The Opportunity
The objective of this Opportunity is to shortlist the submissions that best answer the brief, with the aim of attending a presentation day with Energy Innovation Centre (EIC) Industry Partners, where it can be discussed in greater detail with a technical panel The EIC welcomes submissions from individual companies or companies working in collaboration with each other.
What is the problem?
Northern Gas Networks (NGN) need to capture daily activities and planned tasks within the gas control centre.
Since 1997, they’ve used an IBM (Lotus) Notes application with a custom-built electronic logbook system. It’s been a reliable and flexible tool for managing planned works, faults, general site activities and broader operational issues, however, the system is now outdated and faces the following challenges:
• Performance has slowed due to years of accumulated data
• Lacks integration with essential control room applications such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)
• No updates are available to improve functionality
• The logbook and other in-app features are not user-friendly
• The archive is incomplete, with limited options for filtering.
Preferred Output
NGN are looking for an innovator to conduct a feasibility project to identify potential replacement technologies for the IBM Notes system.
The new technologies must incorporate all historical IBM Notes information and meet the specified requirements below. It will also be necessary to consider any new functionalities required to address the impact of net zero, due to the future use of multi-gas systems. A final report must be produced that meets the criteria below:
a. Identify the as-Is functionality of the existing system
b. Identity the functionality required for the businesses direction towards net zero, with focus
on multi gas systems
c. Opportunities, risks and method of implementing AI based support tools
d. Information sharing opportunities and associated levels of complexity to deliver
e. Impacts and opportunities relating to improved situational awareness
f. Provide a detailed cyber security and data protection assessment of each solution
g. Summary of outputs of the technology review
h. Recommendations for the next steps.