BECHTEL CORPORATION

ENGINEERING

ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT STRATEGY

BECHTEL INTEROPERABILITY STRATEGY
30Y-W01-00002, Revision 000, 2010 May 28
Prepared by: R. Benjamins
Approved by: T.M. Patterson

1.0 PURPOSE

This Engineering Department Instruction defines Bechtel’s interoperability strategy for our
complete project execution domain. The interoperability strategy implements the Central
Engineering and Technology Vision, Strategy and Plan.

2.0 GENERAL

The interoperability strategy, with its emphasis on the “single source of truth (SSoT)” concept,
is designed to change how data is processed, viewed and used on Bechtel projects. Based on
open standards and interoperability best practices and principles, the strategy is built to
maximize return-on-investment (ROI).

2.1 Reason for Issue

 Issued to document Bechtel’s standards-based approach to data integration and

interoperability

2.2 Description

This instruction defines Bechtel’s interoperability strategy and represents the corporate
position for Central Engineering & Technology and aligns with Information Systems &
Technology (IS&T) strategy. This position has been developed from over 20 years of Bechtel
project integration and interoperability experience combined with recommendations from
standard organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), and POSC Caesar Association (PCA). The strategy
has been proven through collaboration with industry experts and authorities.

With the evolution of our projects from home-office-based execution to globally distributed,
24/7, joint-venture execution, the need for a comprehensive interoperability strategy that is
efficient, effective, and low cost is imperative. The strategy is for the long term and must
enable a high degree of reuse that results in significant ROI.

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30Y-W01-0002-000 Page 1 of 11
The continuing issues with supplier information management and recent Six Sigma process
improvement project (PIP) consolidation into the Vendor Information Modernization (VIM)
project have identified key innovations that will escalate improvements, both short and long
term. Our interoperability strategy includes these innovations such as SSoT and Cloud
Computing (Internet hosted and accessed information) that will allow the VIM project to meet
its goals.

3.0 BACKGROUND

3.1 Definitions

 Interoperability – The ability to exchange or correlate information between two or more

application systems or users. Interoperability primarily provides the means to connect,
access, transform, and transport information among systems and users.
 Integration – The making of connections or relationships among information data
elements. This does not necessarily imply that information is merged or brought
together to achieve integration.
 Abstraction – The representation of an occurrence of information in a generalized or
less specific form that focuses on the relevant underlying concepts.
 Encapsulation – The act of compartmentalizing or hiding details of information and
information systems. Encapsulation is used to divide systems into modules and serves
to reduce complexity by eliminating system specific binding.

3.2 Goals

While many different interoperability and integration implementations exist throughout Bechtel,
a significant improvement can be gained by applying a common, standards-based
interoperability solution that consolidates these implementations and provides new capabilities.
This new strategy will extend across our entire project execution landscape, which includes not
only our many diverse applications systems but also the systems of our customers, suppliers,
and joint venture partners. This project-centric strategy will also extend to our enterprise
commercial systems.

A key shift in focus of our interoperability strategy is that the information infrastructure and
services provided by this strategy go beyond the obvious needs of data exchange. This
additional functionality includes support for information requests, cross-application reporting,
integration, state, search, visualization, and analysis. These additional abilities will be available
across the project landscape and are applicable to both Bechtel and non-Bechtel information
sources and systems.

A benefit of this full service approach is a reduction in the volume of data exchanges now
required on our projects, resulting in higher quality data due to reduced data duplication and
clear ownership of data.

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3.3 Standards

Experience has shown us the importance of interoperability standards over technology, which
is subject to rapid change. Since the strategy will be dominated by standards, the selection of
the right standard is critical. The ISO 15926 interoperability and integration standard has been
selected as the primary standard for our interoperability strategy.

ISO 15926 has been adopted by our industry as the preferred standard for information
integration and interoperability. The adoption of ISO 15926 by our customers, suppliers, and
joint venture partners continues to increase. ISO 15926 is independent of technology
implementations. The design of the standard ensures that investments made today in ISO
15926 will far outlive the inevitable changes in information technology.

ISO 15926 provides the power, adaptability, and ROI to solve not only our current, but also our
future, integration and interoperability needs. ISO 15926 is a full fidelity standard that can
manage documents, geometry, data ownership, metadata, relationship information, and
lifecycle information.

ISO 15926 is based on rigorous information modeling principles that are heavily influenced by
Semantic Web concepts. This use of information modeling provides the ability to significantly
reduce information ambiguity and raise the semantic precision of our information. The
reduction of ambiguity and increase of precision has far-reaching advantages that will enable
greater productivity gains on our projects. Information ambiguity raises the cost of
interoperability. An increase in precision provides greater opportunities to automate processes
that are done manually today.

