency and increasing operational costs.

Solution

Intelligent Plant implemented the Aperture app to address these challenges. Aperture provides a sophisticated solution for verifying safety valves by analysing historic valve movements, allowing operators to demonstrate compliance without the need for physical testing during shutdowns.

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Key Elements of the Solution:

Historic Movement Analysis: Aperture uses historic valve movement data to assess whether safety valves meet the required performance standards. This method eliminates the need for physical testing during shutdowns by providing a reliable analysis based on past performance.

Regulatory Compliance:

The app helps operators prove compliance with safety regulations by verifying that valves have moved according to required intervals and standards.

Client-Specific Enhancements:

Based on client feedback, Intelligent Plant further developed Aperture to better manage a large number of valves. These enhancements included improved user interfaces and more efficient data handling, making valve management more straightforward.

Results and Impact

The deployment of Aperture led to several key benefits for the client:

Engineer Time Savings:

The app streamlined the verification process, reducing the amount of time engineers spent on manual verification and valve testing. This efficiency freed up engineering resources for other critical tasks.

Enhanced Compliance:

Aperture enabled the client to maintain regulatory compliance without compromising production schedules. The ability to use historical data for verification ensured that safety valves met performance standards as required.

Improved Functionality:

The integration of client feedback into Aperture enhanced its usability and effectiveness. The app’s improved features made managing multiple valves easier and more intuitive, further benefiting the client’s operational practices.

Conclusion

The implementation of Intelligent Plant’s Aperture app provided the client with a transformative solution for safety valve testing. By leveraging historic valve movements, the app allowed the client to meet regulatory requirements efficiently without planned shutdowns.

The subsequent enhancements based on client feedback further optimised the management of safety valves, leading to significant time and cost savings. This case study illustrates how advanced digital tools can enhance compliance processes, improve operational efficiency, and reduce the impact of necessary safety measures on production.