June 9, 2023

Vision, application cases for managing your technical networks

Reading time : 10 minutes

Energy management has become a crucial issue on a global scale. Faced with the challenges posed by changing approaches to the use of fossil resources and energy, it makes sense to assess how digital technology can foster sustainable, efficient solutions for producing, distributing and consuming better. In addition to energy efficiency, digital technology must also address the essential issue of the safety of the people and goods who work on these installations.

Electrical accidents are 15 times more often fatal than ordinary accidents. The electrical risk in the workplace, although better controlled, is still present.

(source: https: //eduscol.education.fr)

Energy is at the heart of our lives, whether it's our homes, businesses or critical infrastructure. To optimize the management of this energy, it is crucial to harness the benefits of digital technology. One of the key aspects is large-scale data collection, often illustrated by the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart sensors, but also by the ability to collect, transform and distribute data via APIs, exploit maps, index files etc....

Vision technology, for example, enables precise information on energy consumption to be gathered from EMC software, operating diagrams, maintenance interventions, upcoming work and much more to be analyzed, enabling managers to make informed decisions to improve energy efficiency.

Are you looking to implement a digital transformation policy for network-related professions, whatever the type of fluid (Air, Water, Gas, Electricity...), and wondering where to start? You'll find some ideas and feedback here.

Where to start?

Are you looking to implement a digital transformation policy for network-related professions, whatever the type of fluid (Air, Water, Gas, Electricity...), and wondering where to start? You'll find some ideas and feedback here.

In general, your data sources are multiple and highly heterogeneous. The first step would be to analyze your available data sources - schematics, drawings, Excel files, databases, specific applications - and possibly undertake a physical and digital inventory. This sorting is an important step in recovering as much relevant information as possible. In the absence of digital data, a document scan may be useful to keep track of these documents.

At this stage, what is important is to link the different pieces of information so that they can be accessed quickly and efficiently - for example, this could be :

On the basis of a physical plan of your buildings or plants, locating the various equipment or network components
In a functional diagram of your network(s) with the ins and outs
But also by identification in the field via a tag (QR code or other) of the equipment concerned and its position in the network.
Or, more traditionally, a search based on your identification number

Vision's Data modeler and Plan module are very useful for linking diverse information from heterogeneous systems with proprietary data models, and enabling visualization and interaction on a plan.
An example of visualization on Plan? click on this link

Once the data has been collected, we need to identify the players and their role in processing and updating this information:

The key players in ensuring that fluids are made available are the operating team, which can be internal or external, depending on the situation in industry or construction. It is this team that coordinates interventions and their impact on the operation of the building or infrastructure, by organizing work operations and coordinating preventive and/or regulatory interventions; it has overall knowledge of the building's technical assets.
In the event of a problem, it can call on the maintenance team, which is in charge of preventive maintenance and curative interventions to get energy systems up and running again. This team can also be internal or external to the company, depending on the level of skills and knowledge required (for example, different types of skills are required for HV, LV or low-current electrical networks).
To ensure the conformity of installations, a third type of participant is the inspection body. The inspection body is responsible for identifying non-conformities (insulation problems, missing diagrams, undersizing, etc.), communicating them to the site manager, and assisting him/her in resolving these technical reservations. In this capacity, he or she may decide to shut down the power supply, or to undertake a worksite to bring the installations up to standard, or to modify the data supplied for the analysis of the installations (diagrams, calculation notes, etc.).
Energy and network installation companies, together with their engineering and design departments, are the anchor point for the information that will later be used in operations. For this reason, a working charter should be put in place (at least for large-scale projects) to ensure that structured, standardized data is supplied, so that it can be used in the best possible conditions. In this way, specific formats will be requested for diagrams and plans, and data files (nomenclature, inventories, location, etc.) will be supplied. In this area, BIM can make a major contribution, as it enables a maximum amount of structured data to be aggregated during the design/construction phase, which can then be used for operation/maintenance.
Last but not least, you, me, floor 7, the cleaning room, the labeler, the conveyor... in other words, all energy consumers. Under no circumstances can they tolerate a power cut, or worse, feel in danger in the vicinity of an electrical or gas installation, for example. In this sense, the correct routing of energy to the consumer is the guarantee of efficiency/optimization of activity and the safety of people and property, and this applies to all sectors of activity.

Business procedures related to energy networks

The next step is to provide the appropriate tools and procedures for the various stakeholders to consult and update the information. Of course, as this information is important, it is also important to set up validation procedures that can be adapted to the different categories of interlocutor.

