Application of Systems Engineering Methods in the oil and gas industry

In the last decade, the energy industry has been through significant changes, demanding drastic cost reductions and increasing the need for collaboration across the actors in the industry. The changes have led to increasing complexity, both in terms of the technical system and regarding business and organization. To evolve successful systems in the new market, companies need to utilize existing systems knowledge effectively. The overarching goal of this research has been to show how companies in the energy domain can apply systems engineering methods to meet the industry's challenges and support the companies' transformation to the new market [1]. The Ph.D. work is performed within the company TechnipFMC, using action research and "industry-as-laboratory." Subsea production systems are complex systems consisting of many interacting constituent systems. To avoid costly late design changes, it is essential to account for the interactions between the systems in the early system design phase. Through interviews, surveys, and observations in the company, we have explored the challenges impacting the early phase of decision-making. We find there is a need to improve the knowledge sharing and the awareness of the system in the operational context. The research evaluated the application of conceptual models to support architectural reasoning in the early phase through several test cases in the company. From the insights gained in the study, we propose an approach for conceptual modeling to support system-level decision-making. The approach gives the engineers guidance in understanding the key drivers and the tensions and how to explore these tensions through conceptual modeling. Application of the approach in the industrial setting supports the engineers in communicating across disciplines and sharing knowledge. [1] Engen (2022), Conceptual Modeling for Architectural Reasoning in the Energy Domain, Thesis

- Økt forståelse av systems engineering practice i energi domenet - Kompetanse heving i bedriften om systems engineering metoder og bruk av konseptuell modellering. - En metode for å bruke konseptuelle modeller i tidlig fase. Metoden er basert på behovene til energi domenet, men kan benyttes på tvers av ulike domener.

Systems Engineering has been used in industries such as defence and automotive for many years, and has contributed to effectiveness in projects. For the subsea industry, however, the use of Systems Engineering is less mature. As oil and gas industry projects tend to differ from other industries, more research on systems engineering specific for the oil and gas industry is needed. The oil and gas industry is changing, and there is a demand for making more cost efficient, flexible and modularized systems. Earlier research has shown that the subsea industry does not put enough emphasis on system design, architecture and requirement management. The proposed research aims to illustrate how systems engineering methods can be applied to meet the subsea industry’s challenges. The Ph.D. will support the company's transformation to the new market. The project shall be conducted within TechnipFMC, within the context of the subsea industry. Data collection will be performed within the company using ongoing and previous projects. The aim of this Ph.D. research is to apply Systems Engineering methodology to systems within the company, with focus on system design, architecture and requirement management in order to: -Deliver systems according to customer needs -Reduce tendering time -Reduce life-cycle cost -Reduce design related changes