Managing Engineering Documents an Enterprise Perspective

Transcription

1 Managing Engineering Documents an Enterprise Perspective WHITEPAPER TM May 2006 : Revision 6

2 Introduction McLaren Enterprise Engineer leverages ECM platform technology to provides a comprehensive solution to manage engineering documents. The explosion in the volume and complexity of engineering documents, and the accompanying organizational requirements for improved operational efficiency and managing commercial and technical risk, are key issues for anyone involved in managing documents. This document summarizes the implementation options of a document management solution and provides an overview of how McLaren Software s Enterprise Engineer application suite can help solve these issues. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platforms provide base functionality to manage a wide variety of content types from general business content through to multi-media files. Enterprise Engineer leverages Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform technology to provide a comprehensive solution to manage engineering documents, and the related business processes that use them in engineering design, procurement, construction and operations. In an engineering and plant operations environment, engineering content can include visualizations, images etc, but much of the day-to-day activity is concerned with the management of drawings and documents that contain SOPs, calculations, geophysical data, etc. This paper concentrates on the management of these key documents. The Engineering Document Explosion An engineering document is the vehicle to communicate both structured and unstructured information. They can be specifications, procedures, drawings, data sheets, calculations, geophysical data, analysis results, correspondence, contractual commitment or financial projections. Engineering documents flow within and across company boundaries fuelling business processes that deliver large-scale programs of work. Typically, programs of work transition through phases such as Investigation, Engineering, Procurement, Construction, Operation and Maintenance. Engineering documents have specific characteristics that must be considered: As deliverables they are contractually binding and often tied to payment. It is therefore critical to the business that the validity and history of the documents can be trusted. They can have significant impact to the overall safety and regulatory compliance of a particular location, facility or individual piece of equipment / machinery. They must be found easily and consistently by anyone who must use them. Ownership and risk may be transferred between different companies using engineering documents at project milestones. This may involve physically transferring documents between dissimilar systems. Collections of documents can have complex inter-relationships. It is not uncommon for a drawing to have 50 or more related reference drawings, each of which may have a separate revision history and exist in a different state. Specifications may also be related to calculations in further, separate documents. The integrity of these collections must be maintained. Very high volumes are generated that are subject to stringent change control. The speed and accuracy of this change control affects the success of projects and the bottom line of the business. Files can be very large in terms of both the physical dimensions of the printed media, and in total file size. Different formats are required depending on the role of the recipient as well as their preferred systems for viewing or editing, and the network bandwidth available. 2

3 Document management can be described within the framework of a set of basic processes. Design is a collaborative activity. On all but very small projects, input is required from professionals who are highly specialized within a particular design discipline. Figure 1 Basic Document Management Processes Production Engineering documents are produced by a combination of: Project investigations (e.g. site surveys), planning and management activities. Collaborative design activities. Reworking or revising existing documents. Receiving and incorporating documents from customers and vendors. Design is a collaborative activity. On all but very small projects, input is required from professionals who are highly specialized within a particular design discipline. For example, a civil engineer may specialize in bridge design or wastewater treatment design. Each discipline has a different view that is impacted by the views required by other disciplines. There are many specialized applications that can generate engineering deliverables, ranging from electrical load simulators to structural analysis applications; some of these are implemented as stand-alone desktop applications, others as extensions to CAD applications, and some provide a data-centric model for multi-disciplinary collaboration. Commonly, drawing office teams work with drawings that reference each other as backgrounds. For example, the piping designer might reference steel work drawings while the steel work designer references piping drawings. For specialized desktop systems and CAD extension systems, Enterprise Engineer can be used as a secure environment for collaborative authoring and for controlling deliverables. For data-centric collaborative design systems, Enterprise Engineer manages the deliverables. There is no longer a debate between the merits of data-centric versus document-centric in the engineering community. The fact is that, in a contractual multienterprise environment, there needs to be deliverables (.dgn,.dwf,.doc,.xml,.mdb,.pdf, etc.) and these deliverables need to be controlled. Data-centric collaborative design systems provide benefit but they do not deliver enterprise scale document management. Owner-Operators have, historically, kept large numbers of paper-based drawings that 3

