Quality assurance, design and installation documentation for a new sub-sea system has been made accessible through a versatile web-based application. Users can 'drill-down' through the structure of the system to access data for any component

Background

A leading multi-national exploration company has developed a new sub-sea system comprised of a large number of individual components manufactured by a number of external contractors. The company faced a requirement to collate manufacturing and quality assurance documentation for each component, and thus ensure that each stage of manufacture and assembly had been fully certificated before installation on the sea floor.

A method for being able to check quality assurance stages on each component and group of components was required, with a means of reporting this data back to manufacturers and to management. With much of the data residing in paper documents and on personal spreadsheets, a way of centralising and publishing this information was seen as essential, to avoid critical information being missed.

Outcome

Venture, in conjunction with the project engineers, developed a web-based application which, through the use of hot-spots overlaid onto technical schematics of components, allows users to navigate graphically through the sub-sea system. At each stage, from individual connectors to the system as a whole, relevant documentation (including scanned documents) and QA information is displayed, with access to photographs, original schematics, and so on. Administrative data update facilities and documents upload functions, ensure the QA data is up to date at all times.

The application provides users with rapid access to Quality Assurance data for each component in the system, and also allows the project team to find any holes in the overall QA and thus liase with manufacturers and contractors to fill the gaps prior to installation.

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