This involves answering questions concerning the identification of standard business processes to be implemented, as well as those specific to the company. In the electrical sector, for example, operators in the building or industrial sectors must at the very least set up periodic inspections of installations, and be able to provide any intervening party (maintenance personnel, fire department, police, etc.) with the necessary information on the various electrical supplies and related data. This calls for special organization and tools to monitor interventions, reports and action plans, as well as tools for supervising technical documents.

In addition to these actions, standard business procedures, specific to each company, are also necessary, such as the consignment/unconsignment of energy, the distribution of shutdown notices, the provision of safety to participants (e.g. the safety minute, the preliminary observation time found at EDF), and internal procedures for updating during work operations (assimilation of DOEs).

Setting up governance for your data

Data governance means harmonizing human intervention and processing tools.

Let's start with people:

The CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) defined during the data modeling phase ensures that information is kept up to date. As this information is often linked to the field, we need to ensure that employees have mobile terminals at their disposal to access, enter or update the information, if necessary. We opt for a validation stage for sensitive data or documents that will be disseminated in the information system. In this way, each person is given responsibility for monitoring one or more specific items of information, via a dedicated and easily accessible interface.

Then the machine :

Awareness of the value of data enables business units to make IT understand just how important data governance is. This, in turn, encourages the integration of this information into the information system, and helps to ensure that it is no longer considered as Shadow IT. Having a tool that enables this integration without requiring special skills or complex projects is another huge advantage of Vision. Data is then associated with management rules within automated workflows, scheduled tasks or access routes for third-party software.

It is clear that the same data can have very different uses and that it is essential that they be reliable and up-to-date.

Business benefits

Today, it has been widely demonstrated that having a good knowledge of your networks has a very strong impact on :

Improving equipment availability
Quality and efficiency of interventions through fast, relevant access to the right information
Implementation of complementary business applications such as :
- Consignment management,
- Incident reporting,
- Setting up automatic cut-off notices
- etc...
Implementing a preventive or even predictive maintenance policy
Reducing human risks by increasing risk awareness and keeping people on their toes
Managing relations with the various parties involved, particularly subcontractors
Performance of work and maintenance operations

It is the foundation for an efficient and optimized network management policy, and the basis for better energy management.

The advantages of No-Code in this field

Here is a list of the various advantages:

Develop the applications you need, tailored to your requirements and constraints, and connect them to your data sources simply, quickly and inexpensively.
Limiting technical constraints, allowing you to focus on WHAT rather than HOW.
Gain experience and become autonomous in building and, above all, upgrading applications that would normally require special internal or external IT expertise.
Avoid tunnel projects, progress at your own pace and see results with every new feature.
Eliminate Shadow IT by providing your users with tools that they can use and develop themselves, with very little support from IT teams, while respecting security and IT operational issues.
Reduce the number of your SaaS applications by streamlining the management of your business data flows on a single platform.
Reduce the cost of your applications and enable you to better manage your activities through data
Create interfaces adapted to each persona and action to be taken to encourage adoption and use of the applications.
Easily connect to different data sources, dynamically harmonize heterogeneous data models for consistent and coherent use of your data.

Lessons and projections

Network-related professions are still poorly equipped for digital transformation, paper is still legion and the difficulty of obtaining reliable data is increasingly complex. It is said that in these professions, more than 20% of time is spent searching for information.

With the need to implement a policy of regulating and optimizing energy use, the teams in charge of digital transformation have a tremendous opportunity to launch projects to inventory and identify networks and equipment, and create knowledge bases. The latter will serve both to secure interventions and to identify areas for optimization (e.g., power or flow rates that have become inadequate over time).

Here again, No Code will enable rapid connection to external data sources, such as a Technical Energy Management solution, to pool data (premises, equipment, power, volume, surface area, etc.).

For maintainers, it's also a way of complementing CMMS tools with an integrated application dedicated to network trades such as electricians, plumbers, heating engineers, etc...

For organizations, it's an opportunity to collect useful data to improve procedures and practices in order to increase efficiency, ensure the safety of individuals, implement prevention policies,.....

- article written on 06 June 2023

Vision by Algo'tech is a No-Code platform for creating professional applications, all in one.

Create your mobile & desktop user interfaces + the database that feeds them + the processes to guide the user through the application + the API connections.

The platform also offers you to host your creations in a centralized space to manage multiple applications, users and their rights.