Institution news
Q: Could you briefly explain your role and how it relates to the digitalisation of asset management?
Dan Wilson (DW): I am the Asset Data Manager within Electricity North West. Sitting within the Asset Management team, I am responsible for the strategy and governance of our asset data, covering the collection and storage of that data and the use of analytical techniques to generate value from it. This includes areas such as asset risk modelling and supporting the development and optimisation of our capital investment programme.
Q: What are the main challenges you have faced implementing digital tools to support the reliability of equipment or infrastructure?
DW: There are probably two key challenges:
- Much of our equipment is not instrumented and/or inaccessible (e.g. underground cables), and key failure modes tend to be around corrosion and insulation ageing rather than wear. As such, much of our conduction data is from manual inspection, so the challenge is finding the balance between getting the most value from our data, and being overly reliant on an inexact data set
- Integrating data from historically disparate systems (such as asset registers, GIS and control systems) to gain an overall view – we have invested heavily in this and are now starting to really see the benefits
Q: What is the most exciting data-driven development in the field of reliability at the moment?
DW: For me, it is probably the growth in open data and open source analysis tools which present huge opportunities to bring together data across different domains and gain new insight which can help to inform future asset management strategy, and allow us to deploy resource more efficiently.
Q: What are you hoping to address at the Asset Management 2020 seminar?
DW: Within the roundtable sessions, I’m hoping to get some insight into how organisations in different sectors are making use of data to improve their asset management, and what lessons and techniques can be shared across sectors.
Q: Which other speakers and topics on the programme are you most looking forward to, and why?
DW: Always a really difficult question with such a good programme, but I’m particularly looking forward to hearing speakers from the offshore wind, rail and nuclear industries to see what learning can be applied to electricity distribution.
Q: Why should a mechanical engineer attend a seminar on digitalisation?
DW: Digitalisation is about pooling knowledge. Combining digitisation with good engineering practice and understanding is vital to ensuring we can get the best value from our assets and allow us to intelligently manage risk.
Q: What innovations are you most interested in for the future?
DW: I find the application of machine learning techniques to asset management particularly interesting, particularly when looking at how we use a wider variety of data source to improve decision making. I’m also interested to look at how we move from managing particular assets to managing interconnected systems, and how digitalisation can help us to understand the emergent behaviours such as resilience and adaptability.
Asset Management: Reliability for a Digital Age takes place on 26 March 2020 at One Birdcage Walk in London. Join this seminar to:
- Learn about the application of data analytics to support design, operation, maintenance and life extension decisions
- Hear more about developments in digital asset management tools including digital twins to leverage large volumes of data and upgrade the reliability of your assets
- Benefit from a wide range of industry case studies from the aviation, power distribution, rail infrastructure, nuclear and renewable energy sectors
- Take part in peer-to-peer roundtables to set the tone for discussion and develop solutions for critical challenges
- Enjoy networking time throughout the day to meet new partners and build relationships which will drive your business forwards
To book your place, please visit www.imeche.org/assetmanagement.