How is digital transformation driving the strategic ethos of AVEVA?
For the past two decades industries have been investing heavily in digitisation of operations, process and stakeholders’ engagements.Segments like banking, telecommunication, manufacturing and retail have transformed their business largely using the latest technologies and trends, to achieve higher operational efficiencies and reduce cost to improve profits in highly competitive era.
Traditionally,the infrastructure sectors have been implementing silo solutions to achieve departmental or process specific automation to drive better operational efficiencies and these investments have certainly delivered huge benefits. However, the silo solution implementations have many gaps which give rise to human interventions as the information is fragmented, which adds to inefficient operations. Operators of infrastructure like airports, sea ports, railways, metros, cities, water systems, tunnels and even facilities like township and multisite data centre etc, are realizing that to enhance their operational efficiencies further, they need todevelop a road map for digital transformation by leveraging existing investments in solutions and systems. From our stand point we believe in achieving next level of operational efficiency by seamlessly integrating systems, process and people across multiple sites.
Having said that, the approach needed for the digital transformation of infrastructure is very different than rest of the industries as infrastructure is operated with the help of engineering solutions and IT technologies. Many IT technology companies are trying to build solutions offerings however their offering exhibits lack of understanding, experience and capabilities to leverage the engineering technologies. AVEVA brings experience in designing and building engineering technology in combination with IT technology through a true IT and OT conversion platform called “Unified Operation Centre”.
What are the most significant challenges to the creation of smart infrastructure?
Before we jump into implementation aspects, I would like to address the challenges that the infrastructure industry is facing at the definition level-“what is smart”. The concept of digital transformation of infrastructure is new and evolving without much of standardisation or a framework. Infrastructure operations are very complex, which are also spread across multiple sites with variety of domains, which spans horizontally across departments. And each of these domains may have deeper vertical implications as well. If you choose cities, city operators take care of many unique operations, which are very different from one another and specialized in its own sense. For example, city managers are responsible for managing city infrastructure like roads, tunnels, drainages, water supply, sewerage treatment, street lighting etc. Also, they need to manage citizen services like traffic management, public safety and security, transportation, emergency response, etc. plus they also need to take care of governance like budgeting, licensing and permits, building permission, real property taxation, etc. Similar dynamics applies to other sub-segments like ports, airports, railways, etc. Therefore, digital transformation of infrastructure becomes very complex due to multiple domains, which gives rise to requirement of implantation of multiple solutions from many vendors comprising of information technology and operational technology solutions.
Another challenge observed is, when customers try to engage consulting companies to define the vision and the road map. Many consulting companies feel challenged to address the real gaps due to lack of all-round experience in dealing with variety of domains plus knowledge to leverage existing investments in solutions spread across information technology, operational technologies and IoT to drive innovation along with inception of new solutions.
Another aspect which adds to the challenges is when technology companies try to sell their solution under the pretext of the true digital transformation approach and the customers end up having variety of solutions with different degree of maturity addressing automation, feature and functionality.
Therefore, many times it is seen that the vision and transformational road map is not developed in totality. Under these circumstances, the customer with limited budget and without an appropriate road map and incomplete vision try to take up few projects, which does not deliver the desired outcome.
What are some of the technology focus areas for the development of smart infrastructure?
The digital transformation of infrastructure into smart infrastructure needs basic automation in place. The transformation can be achieved, if the client has invested in digitisation of their operations by adopting silo solutions, which are designed to address specific business drivers at the department or functional level. Many customers are modernizing or investing in basic automation layers to leapinto more advanced capabilities in time to come. There is a space for all these different technology pieces like various platform technologies, IOT, big data, cloud to achieve true smart infrastructure. The issue arises when we skip from investing in stepwise approach to address real gaps in digitisation but jumping on to invest in solutions which may need certain basic technology readiness, operational efficiencies and maturity of the organization. One good example is the latest trend of big data analytics with AI ML based predications, the adoption of these technologies is only effective when organization has completed their digitization of operations and achieved great degree of operational efficiencies by integrating systems, automating people driven process and collaboration of information across multiple sites in real time.
How do you manage your relationships with partners and solution vendors to ensure you get the best value (both in terms of quality and cost)?
Smart Infrastructure transformation projects are complex in nature and it needs selection and engagement with variety of solution providers, consultants, and master system integrators. We encounter two types of partners, first onearethe prime bidders, these are the organization who are engaged in delivering transformational project on turn key basis. Prime bidders need assurance of successful delivery apart from deep guidance on the technology differentiation while they are choosing solutions. Since we work with the cities directly and engage city leaders through our thought leadership, we take the ownership of jointly validating the different solution components with master system integrators, along with our platform technology Unified Operation Centre (UOC).