Ambiguity equals cost, while precision equals opportunity.

3.4 Strategic Software Suppliers

Ubiquitous industry data interoperability will be facilitated and accelerated by software supplier
applications that implement and support ISO 15926. Therefore, to improve the reuse and
integrity of information received from and supplied to others, we will continue to engage with
our strategic software suppliers to enable standards-based interfaces or to access data
managed by their design and data management tools. Where necessary, we will build interface
capability to support our business needs.

3.5 PSN 2.0

IS&T has been moving toward a pervasive open-standards-based strategy for its technology
platforms and services, which is embodied in the Project Services Network (PSN) 2.0. PSN 2.0
is necessary to support our global, 24/7, distributed work execution model. The PSN 2.0 vision
is a key part of our interoperability strategy. The implementations resulting from our strategy
will be built for PSN 2.0.

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3.6 Open Source

The implementation of our interoperability strategy will maximize the use of open-source
technology and solutions to minimize cost and maximize interoperability with our customers,
suppliers, and joint venture business partners. Our open-source engagement will include
Bechtel’s participation in developing, contributing, and initiating new open-source projects. The
preferred license for open-source software should be based on the Berkeley Software
Distribution (BSD) license. IS&T and the PSN 2.0 vision and strategy are aligned with this
open-source approach.

Usage of open source does not exclude usage of commercial proprietary software
technologies. We will encourage our technology providers to engage in open-source initiatives
that support our strategy and implementation plans.

3.7 IP Protection

Our intellectual property (IP) will be protected from public exposure. The separation of ISO
15926 reference data and its mapping allows natural containment of our IP. The reference
data used on our projects that does not contain IP will always be public to maximize our ability
to interoperate with other companies that use the same reference data. The mapping will
always be private; this is where our IP is normally maintained. If it is possible to discern our IP
based on our use of reference data, that reference data will be kept private. Such cases are
considered exceptions that require corporate Engineering Automation approval.

3.8 Fundamental Requirements

Our interoperability strategy includes the following fundamental requirements:

 Is based on open standards and protocols
 Adheres to Semantic Web (Web 3.0) principles
 Fully conforms with ISO 15926
 Uses ISO 15926 standardized reference data
 Is built for global work execution
 Is secured for global collaboration
 Embodies SSoT as defined by the W3C

Adherence to these fundamental requirements will result in a strategic implementation that is

well suited to our current and future project execution model. This will also enable a high
degree of reuse of our investments in our configurations, with the least amount of variation,
thereby resulting in lower costs to own, maintain, and operate.

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3.9 Principles

The interoperability strategy incorporates three very powerful principles: encapsulation,

abstraction, and single source of truth. Strict adherence to these principles will achieve the
lowest cost and most effective operation. Conformance to these principles should not be
relaxed.
 Encapsulation creates a loosely coupled information environment. Loose coupling
enables complete application system independence from any information consumer or
provider. Successful encapsulation tolerates application version or whole system
changes without any impact to the rest of the information landscape. This brings needed
flexibility to our projects and enables a greatest capability, lowest cost approach.
 Abstraction provides the ability to represent information in a completely neutral manner.
Abstraction is a powerful concept that enables high reusability of information and
information interfaces. Abstraction is also an essential requirement to achieving
encapsulation.
 Single source of truth is a powerful concept that states that information should be
accessed exclusively at the point of ownership. This point of ownership is typically a
secure, publicly accessible endpoint (interface) on the Internet.
– SSoT requires that information not be copied but instead be simply referenced. The
reference is in the form of an address or link that points to where the owner has
published the information. Copying data from SSoT endpoints to an application
results in possible transformation errors, information obsolescence, increased
information maintenance and management costs, and the unnecessary bloating of
our applications in trying to manage an accumulating mass of foreign data. Most
importantly, eliminating information copying improves information throughput by
reducing the number of process steps.

– SSoT is sometimes confused with integrating or consolidating repositories such as

data warehouse products. These solutions have their roles and at times are
advertised as being SSoT implementations. However, this is incorrect: data
warehouses inherently contain massive amounts of copied information with all of the
negative aspects stated above.
– The vision for SSoT is a federated landscape of information endpoints that are
accessed via information queries. This is the vision of the Semantic Web. It is also a
major component and expectation of the VIM project.
– The ISO 15926 standard provides the means to implement strong encapsulation and
abstraction and is fundamental to achieving SSoT.

