CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
14 March 2007
Company News
President of ExxonMobil Development Company Focuses on Keys to Successful Project Execution in BE Magazine
In the latest issue of BE Magazine ( http://www.be.org/ ), published by Bentley Systems, Incorporated, Mark Albers, president of ExxonMobil Development Company, highlights seven attributes that open the door to improved performance and excellence in project management and execution: safety leadership, concept selection, technology, execution planning, contracting strategy, project management teams, and change management discipline. Albers concludes with a discussion of strategic fundamentals that can help engineering and construction organizations successfully provide the infrastructure and energy to "not only support the world's economies, but to help them grow and prosper."
In the article that follows, titled "Loss Prevention," PinnacleOne's Bryan Forbes examines one of the most critical project challenges for owners: limiting unacceptable cost growth during construction. Forbes explains that even though owners expend a lot of energy developing accurate budgets for all phases of a project, they may still find themselves "holding an empty wallet at the end of the construction phase." Forbes' advice to owners is practical and to the point. Says Forbes, "It is generally not an owner's actions that cause the greatest cost growth, but rather a lack of action."
From these discussions of challenges affecting today's project participants, BE Magazine moves to the article "Envisioning the Future," written by Carol Rieg, director of the Future City Competition. Rieg provides candid comments from students taking part in this year's Future City Competition. Though the aspirations expressed by each student are unique, their remarks share a common theme: They can and will make a difference for future generations. A sidebar highlights the first inductees to the new Future City Hall of Fame, which recognizes Future City Competition participants now pursuing active careers in engineering and related fields.
This issue also brings the second in a series of articles on change management. In "Creating Empowerment Teams Helps Multiply Productivity," Arnold Most, a project engineer at the Hudson Valley Technology Development Center, discusses the need for companies to handle, manage, and support positive change to enable innovation - which he says is the most potent weapon in today's arsenal of competitive tools for global organizations. Most outlines four stages of change a company must go through to transform its business and become a world-class leader.
A new department in BE Magazine called BE Gallery features images supplied by MicroStation users that showcase their visualization expertise. The images are hand-picked by Bentley visualization standard-bearers Ray Bentley, executive vice president, software engineering, and Joe Granville, MicroStation product designer responsible for visualization and animation strategy.
In his column "The Last Word," CEO Greg Bentley emphasizes the critical importance of enabling software interoperability - and then achieving interoperations - for both IT vendors and user organizations. He points to Microsoft's opening of its formats in Office 2007 as the most publicized example of a vendor recognizing this win-win gain, and he applauds the huge benefits of such efforts. "Data that has been proprietary and opaque becomes valuable 'content' that can be exchanged with - and becomes queryable by - other applications," says Mr. Bentley. "Users own the data they create, so of course they should have the right and the ability to continue to reap returns from their intellectual property indefinitely."
He continues, "For infrastructure professionals, their distributed enterprises and the long asset lifecycles make the return on interoperations particularly dramatic. So it's surprising, and frankly disappointing, to see IT vendors in our space expressly impede interoperability, especially to the point of attempting to threaten what progress has been laboriously accomplished by others."
Mr. Bentley goes on to express his optimism about improving interoperations, including expanded information reuse for process plant owner-operators, and expanded tool choices for their contractors, through the increasing demand and support for ISO 15926. He explains that much of the credit for the success of this data protocol is due to the FIATECH consortium of owners, contractors, and IT vendors. He adds that Bentley is using an ISO 15926 framework for interoperations across its comprehensive portfolio of plant applications, from front-end engineering design through analysis, detail design, layout, and ultimately operations.
As always, readers of BE Magazine will also find a variety of inspiring user success stories; how-to articles that help architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) and geospatial professionals as well as owner-operators become better connected and more productive; a global roundup of AEC and geospatial news; practical technical notes; commentary on issues critical to the AEC and geospatial communities; and more.
To experience BE Magazine's latest digital issue and become a subscriber, go to http://www.be.org/ . To contribute to the editorial content of future issues, please submit success stories, feature articles, news items, commentary, or letters to BEmagazine@be.org .
Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.
CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.