4 have subsequently been converted to raster image files. Using Enterprise Engineer these drawings are managed as composite (hybrid) raster and vector drawings with revisions made by deleting parts of the raster images and adding vector information. Drawing and document revision has a different significance depending on the phase of a project. Review Formal review is a vital part of all engineering documents processes. It is necessary to snapshot or baseline interdependent pieces of engineering documents for review, and to coordinate and provide audit trails of review activities, tracking all annotations through to resolution. Revision Drawing and document revision has a different significance depending on the phase of a project, the number of consumers and the impact that subsequent changes to a document might have. For example, a set of documents and drawings could be used to procure some equipment. If these documents and drawings are subsequently revised a new set needs to be issued to the parties involved, along with detailed change histories. All changes should be highlighted within the re-issued documents and drawings to reduce the risk that the recipients will overlook changes. An alternative to a new revision is to issue an addendum. For example, a design office receives a request for clarification of some design description within a specification. A contractor on a construction site has read this document and considers it to be ambiguous and consequently raised a request for information (RFI). In this situation, rather than re-issuing the whole document it is likely that an addendum would be issued identifying a particular section; this could be accompanied by an explanation of how it should be interpreted or provide a less ambiguous re-wording. If this is the case, a mechanism is required that ensures that a consumer of either the original document or the addendum is pointed to the related item. The addendum must be obvious to the user every time they access the original document. Approval Document approval is a method of managing risk. Saying that a document is approved means that it is fit for a purpose. Without an approval mechanism, an unknown number of documents could be used for an unknown number of uses. Approving engineering documents involves: Archiving information to support a decision. Recording the approval event. Changing access security permissions upon approval. Critically, the reason for the approval must be identified; for example, feasibility, design, procurement, hazop, construction, or as-built. Using a drawing that was only approved for a feasibility study on a construction site could result in a disaster. When approving using an electronic signature, in accordance with the Pharmaceutical industry s regulatory standard 21 CFR Part 11, the following needs to be provided: Username and password required for electronic approval. Reason for signing (as fit for procurement, as meeting H&S standards, etc.). Audit record of who did what, and why and when they did it. Signature manifestation when the document is viewed or printed (Who, Why, When). The Nuclear Information and Records Management Association (NIRMA), is driving the U.S. Nuclear Industry in the same direction as the FDA with TG , 10 CFR Part 50, Authentication of Records and Media. In addition, the number of approved engineering document deliverables can be used to measure earned value on a project. 4

5 A common practice within the engineering industry is to structure milestone payments around the status of deliverables. Managing and driving documents through their lifecycle therefore has a direct impact on cash flow for engineering organizations. Consider the representatives of various parties involved in a major construction project debating why a wall has been built in the wrong place. Their real concern is who will pay for the mistake to be rectified? Issuing Issuing involves formally giving key documents to named recipients for a particular reason. Commercially, issuing is more significant than informal releasing. Formal issues are made to named recipients so that subsequent revisions and addenda are issued to the right people. When formally issuing an acknowledgement of receipt needs to be obtained and this receipt added to the audit history. When issuing documents they may also need to be reproduced in new formats and physically transferred. Reproduction Reproduction involves transforming documents into a format that is suitable for a recipient to review, approve, issue or read. The document is sent to the reprographics service along with the instructions necessary to produce the published material. Reproduction examples include: watermarking, rendering to different formats, printing and plotting, binding reference files, and synchronizing title blocks with object properties. Transferring (Transmittals and Submittals) Transferring is the process of: Formally receiving deliverables from external organizations and applications. Issuing documents to/from external organizations. Linking documents to/from external applications. Transferring ownership to external organizations and applications. Controlled transfer is important within an engineering organization to manage commercial risk. Consider the representatives of various parties involved in a major construction project debating why a wall has been built in the wrong place. Their real concern is who will pay for the mistake to be rectified? Did the builder use the wrong drawing, or was it the engineering consultant, who can t prove that the builder received the newest revision of the drawing at the correct stage in the project? Mistakes, traceable to incorrect information, are so common in the construction industry that organizations that do not maintain an audit record of the transfers and immutable copies of the documents are leaving themselves commercially exposed. The same document at different stages of its life may be sent to different recipients for different reasons. A response may be required or further processes instigated. Rather like approval, purpose is an integral part of a transmittal. Time is another important factor that needs to be managed, perhaps there is a time limit for the response or completed action, or perhaps the information is only valid until a particular date. Retention and Disposition A production ECM system will generate vast quantities of electronic documents. The individual documents within the repository have different commercial significance at different moments in time. Some documents must be archived and controlled as records to manage long-term liabilities and/or provide long-term reference material that needs periodic revision. The vast majority of documents, however, should be permanently destroyed when no longer pertinent to the business. Retention and disposition housekeeping is required for all engineering documents in any production system. 5