3.10 DataBroker

Although DataBroker is well established and has proved and established many of the sound
interoperability practices and principles stated above, there are several reasons why we must

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plan its retirement and replace it with a new approach and strategy. The reasons for
replacement are:
 Information Relationships – The relationship is central to integration. Most of our
applications are centered on data, with the relationship model embedded in the
application. Once the application data is exported outside the application, the
relationships become ambiguous. This is true for DataBroker as well. With the
increased use of asset lifecycle information management systems such as Intergraph’s
SmartPlant Foundation, NRX Global’s AssetHub, Aveva’s AVEVA NET, and Bentley’s
ProjectWise Life Cycle Server (which all provide information integration and
consolidation services), the need to populate these repositories with relationships
cannot be met by our current interoperability approach. Relationships are a core feature
of the ISO 15926 standard.
 Scalability – Since DataBroker is based on a difference-driven methodology, it is not
efficient at handling the current volumes of data found on our large projects. Although
the system works well, the time it now takes to process a data exchange is starting to
affect project schedules.
 ISO 15926 Compliance – DataBroker is based on STEPLib, a precursor to ISO 15926.
The reference data is not fully compliant with the ISO 15926 standard and is
represented exclusively by a Bechtel proprietary wrapper.
 Open Source or Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) – DataBroker is a proprietary
Bechtel-built solution.
 Technology Obsolescence
– Code Base – DataBroker is written with Microsoft VB 6, which has been replaced by
.NET technologies. Support for this legacy technology is dwindling and has started
to increase the costs of enhancing and maintaining the existing code base.
– Architecture – DataBroker is an n-tier design based on a Windows “fat” client model
that is not well suited to PSN and is not a PSN 2.0 application design.
– Component Object Model (COM) – COM is a core legacy Windows technology,
and DataBroker took advantage of advanced features that are not well supported in
Windows 7 and Citrix.
– Tied to Oracle – While DataBroker can provide interoperability services to
applications that use most databases such as MS SQL Server, MS Access, MS
Excel, and Oracle, the DataBroker components themselves are bound to Oracle. MS
SQL Server is Bechtel’s preferred database technology, and a significant rewrite
would be required to move from Oracle to MS SQL Server.

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4.0 STRATEGY

4.1 Strategy Background

Our interoperability strategy evolved primarily by merging years of experience using Bechtel’s
proprietary DataBroker system with our deep understanding of ISO 15926 and Semantic Web
principles. Our initial use of ISO 15926 with our DataBroker system primarily took advantage of
the benefits of terminology standardization. We then expanded our use of ISO 15926 in our
Staging Service project through the use of explicit relationships modeling and higher semantic
precision. Because this was our first use of the full ISO 15926 standard, we still incorporated
some Bechtel proprietary aspects similar in concept to those of DataBroker, which led to a
less-than-desirable outcome. The takeaway from that first effort was to fully adhere to a
standards-based approach. The current interoperability strategy is completely standards
based, with all reference data (not project data) not containing Bechtel IP moved into the public
domain. The IP that remains is now implemented via configuration.

All of our experiences from DataBroker through Staging Service were rolled up into our current
implementation, called Project Data Management (PDM). PDM is a multiphased
implementation that will leverage the existing DataBroker system to deploy ISO 15926
throughout Bechtel. PDM also introduced the participation and creation of open-source
software solutions that resulted in iRINGTools. iRINGTools is an implementation of iRING,
which is the branding of any implementation (open source or commercial) that conforms to all
of the parts of ISO 15926. Although PDM is a Bechtel initiative, its use of open source and
open standards extends the initiative to other companies that are also contributing significant
resources and expertise to the development of iRING.

4.2 Strategy Outline

Figure 1 depicts the deployed breadth of our new interoperability strategy. All information
managed by the iRING infrastructure is accessed via the PSN Portal. The PSN Portal provides
secured, device-independent, Internet-based, single-point access to all information managed
by iRING and its associated services.

The PDM information infrastructure with ISO 15926/iRING protocols is our SSoT platform.
PDM provides the platform that strictly enforces investment protection and flexibility of
encapsulation and leverages the full power of abstraction as implemented by ISO 15926
reference data.

The primary feature of the new information landscape is a federation of application endpoints
(interfaces) that extends beyond Bechtel to include our customers or owners/operators,
suppliers, and joint venture partners. These endpoints securely expose an application’s
information on the Internet to allow other applications to query and pull information. The query
is the basic operation that all ISO 15926/iRING endpoints support and is the basis for
interoperability services. These services are:
 Query

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  Data exchange
 Cross-application reporting
 Integration
 Search
 Visualization
 Analysis

Figure 1 – Bechtel’s Interoperability Strategy

Since these endpoints are built on standard protocols and are deployed on the Internet, access
is not a function of intimate knowledge of the endpoint’s design or location. With this approach,

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knowledge of how to get to an application and its internal data structures is not required to
successfully reach across multiple applications that could be spread among many different
locations and companies.

