Coming up to standard (How CFIHOS is now more than cake…)
Five(!?) years ago I wrote about how CFIHOS is like cake, in that blog I explained what CFIHOS stands for, how to say it, how it was like cake and, most importantly, why it was exciting.
So given that a bit of time has passed and that after nearly three years and a global pandemic the CFIHOS community was finally able to get together, I thought it was probably worth revisiting the state of CFIHOS, where it’s at and why it is still worth getting excited about.
It’s easy to lob brickbats at standards like CFIHOS because they seem to move so slowly and there are not a ton of exciting press releases about them. CFIHOS implementations sadly don’t lend themselves to flashy PR presentations or pretty graphics and, real talk, data standards are not a thing that many people get excited about. That said, given the number of presentations and engagement in Stavanger and the ever increasing and impressive members list, who are now rolling out and using CFIHOS in their projects and businesses, then actually it’s fair to say that there’s a lot going on.
Based on the spread of presentations I watched this year CFIHOS is clearly no longer just an Oil & Gas standard and can be found used in:
- Chemical
- Nuclear
- Utilities
- Power generation
- Infrastructure
- Chemicals
- Renewables & New energies
If you’re not closely involved in the standard, then things can seem to move ponderously but it’s worth pointing out a few things:
Creating standards is supposed to be thorough and comprehensive, in order to ensure that the resulting output is of high quality and will be widely accepted and adopted. CFIHOS is also member driven and developed in a way that takes into account the needs and interests of multiple parties (this is part of its success). CFIHOS members may also have competing interests or are using different technologies or approaches and all those cats need to be herded to get a standard that works for everyone. Each release must be tested and validated before it can be finalised and published, every version must go through multiple rounds of testing by many organisations before it is published.
Not only does it take time to create but given its target audience it can take a long time to rollout as well. Some of the CFIHOS implementations Kraken IM been involved in have been huge, multiple business units, countries, and sectors all have to be aligned and then their needs met, CFIHOS has to be included in contract wording, users trained, software set up, teams aligned, validation rules setup. Don’t let that put you off though, it pays off in spades and it’s the classic example of slowing down to speed up.
So why should you still be excited about CFIHOS?
I would also argue and my statement from 2018 still stands “You want to deliver on your billion-dollar buzzword? You need a boring standard to enable it.”.
On the subject of billion-dollar buzzwords, the rise in CFIHOS interest has been closely aligned with the rise in interest in digital transform and I would argue that if you work in process or other asset intensive industries then CFIHOS is now, more than ever, an important tool in your bag of digital transformation.
First, a quick reminder on the benefits of using CFIHOS, cribbed from the CFIHOS website
- Interoperability improves — consolidating information is easier at each step in the supply chain
- Productivity rises — handover is quicker so plants can open and start working sooner.
- Managing modifications is faster — easier document/data retrieval saves staff time.
- Operational risk falls — minimum standards for data assures asset information quality.
Standards are critical for digital transformation because they provide a common language and set of guidelines for various technologies to interoperate and work together effectively. Without standards like CFIHOS it would be much more difficult for different systems and devices to communicate and exchange data as they would likely be using proprietary or incompatible technologies.
For example, consider your company is attempting to digitise its operations with the implementation of new technologies. If these technologies do not adhere to a common set of standards, it would be difficult to integrate them into a cohesive system and realize the full benefits of digital transformation. If you want things like your cloud computing, data visualisation and ML to sing then you’d better be sure that they all speak to each other, or you’ll spend your life trying to make them.
Standards help to ensure that different technologies are compatible with one another and can be used interchangeably. This allows your organisation to mix and match different technologies as needed, rather than being locked into a specific vendor or platform.
Overall, standards play a crucial role in enabling your digital transformation by providing a foundation for interoperability and compatibility across different technologies and systems. CFIHOS brings you a way to integrate systems, automate procedures to improve data sharing.
I hate the term “single source of truth”, not because it’s inherently a terrible aspiration but because it has been co-opted by every software vendor to really mean “buy my sh*t”. Software specialisation is increasingly a thing and a good thing at that, buying specialist software tools gives you:
- Improved efficiency: Specialised software is often designed to perform a specific task or set of tasks in the most efficient manner possible. This can lead to significant time and cost savings for organizations that use the software.
- Enhanced functionality: Specialised software is typically developed with a particular set of user needs in mind. As a result, it is often more feature-rich and better suited for a particular use case than the single source of truth.
- Innovation: Specialised software allows developers to focus on solving specific problems and developing new solutions, which can drive innovation and lead to the development of new technologies and capabilities.
You can probably service a good part of your car with a Leatherman, but you’d wish you had a toolkit the whole time.
One of the killer things that CFIHOS gives you is data portability, meaning seamless persistence of data, enterprise integration, and validation out of the box. Using CFIHOS enables your organisation to easily transfer your data from one system to another across the whole supply chain, benefits include:
- Control and ownership: Data portability gives your organisation control over your data, allowing you to easily move it between different systems or platforms. This can help ensure that you retain ownership and control over your data, rather than being locked into a particular system or platform.
- Interoperability: Data portability enables greater interoperability between different systems , allowing data to be shared and used more effectively. This can facilitate collaboration and the exchange of information between different organizations or individuals.
- Competition and innovation: You can start choosing your software based on its features not based on who can lock-you-in best.
- Flexibility in supply chain: your suppliers and get all the above benefits and get to choose the tooling that suits them.
In effect you get the benefits of the single source of truth without the downsides of vendor lock-in and you can use it as part of the scaffolding that holds your data together.
The state of the nation
One of my big takeaways from Stavanger was that people are now starting to riff on CFIHOS and extend it as they implement it and that is coming back into the standard from the members. The upcoming version of CFIHOS includes ways to do everything from populate maintenance systems to including process stream data. We at Kraken IM use CFIHOS as a basis for our GHG calculation data collection. Increasingly it is starting to align with other standards and become more useful.
The heart of CFIHOS is still the RDL but don’t underestimate all the other parts of the standard as they will give you guidance on things like how to implement the standard, what needs to be delivered and when and even rules on how to extend the RDL, which is incredibly valuable if you want to extend it yourself.
CFIHOS is now adopted by numerous O&G majors and operators, it is starting to consistently appear on contract documents and RFP’s not just in O&G and, though it might seem slow, it has inertia on its side. It has a member driven roadmap that outlines what the standard hopes to achieve moving forward and is only getting more useful as the content increases, if you want to learn how we can help you use CFIHOS in your business with either training or software then get in touch.