6 Managing Business Critical Documents The complex situation experienced by companies who deliver large-scale capital projects and manage major assets creates a challenging environment. Success depends heavily on controlling the timely transfer of information amongst many individuals in different organizations (such as financial institutions, owner-operators, regulatory bodies, general contractors, designers, and construction-site supervisors). Engineering organizations also need to manage their documents to demonstrate that they fulfill their regulatory obligations. Engineering organizations also need to manage their documents to demonstrate that they fulfill their regulatory obligations. For example, 23 CFR Part 627: CHAPTER I--FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION PART 627--VALUE ENGINEERING Sec General principles and procedures. State [Value Engineering] VE programs. State transportation departments must establish programs to assure that VE studies are performed on all Federal-aid highway projects on the NHS with an estimated cost of $25 million or more. Program procedures should provide for the identification of candidate projects for VE studies early in the development of the State s multi-year Statewide Transportation Improvement Program. So how does an organization know when its regulatory obligations are met? Managing regulatory compliance demonstrates value of business orientated reporting. This sort of information should be generated as a consequence of using an ECM application, and configurable reports allow an organization to ensure compliance and demonstrate it to auditors. Construction Construction is where the largest amount of labor is spent and when the largest number of organizations is involved. The engineering documents govern both what is built and how it will be built. The construction user only requires view rights to documents issued for construction. Time is also a critical factor in the design and construction phases; Engineering and Construction companies face reduced margins and punitive penalty clauses for late completion, coupled with increased build complexity and the need to collaborate with many companies to complete a project on time. Managing the engineering documents that are used in different ways by different parties is a critical component in coordinating the supply and build activities of these organizations. This means issuing the right documents, when they are in the correct state, to the right people at the right time, and ensuring that all resulting communications, clarifications, addenda and updates are also managed. Note: the common industry terms for describing packages of documents that are sent and received in a controlled manner are transmittals and submittals. Due to unforeseen circumstances, changes are often required. During the construction phase, poor management of changes will result in delays, cost overruns, and problems with the quality of the resulting facility. Effective management of engineering documents is a critical component of hand-over and commissioning activities. It not only validates the as-built physical facility, but many of the documents generated during construction and commissioning record configuration testing and acceptance information. Collectively these documents form the basis of perform-todesign acceptance specifications, supplier warranty and plant safety documentation that 6

7 can set long-term fiscal and legal liability boundaries on all the involved parties. Failure to capture, control and deliver such documents can have a negative impact on the cost, schedule and success of a project. Construction is contractual in nature since so much of the actual work needs to be done by so many independent specialists. Construction is contractual in nature since so much of the actual work needs to be done by so many independent specialists. Contracts outline the terms and conditions each party agrees to and re-emphasizes the importance of proper control and management of the contract deliverables. Even when these deliverables are comprised of physical equipment or services incorporated into the construction phase, there are always document deliverables that serve as record of the purpose of the contract (build a reactor, install a panel, configure a device, etc.) and the activities performed under the scope of the contract. Proper contracts management, with communicated collaboration and control of supportive documentation, diffuses adversarial postures by focusing on demonstrable facts and keeping contract management in step with the issues. A formal Change Management business process, along with a comprehensive audit trail, is essential for keeping these relationships, and therefore the project, on track. Operations Owner-Operators are under pressure to extract greater value from assets while reducing operational and capital expenditure. Over their life, assets are renovated, reconfigured, extended or decommissioned to meet changing business demand or to meet external regulatory requirements. Owner-Operators struggle to retain and share information for the life of the asset. Effective operation of a facility is not possible without accurate up-to-date health and safety documents, maintenance manuals, SOP s, and as-built design documents, meaning that engineering documents play a key role in the ongoing operation of facilities. Managing as-built documents is a big challenge, not only for the reasons just stated, but also because it is common for several new and ongoing capital projects to be concurrently refurbishing and extending facilities. The result of this is simultaneous modification of the same engineering documents, by different capital projects and maintenance teams who are working in parallel. Not only are the existing documents being modified, but they are modified and extended in different ways, so that when they are brought together they don t always fit neatly to provide a consistent view of the facility without any gaps. In addition, a facility may require documents to be archived for 20 or 100 years. The Modern Document Management Solution Departmental Applications There are applications on the market that consider CAD and engineering departments to be separate entities from the rest of the enterprise. These applications provide a design-centric view of the engineering domain; a view that stems from a pervasive attitude among many Engineers, many of whom don t understand the value of document management because they, the designers, produce everything. Ensuring that a third party has the right information at the right time may have a bigger impact on the success of a construction project than making a choice between several design options. This is not to say that design-centric applications do not have a vital role to play in engineering organizations. The point is that the business benefits from them will not be fully realized and major project risks managed if deliverables are not effectively managed in an enterprise context. Most of the people who need to work with engineering deliverables are not designers. 7

