ACADEMIA

AVEVA announced that Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil, has decided to migrate its legacy data from four of its refineries to AVEVA's Plant Design Management System (PDMS). The decision came following a successful working translation from Intergraph's PDS plant design product using AVEVA's PDS to PDMS Translation Service. This is the first time that such a translation has been used in production. Petrobras is Brazil's largest corporation and produces 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. As the world leader in deep-water extraction, it operates the exploration, production, refining, marketing, and transport of oil and its by- products, across operating units worldwide. Petrobras is using AVEVA software in eight of its refineries, but is expected to integrate the product across all fourteen over time. Richard Longdon, Chief Executive of AVEVA group, said: "We are delighted that Petrobras has decided to migrate their valuable legacy to our PDMS format. The ability to translate data into PDMS while retaining the full scope of the Intergraph data will help customers lower costs and increase productivity through the adoption of PDMS." "The PDMS architecture was designed to evolve forever," Longdon continued. "It has been through every change in the IT revolution since 1976 and is still compatible with our customers' earliest models. Today, it is the first system to use Microsoft's latest .NET technology and I'm happy to report that it has as much future today as the day we launched it. As other solution providers are going through times of change, we are offering a proven path on a solid foundation." The success of the PDMS implementation on the Petrobras refineries was evident in the project and construction results, high quality layout arrangements and good construction visualization and simulation. Mr. Alexandre Casalechi, Petrobras Refineries CAD 3D coordinator said: "Not only were we impressed by the ability to convert data between the two formats but the quality of the translation has also left us convinced of the benefits of using AVEVA to help achieve our goals. AVEVA's capability to support project data across different and competitive 3D applications and the strong technical support and training it provided left us in no doubt that AVEVA will also be able to support our ongoing projects." Matt McKinley, AVEVA's Executive Vice President for the Americas commented: "Petrobras would not have changed systems without a strong faith in AVEVA's ability to provide top-notch customer service and support. The Americas team is pleased to receive this vote of confidence and stands ready to provide the people, solutions, and support to make our customers successful." PDMS offers a data-centric design environment based on best practices in 3D design and delivery. It provides a comprehensive set of integrated, multi- discipline engineering applications that enable users to work within a controlled, multi-user environment, delivering a clash-free design and deliverables. PDMS has repeatedly proved itself to be customisable to the needs of a vast range of projects, from the very smallest food and beverage facilities to the largest oil and gas installations in the world.