Second set of partners are solution vendors like Intelligent Traffic Management, Vehicle Parking, Transit Management, CCTV Surveillance, Water and Energy Systems etc. We work with them for integration of their solutions with our UOC. The pre-integrated approach helps in reducing the overall cost of the project and ensures success. This “value” driven engagement approach helps Master System Integrators and other solution providers to lower cost and increase assurance of successful delivery of the transformation project
Lastly, we also extensively engage with consulting organizations and support them with technology briefing, case studies, future innovations on our technology, brain storming and feedback sessions. This help them in recommending clients on best possible approaches and technology options, while they suggest the transformational road maps.
What are the interesting features of ‘city in a box’?
Well, when we look at the statistics of urban population shift, we observe this trend – which is shifting population from metro cities to large cities to mid-size cities. It is evident that the development of mid-size cities and green field cities hold the future of the urban development and most eligible option to reduce the dependencies on metro’s and large cities. Also, transformation of the midsize cities is comparatively easy than metro’s and large cities. While this transformational trend is setting in, the city authorities have an opportunity to avoid or overcome issues the large cities are facing. One of the main issues is the governance process of the cities. By and large, as a practice the city operations are managed through departments which are independent of each other. The very approach does not allow city authorities to manage the interdependent functions, events and incidences. For example, if there is road repair work to be taken up by public work department, the information about this activity may not be shared with traffic department in advance, whereby traffic management issues can be managed when work is ongoing. These kind of gap by not having interconnects between department is more evidently seen in city administration, which gives rise to inefficiencies affecting citizen services. Also,the departmental operations are very manually driven although there could be deployment of point solutions. Many of these point solutions may not have very advanced visualization, human process automation, analytics and collaboration capabilities. This becomes a road block for departments to improvise the operational efficiencies to the next level. To make a city smart one needs to bridge these kinds of gaps which reside in the system although there is substantial investment in digitization of the departmental operations.
The concept of City Command Centre platform has come to reality to solve some of these issues. And we at AVEVA play a very important role by helping cities in their transformational journey through our platform technology “Unified Operation Centre”. By means of our platform one can enhance capabilities of the silo solutions through seamless integrations with Information Technology (IT), Operational Technology (OT) and IOT based solutions with UOC.This not only enhances the point solution capabilities but also allows centralization of operations, management of critical incidences, eventsand collaboration of information between departments electronically to achievehigher-level of efficiencies. UOC allows conversion of IT and OT solutions not only at the platform integration layer but also at the data layer. This gives true power to users not only to centrally “control” some of the functions of underline IT and OT applications but also the capabilities to share and collaborate information through active workflows connected through mobile devices, visibility and visualization through dashboards and GIS mapping. Effectively one can monitor and control entire city operations through a centralized command and control centre. I call such an implementation as “City in a Box”. We have successfully achieved this concept for a green field city in India called Nava Raipur.
How can change management be dealt with? What are the possible ways to minimise transformation-based disruption?
Change management has many dimensions like carrying out Business Process Re-engineering, Capacity Building and Training. From ICT stand point, we give lot of emphasis on engaging end users while we are building the solution. Since the end user participation is encouraged from the start of the project, the capacity building to adopt to newer environment happens. Also, the solution UI gets built on the specific domain hence the end users are comfortable to use newer technology. Likewise, we have programs like train the trainer which allows customer to have an internal coach for their users. Finally what matters is the “ease of use” and “empowerment” of the Users equipped with adequate information that can reduce their workload while increasing overall efficiency.
What aspects of sustainability will be impacted with the creation of smart infrastructure?
Well, one of the main objectives of digital transformation is to enhancesustainability. Digitally transformed infrastructure drives asset lifecycle management, optimisation of resources (like workforce, energy, water, fuel, etc.), and ability to predict future possibilities, which enhances the sustainability. All of this is possible because the transformation process captures the real time data on the platform, which allows not only tracking of the behavior of the physical infrastructure but also human behavior in terms of actions to abnormalities.
This rich data generates actionable intelligence that allows you to analyse historical trends, behavior patterns and future possibilities. For examples, in case of traffic management, if roads are wired with sensors, the data collected about average speed and the volume of vehicles across the stretch of the road gives visibility of the traffic pattern through the day. This data then can be used not only to manage the traffic signal timings but also to make infrastructure decisions of whether to build a flyover at junction or just widen the curvature of the road turning at the junction which can ease out the traffic at specific hours of the day. Likewise, in case of Airports if the systems at the apron side are integrated, the airport Operator will be able to track real time gate turnaround time and by doing this they will be able to optimize the turnaround time and achieve more frequency. Similarly, if water distribution pipelines are tracked with flow, pressure and quality sensors connected to real time hydraulic modelling software like Aquis, then one could monitor the water pressure based on demand which will eventually reduce the leakages. This software will also be able to track the lifecycle of the pipelines which will give indication of requirement be it preventive maintenance or replacement. All these examples give proof point for enhanced sustainability.