8 Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Platforms A content management system cannot be applied to a large organization unless it supports their document handling business processes. If a vanilla enterprise document management system is rolled out across an enterprise, vast quantities of content will be created very quickly in a chaotic unusable state. What will happen when workers are given the ability to classify and file documents however they chose? A simple example illustrates this chaos. What will happen when workers are given the ability to classify and file documents however they chose? Imagine just 100,000 documents being imported without a mandatory classification scheme, automatic filing, automatic numbering and validation of property values. Could someone in one office reliably find a document created by someone in another office without phoning or ing to ask where it is? Will they even remember where they put it a couple of months later; or what name they gave to it? And whom do they phone anyway? Should thousands of people be phoning and ing each other when they have a document management system? There are companies who add intelligent search engines to compensate for these problems rather than establishing a basic organization and classification structure. But is this a solution? Imagine a system telling you that there is only a 70% chance that a particular document is the correct emergency safety procedure. Another simple example is not managing lifecycle state. Consequently a drawing that is being edited in a drawing office could be printed out and used on a construction site, with incalculable results. Enterprise Content Management Applications ECM platforms like Documentum and FileNet provide powerful functionality but it takes applications to enable an organization to effectively benefit from them. A parallel can be drawn between the evolution of data-management applications and document-management applications. In the past, a relational database could be thought of as an application that was customized to satisfy a business requirement. Today, major applications rely on a relational database infrastructure as a platform. In recent years the same phenomenon has been seen with Enterprise Content Management platforms. Enterprise Engineer is a suite of applications built on ECM platforms. The competitive edge of many of today s companies is linked to their productivity, operational efficiency and ability to manage risk how well they ve adapted their business practices to the demands of their market. Embedding an organization s best practices into ECM technology and applications help ensure that consistency and key competitive advantage are maintained, since new and existing employees are guided down the routes that their business processes require. Major Systems Integrator/In-house Development For companies today, implementing major business analysis and software development projects is not something embarked on lightly, and certainly not without considering the total cost of ownership and defining the expected return on investment. Odds are that most companies around the world have embarked on software projects that cost thousands, millions, or tens of millions of dollars and then failed to meet expectations. Software development projects today deliver business benefit by lowering costs, managing commercial risk, and providing competitive advantage not by reinventing standardized functionality. Why spend money repeating the mistakes that other organizations (even those with great experience of document management) have already made? Consider the even greater long-term cost of keeping a custom solution in line with business expectations as business processes mature. 8

