Opentext™ Extended ECM for Engineering is one of the most comprehensive engineering and asset information management platforms available for engineering, procurement and construction. It provides document control to support an entire project lifecycle from initial set-up, design, construction and commissioning to final handover and operation.
It provides a single, authoritative repository for storing and controlling engineering and construction documents and work processes. This includes capabilities such as automated documents numbering and naming, template management, revision management, transmittal management, metadata and picklists, Master Document Register, viewing/commenting/annotating, and CAD-integration. With advanced document and workflow controls, Extended ECM for Engineering facilitates efficient and secure collaboration with interdisciplinary teams and suppliers in the cloud.
In my first blog on Engineering Document Management in capital projects I discussed the key principles to reduce cost and risk in capital projects. In this blog I am going to share a recommended best-practice deployment of OpenText Extended ECM for Engineering.
Introducing an Engineering Document Management System can be a complex process. Organizations have precise functional requirements which they define in requirement specification documents, but regardless of how precisely these requirements are defined, the proof of fulfillment can only be made on the system itself using own sample data. We recommend following these key steps to accelerate the deployment of an effective document management system:
- Conduct design workshops for project initiation and investigations to establish the scope and high-level design of the project
- Utilize a protype system for proof of concept (PoC)
- Review best-practice configurations
- Deploy configurations to the target environment
The new service from OpenText, FasTrak for Engineering and Plant Maintenance has been designed for quick deployment and rapid scaling throughout organizations. From the first design workshop, customers can experience a fully configured Engineering Document Management system which already considers document master lists, meta data, pick lists, document naming conventions, revision schema and process flows (if given in advance). This best-practice configuration can be adjusted from one design workshop to the next until the customer is confident that the configuration is ready to be deployed to the target environment.
Without installing the system or purchasing licenses, customers can use this PoC service to identify how their organization can benefit from this solution. All jointly created configurations on the prototype can be easily transported to the target productive environment, regardless of whether on-premises, in the OpenText Cloud or a hyperscaler cloud.
If you’d like to know more about OpenText Extended ECM for Engineering, the FasTrak service, or the PoC service, please contact us.
Author: Jens Friehmelt – Jens is a Senior Manager in OpenText Professional Services EMEA leading an international team which combines multiple OpenText technologies to serve customers with best practice solutions for Engineering, Construction and Maintenance processes.
