Register      Login
Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Non peer reviewed)

Digitalisation and automation for the development of modern engineering workflows

Alan Hernandez A * and Michael Sinclair A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Xodus, Level 1/1 William Street, Perth, WA, Australia.

* Correspondence to: alan.hernandez@xodusgroup.com

The APPEA Journal 62 S117-S121 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ21085
Accepted: 5 April 2022   Published: 13 May 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of APPEA.

Abstract

Automation, as part of the Energy Industry’s Digital Transformation, is producing significant time savings in modern engineering workflows whilst minimising opportunity for human error. A challenge we face is ensuring these automated workflows are accessible to people in the industry without programming experience. Xodus’ solution to this problem is FLUX. FLUX works as an object-oriented, ‘no-code’, web-based platform which tracks, stores and executes both technical and non-technical workflows. Workflows are first automated in-house by developing scripts, which are then hosted on FLUX allowing them to be easily shared across the business without requiring programming knowledge. A popular use case for FLUX is in the concept engineering phase of a project when performing parametric analyses. Multiple simulation cases (typically thousands) assessing all the different possible combinations of design parameters can be interrogated at once. FLUX can then automatically output an interactive parallel coordinate plot to highlight the impact of each parameter on the overall system. Platforms such as FLUX are an effective solution to increasing accessibility to automation for the industry via ‘no-code’ mechanisms, the ability to interface through an intuitive digital platform where project data is stored, exchanged and analysed through automated calculations is a step forward in engineering workflow efficiency.

Keywords: APIs, automation, digital asset register, engineering workflows, OLGA, on-bottom roughness, Orcaflex, span analysis, subsea pipelines.

Alan Hernandez is a petroleum engineer with 4 years of industry experience, working initially with Mexico’s National Oil Company PEMEX and joining Xodus after completing a masters in Subsea Engineering in 2018. Over the past 3 years, Alan has supported Xodus’ Flow Assurance and Subsea & Pipelines Divisions. Alan has used his Subsea Engineering knowledge in combination with coding skills to create in-house digital design tools and foresee their application across the whole energy sector. He has been recently seconded to Xodus’ Digital Development Division to support the automation of engineering workflows in FLUX as well as to provide training for engineers without programming experience.

Michael Sinclair is a chemical/process engineer by background with 5 years of industry experience with exposure to large operator, oil field servicing and consulting companies. Michael gained most of his experience with Granherne (KBR) in a Process Engineering role. Michael joined Xodus in December 2020 as a Senior Engineer in the Production Assurance Team. He currently works as an Automation Engineer seconded into the Digital Development Team. Michael uses his self-taught coding skills to automate workflows across multiple disciplines within Xodus. He has been closely involved with the development and testing of the FLUX platform and several Python-based scripts hosted on the platform.