9 McLaren Software s Answer Enterprise Engineer delivers business scalability on top of ECM platforms like Documentum and FileNet. These platforms are scalable because it gives thousands of users across the enterprise access to content in a controlled environment. The Enterprise Engineer suite of applications help these users work effectively together by consistently enforcing basic business processes across the enterprise while allowing the flexibility they need. McLaren Enterprise Engineer delivers business scalability on top of ECM platforms like Documentum and FileNet. Enterprise Engineer is a suite of user configurable business applications. These applications, support business processes, drawing management, transmittals management and concurrent engineering, as well as the loading, viewing, rendering and publishing of engineering documents. Enterprise Engineer uses all the power of the ECM infrastructure without preventing the use any of its platform functionality. Enterprise Engineer can co-exist with other custom solutions. Enterprise Engineer Key Features The following section introduces key features of the Enterprise Engineer suite that help organizations manage engineering documents and associated business processes. Document and Drawing Management Drawing Manager is McLaren integration that provides the capability to manage CAD drawings, other engineering content and their lifecycles in line with an organization s business processes. Drawing Manager manages vector-raster hybrid drawings and AutoCAD and MicroStation reference files. Reference files can be resolved within the repository to a specific version, to the current version, or to the latest drawing in a version sequence that is at a particular state (for example, approved for design). CAD Management also includes title block synchronization with repository metadata and bulk import/export with reference files Drawing Manager: Marries the management of CAD drawings and other engineering documents, in a controlled environment, with enterprise business process requirements. Allows the information that is tied up in the drawing office to be shared, used, re-used and communicated more effectively throughout the whole enterprise. Reduces exposure to risk, by ensuring controlled, auditable management of engineering documents. Enables wider team participation in key engineering processes on the desktop or Web via integrated annotation and review. Drawing Manager provides pre-configured functionality that includes: CAD and support for drawing lifecycles Pre-configured forms and menus Pre-configured types and attributes Pre-configured searching Drawing templates Drawing Manager allows a drawing office to: Quickly configure document types, lifecycles and forms to match your business processes. Capture, classify and manage drawings in a secure manner. Integrate annotation and review processes. Support Electronic Sign-Off. Control common document lifecycle tasks such as review, approval and retirement according to individual business rules. Deliver powerful drawing numbering. Support automatic drawing filing, revision management and other features. 9

10 Engineering Document Lifecycles The Enterprise Engineer - Foundation Application provides support for the basic content management processes around engineering content and within an engineering project office. It enables documents and drawings to be captured, classified, and managed across the enterprise within a secure ECM system. Enterprise Engineer enables documents and drawings to be captured, classified, and managed across the enterprise within a secure ECM system. There are also several lifecycles installed as part of the Foundation Application. These lifecycles have been based on the typical activities that occur in an engineering project office and can apply to different types of engineering documents. For example: Controlled documents iterate through a review - approval process until they have been accepted by all relevant approvers, and can be formally issued. When the author believes it is ready for publication, they will send it for review. The reviewers may agree and it can then be sent for approval, or they may reject it for further revision. The approvers may also approve or reject the document. A document may need to be approved by several different approvers for different reasons (for example, for construction, for procurement or as conforming to Health and Safety requirements or good manufacturing practice (GMP)). It is the responsibility of the issuer to check that all required approvals have been given before issuing the document; again documents can be issued multiple times for different reasons. Vendor documents in this lifecycle are submitted as a contractual deliverable that needs to be reviewed and accepted or rejected. Initially document deliverable objects will be created as placeholders (with no file content). These allow the documents to be tracked prior to being received, for example, reports can be run on meta-data for planning and tracking. When the documents are received they are promoted to the Received state. Each time a revision of a vendor document is received, the revision number is set to the one supplied by the vendor. This is because it may have been revised several times within the originating organization before they sent it. If a document is sent to the vendor for re-work, the starting point for each iteration is always the External state. Incoming correspondence is received; it is recorded by importing it into the repository (for example, using the MS Outlook integration). In some cases additional actions are required. For example, there may be a need to send for a review. Correspondence is imported at the Received state. If action is required, the recipient assigns someone to carry this out. Otherwise they issue it directly for filing. Reports and Notifications Enterprise Engineer provides dynamic management of both electronic and physical documents, including engineering documents, to implement retention policies and trigger business actions and alerts based on configurable business rules and document state. Enterprise Engineer helps organizations meet legislative and regulatory requirements e.g. archival, audit and oversight activities and manage the risk associated with these processes. Enterprise Engineer utilizes the business forms and rules defined in the Foundation Application to allow documents to be linked to business processes that specify actions to be carried out at predefined time intervals. These policies are monitored and actions automatically applied. 10

