BP Pipelines North America implemented SCADA from Honeywell

On December 10, 2015 the Honeywell company announced the project of audit of process of management of alarm signals and reductions of number of false alarms for BP US Pipelines & Logistics. The project is executed on the software platform Experion SCADA from Honeywell.

Project Tasks

In BP US Pipelines & Logistics company the need for the solution for management of alarm signals which could exclude duplication of information and help with establishing order in functions of the alarm signaling of the pipeline operated by Olympic Pipe Line subsidiary company ripened.

The Olympic Pipe Line pipeline has length of 640 km and there is from the Canadian border to Portland, piece Oregon. The volume of alarm signals on such extended object is huge and operators of the pipeline are overloaded as they had to deal about more than 6 thousand separate alarm signals.

The Olympic Pipe Line company managed by BP Pipelines North America transports gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel on interregional pipeline system, including the pipelines with a diameter of 12, 14, 16 and 20 inches passing through densely populated regions of the country. The pipeline is filled with products of four oil refineries and includes nine pump and nine shipping stations. Products are delivered on objects in Seattle, Olympia, Vancouver and Portland (piece Oregon).

Trace origin of some alarm signals presented considerable difficulties as for lifetime of the pipeline in the company different engineers who adhered to the different principles worked, were guided by different priorities and used different rules of assignment of names to signals.

BP US Pipelines & Logistics selected for management of alarm signals the software developed by Honeywell company which helped to ensure smooth operation of the pipeline due to reduction of quantity of the alarm signals requiring operator intervention. The companies jointly reviewed and updated the management plan alarm signals which provided appointment to signals of priorities for response of the operator, consolidation of alarm signals in groups as required and reduction of quantity of alarm signals with the purpose to select those signals to which the controller should react.

Project Progress

BP selected a management system for alarm signals of Honeywell.

Process of documentation and rationalization of alarm signals which helped to analyze current situation became the first step and to develop the management plan alarm signals. Purposes of process of documentation and rationalization:

• reduction of quantity of alarm signals for selection and management only of those signals which require reaction from the operator.
• removal from the page of summary information of all fixed alarm signals.
• determination and implementation of changes in processing of alarm signals and also selection of those signals which require changes in a system.
• development of the help page for the operator with improvements on the basis of results of process of documentation and rationalization.

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In addition

• reduction of average daily quantity of alarm signals with more than 400 to managed 200.
• determination of processing rules for all signals and appointment of actionees of response for the corresponding signals.
• exception of wrong signals.
• continuous configuration management of alarm signals helped to provide approval of signals of fundamental restrictions of the pipeline.
• establishing order on the page of aggregated data about alarm signals which contained signals of the objects taken out of service.
• consolidation of similar devices in groups for optimization and purpose of priorities to numerous alarm signals in scales of all pipeline.

Honeywell and BP analyzed the existing strategy of management of alarm signals and developed a matrix of gravity of signals for assessment of effects and arrangement of priorities. It was necessary to rationalize more than 6300 alarm signals, including signals from three previous SCADA systems. Process of documentation and rationalization of management of alarm signals consisted of two-week training and included use of the project documentation of a PLC.

Specialists of BP began to group signals, sorting them by the principle of similarity. Having separated signals from similar devices into groups, the staff of BP used spreadsheets of Excel to rationalize and place priorities for numerous signals at once on all pipeline.

This process helped to provide coordination of rules of purpose of names to signals with their descriptions. Separation into groups helped to place priorities.

Many secondary alarm signals generated by other signals are deleted for benefit of initial. As a result this separation into groups saved a lot of time and means for BP.

For December 9, 2015 process of documentation and rationalization is complete for 89% — 5.6 thousand signals are analyzed, processing of their description is complete, a system creates reports on discrepancies.