Construction

Kayd Larsen of Brownfield Solutions Ltd. discusses the first steps of digital transformation, "step one, is understand what you have, and understand your customer."

Brownfield Solutions focuses on engineered information management and the integration of engineered information into the operations of plants and facilities. Brownfield provides consultation and support services to help owner operators maintain and re-use engineered information throughout the plant lifecycle.

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To make a cultural change that can be a very difficult task. And one of the things we’ve looked at in the past taking and essentially having an organization amalgamated group, that we would refer to as an engineering information management group if you will. Previously, we see silos working and that’s normal. That’s what happens in engineering processes, that’s what happens in maintaining this information. But as we move towards digital, we all need to be under one team. We need to have the same vision. We need the top down approach. We need to change our work processes to more of an integrated, collaborative effort, as opposed to a silo, step-by-step transition.

I would recommend that to begin a digital transformation initiative, that number one you need to understand your current state. Whether we have unstructured data, unintelligent data, various standards, right? We really need to understand that. We also need to understand what the goals and objectives are. That needs to be outlined clearly up front. We need to engage operations. What value are they looking to achieve? What data are we looking to bring to the front? We can’t just put an umbrella over everything and say we’re going to digitalize all of our information.

We need to understand our priorities, but we need to understand operation’s needs. They’ll drive those priorities for us. So, big step one, is understand what you have, and understand your customer.