11 Enterprise Engineer supports the ability to track your outstanding tasks and the tasks of your sub-ordinates. Actions can include: Notifications of Lifecycle or State change notification Updating of attributes Document deletion or archiving Assigning a new policy Routing a document Initiating a workflow Running a custom automation component Workflow and Task Management Enterprise Engineer supports the ability to track your outstanding tasks and the tasks of your sub-ordinates. Business productivity can be driven using deadlines that are automatically defined and monitored. Transmittals Enterprise Engineer - Transmittals application enables the controlled creation of transmittals, containing key project documents, ready for internal and external distribution. EE Transmittals: Allows internal project teams and external suppliers and contractors to participate in a controlled review and approval process and encourages more effective project collaboration. Reduces risk in engineering projects by making sure it is possible to see what documents have been included in a transmittal, and by providing the flexibility, through configuration, to systematically collect and deliver an audit-trail detailing who has been sent and acknowledged receipts of what, when. Saves time and effort and cuts costs by reducing the number of manual steps involved in sending out documents for review, approval or formal issue, and by providing an effective way to control this process. Viewing and Redlining Enterprise Engineer EE Viewer enables the viewing of documents and drawings with reference files (over 200 file formats), directly from an ECM repository, via a Web browser. EE Viewer ensures users always have access to the correct version of a document or drawing and have the facility to view, mark and redline it without needing to install the native application. EE Viewer improves collaboration within organizations by making documents secure, yet easily available, making it the ideal tool to support a review and approval process. Publishing and Plotting McLaren Reprographics server makes the publishing of documents in different formats - including engineering content and CAD drawings - fast, secure and simple. It ensures users always have access to the right format to quickly share information with customers, partners and employees around the world, secure in the knowledge that key information cannot be changed. Reprographics server generates TIFF, DWF, and PDF format renditions from most printable file formats, including MS Office, AutoCAD and MicroStation files or can be adapted to provide a remote batch plotting solution. All of this functionality comes as standard. Enterprise Engineer can also be used to implement retention and disposition housekeeping policies on all engineering content. 11

12 Loading and exporting Solo exports documents and content - including CAD drawings and reference files - from an ECM repository to share offline, migrate or archive. There is fine control over the exporting of renditions, versions and reference drawings. Enterprise Engineer software applications help engineering organizations deal with the particular challenges they face when managing engineering documents and other content in an enterprise context. The data DVD, or other offline media, created by Solo can be used to deliver a standalone, browse-able mobile repository. Recipients can search and browse the repository folder structure or search based on exported object property values. DocLoader enables the rapid and controlled bulk-loading of documents, including CAD drawings, from legacy and external sources into Documentum. This includes the automatic population of attribute data during import. DocLoader can be used to import a wide range of content types, from financial information to multi-media or other general business content, catering for the full range of project documentation. No programming is needed, making it easy to learn and use. DocLoader also generates a full audit history so that you can see what has been loaded and if any errors have occurred. In an engineering environment, DocLoader securely loads AutoCAD and MicroStation CAD drawings, including reference files, into your Content Server. Attribute data is then immediately available for use in drawing classification or title block synchronization via the Drawing Manager application. The diagram below shows the main functionality delivered by the Enterprise Engineer suite. Figure 2 Enterprise Engineer Key Features 12

13 Conclusion Enterprise Engineer products address many of the classic problems encountered when delivering IT solutions to business users. The complexity of engineering documents and the characteristics of the engineering environment make engineering documents particularly difficult to manage. McLaren Software s Enterprise Engineer application suite help engineering organizations deal with the particular challenges they face when managing engineering documents and other content in an enterprise context. Enterprise Engineer products also address many of the classic problems encountered when delivering IT solutions to business users and thereby help to ensure that the benefits, resulting from a technology investment, are realized. To learn more about a conceptual model to improve the way you use Enterprise Content Management (ECM) see the Enterprise Document Management Maturity Model white paper. For an overview of the Enterprise Engineer suite see the Enterprise Engineer Packaged Enterprise Content Management Applications white paper. 13

14 McLaren Software Inc Richmond Avenue Suite 825 Houston, Texas USA Tel: Fax: McLaren Software Ltd No. 3 Atlantic Quay The Broomielaw, York St. Glasgow, G2 8LN UK Tel: +44 (0) Fax: +44 (0) McLaren Software GmbH Quattrium Business Center Kaiserswerther Str. 115 D Ratingen (Düsseldorf) GERMANY Tel: +49 (0) Fax: +49 (0) McLaren Software develops engineering-centric intellectual work management applications for the oil and gas, utilities, life sciences, and engineering, design and construction sectors. McLaren helps organizations optimize their engineering design and asset change management processes to maximize the value in their engineering documents while mitigating the commercial risk associated with their use. Copyright 2006 McLaren Software