Value Oriented Engineering Solutions for Business Continuity

This paper presents a systemic approach using Engineering and analytics methods to avail the fastest and safest responses to recovering business operations after Abqaiq Plants major disruption after the 2019 September 14th incident. This new approach using value and agile engineering, risk management methodologies combined with the business continuity model suggested was successfully applied to recover Abqaiq Plants Operations after catastrophic events occurred. This paper pretends to serve as example about how the business continuity plan should response to a major emergency and how this planning activity could be effectively supported using a Value Oriented Engineering Solutions (VOES). This VOES approach is based on Business continuity framework and adapted for use during emergency situations to generate effective and urgent responses to recover one of the most strategical operations in the Oil and Gas Industry worldwide ahead of the last year significant disruption. VOES approach vastly implemented during Abqaiq Plants Restoration allowed a 100% functional recovery on 9 days, 5 days in advance to the most optimistic scenario. This paper shows a case study implemented for major instrumentation and electrical equipment activities performed in UA Spheroids plant, one of the most affected area and responsible to process the 100% of the Abqaiq Plants Oil Production rate. This paper pretends to contribute with the research and practice on business continuity management. Considering a particular approach to BCM, incorporating value-oriented engineering solutions in the developing of continuity plans; we apply model-based techniques to provide quality assurance in the elaboration process, and to automate the generation/update of a BCP. On the practical side, this study converts Operational, Maintenance, Safety and Reliability perspectives in a holistic view provided from Engineering solutions responsible to generate the guidelines for an agile, effective and realizable recovery plan.