Old plants, new challenges

Ironically, the very infrastructure now identified as high-profile terrorist targets - dams, bridges, power plants, transmission lines, refineries and the like - are the assets rendered most 'fragile' by age and under-investment.

The fragility of these crucial infrastructure assets was dramatically demonstrated by the recent and still largely unexplained power outage in the Northeastern United States.

Many high-profile terrorist targets are marginally maintained and poorly documented, with key operational and repair knowledge residing only in the minds of a shrinking, retiring work force. This is a recipe for disaster in which a relatively minor terrorist incursion could precipitate an unexpected ripple effect that dwarfs that recent US power outage.

Today, the owners and operators of physical infrastructure in many industrialised countries face a major challenge: the infrastructure assets and work force that operates those assets are ageing. This basic truth is becoming a driving force in numerous industries, including manufacturing and process plants, and utilities generation and distribution.

In many of these industries, tight budgets and fierce competition create pressures to optimise plant operations and maintenance, while at the same time ageing plant infrastructures are becoming increasingly fragile: difficult to maintain, and above all, difficult to protect from terrorist and other forms of attack.

Our rapidly retiring workforce is often resistant to institutional change, even as they take their knowledge about these ageing and poorly documented facilities into retirement with themselves.

Regulatory requirements and ageing, inflexible IT infrastructures further complicate the picture.

The immediate security threat is clearly an issue, but the longer-term implications of these trends should not be underestimated. In many industries, the operations and maintenance costs of ageing facilities are increasing while productivity is decreasing. This in turn reduces the amount of capital available for reinvestment - while the essential operational expertise is retiring.

In contrast, emerging nations and economies are investing heavily in new plants and equipment that are inherently more efficient than their developed-world counterparts. As a result, countries with mature infrastructures are losing manufacturing skills fast as industries relocate to lower-wage locations - and as engineering and technology jobs shift to low-cost labour sources.

However, the owners, operators and maintainers of ageing and vulnerable infrastructure are not without their success stories. There are many examples of organisations in a variety of industries who have reversed these 'death spirals' by applying innovation to improve productivity, defining new value propositions and establishing international competitive positions.

Perhaps it is not surprising that many elements of these success stories are quite similar, regardless of the industry in which they were applied. For example, proven strategies are now available that (re)define the optimised operations and maintenance processes for ageing plant systems and provide cost/benefit analysis for system upgrades.

Just as ageing athletes require training regimes that differ from those of younger players, so ageing and often poorly protected engineered assets likewise require unique treatment to remain competitive - and secure. Recognition and accommodation of these differences can often extend the useful lives of systems well beyond the limits of the original designers. Technologies are now available that enable robust integration and phased migration between legacy plant automation systems and new technologies.

Sweeping 'throw-it-all-out-and-start-again' change is exceedingly risky and almost never results in the desired outcome. Today, best industry practice is based on a safer, lower risk approach to facilitate incremental change to an organisation's processes and automation infrastructure - driven by sound cost/benefit analysis to ensure the expected results.

To achieve successful, enduring change, organisations must establish a new balance between the people, processes and technologies that reflects the desired changes in the organisation's 'personality' or competitive positioning. Achieving stakeholder buy-in to new business processes and technologies is essential to realising increased productivity and expected results.

It is natural for people to resist change if they are not involved and lack incentives to bridge the gap between the status quo and ownership of the proposed change. Specific steps can be taken to improve plant resilience, productivity and security. Using process modelling and simulation in optimisation, for example; using workflow technologies to institutionalise re-engineered business processes; and employing best-of-class middleware for legacy system integration.

Change management and measuring return on investment in automation projects are critical too. Only by addressing the special needs of its ageing plant can the industry hope to protect those engineering assets from attack, while at the same time optimising them to compete.

Mike Jordan is a business development manager for Intergraph Solutions Group