To facilitate deployment and project configuration requirements, the PSN Portal will be used as
the primary gateway to interact with all information.

As depicted in Figure 1, the information infrastructure is peer-to-peer with no central point of

dependence or failure. Even the online ISO 15926 reference data, which provides the
abstraction and defines the semantic precision of the entire landscape, is required only during
mapping configuration, not during normal runtime operation of any of the information services.
The only thing conceptually in the center is the language of ISO 15926. This peer-to-peer
architecture lowers risk and sustains operation even if services go offline.

This strategy meets our core goals of abstraction, encapsulation, and SSoT.

5.0 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

5.1 PDM

As an implementation, PDM has the challenge of developing and deploying a whole new
information infrastructure. Considering the number of different data exchanging, viewing, and
reporting solutions used throughout Bechtel, the challenge in successfully deploying PDM is to
do so at the least cost and with the maximum reuse of existing investments. To achieve this,
DataBroker will be used to implement PDM inside Bechtel as it transitions to decommissioning.

DataBroker’s established footprint across Bechtel will give the widest reach to the plan to
upgrade to PDM. Furthermore, DataBroker already includes some beneficial standardization
that will allow for an automated transition to PDM without the need to reinvest in new interfaces
on applications that now use DataBroker. Lastly, the natures of both the DataBroker and the
PDM ISO 15926/iRING operations make a hard switchover from the old system to the new
system unnecessary. Both new and old can operate side by side with the same applications.
With this capability, current investments in DataBroker interfaces are leveraged as the fast way
to ISO 15926/iRING.

With the completion of Phase II of PDM, a new data exchange and interface metadata
management system built for ISO 15926/iRING will be deployed. With this plan, it is
recommended that applications deploying new interfaces develop these interfaces as native
iRING interfaces via the iRINGTools software.

5.2 Reuse – DataBroker

In moving forward to the enhanced interoperability strategy, we will reuse the key values of
DataBroker and merge them into the new PDM infrastructure. These key values are:
 Reference Data (RDM)

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  Adapters (Periscope)
 Standardized interface protocol

This reuse will extend the ROI of the original investment in DataBroker and, at a minimum, not
require new software development for any existing application that uses DataBroker interfaces
to move to ISO 15926/PDM. New integrations to BSAPs that don’t currently use DataBroker
will be able to interface with iRING directly through the iRINGTools Adapter.

5.3 PDM Schedule

Figure 2 shows the PDM 3-year plan.

Figure 2 – PDM 3-Year Plan

5.4 PDM Schedule Details

 PDM Phase 1 – 2009 (completed)

Build a new technology adapter that implements the interface protocols of ISO 15926.
This was achieved with the delivery of iRINGTools on May 29, 2009. Develop full
mapping of DataBroker RDM reference data into ISO 15926 and create ISO 15926 Part
4 classes and Part 7 template extensions as required to match DataBroker existing data
exchange scope. Develop a Bechtel proprietary transformation module that can read
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 DataBroker/Periscope configurations and convert them to iRINGTools format. Embed
iRINGTools into DataBroker version 3.0.0 and deliver to configuration management
(CM) before December 31, 2009.
 PDM Phase II – 2010
Deploy iRINGTools to PSN and develop initial cross-application report examples.
Evaluate and select a new ISO 15926/iRING-compatible middleware/enterprise service
bus (ESB) solution to replace the DataBroker server. Develop the gap report for the new
middleware/ESB selection. Develop solutions for critical gaps and complete by
November 30, 2010. Deliver the new middleware/ESB to CM by November 30, 2010.
 PDM Phase III – 2011
Finish developing the remaining gaps in the middleware/ESB solution. Tie the
middleware/ESB to the PSN Portal to manage all ISO 15926/iRING information
services. Develop a suite of cross-application reports as templates. Begin
decommissioning DataBroker.

6.0 REFERENCES

6.1 Strategy Paper 30Y-W01-00001, Central Engineering and Technology Vision, Strategy
and Plan
6.2 ISO TC184/SC4, the owning organization of ISO15926
6.3 POSC Caesar Association (PCA) Primer on ISO 15926
6.4 iRINGUserGroup for the ISO 15926 implementation user group

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