Utility Week

30 www.utilityweek.co.uk/fLeX AR helps Metawater transfer skills to new recruits AR technology is attracting a new generation Metawater, a leading Japanese provider of repair and maintenance services for water and sewerage infrastructure, turned to augmented reality to improve efficiency and transfer the skills and experience in water facility repair and maintenance of the engineers approaching retirement. "Working with Fujitsu, Metawater began placing augmented reality markers and tags on the infrastructure assets being visited by engineers," explains Graeme Wright, CTO manufacturing, utilities and services, Fujitsu UK & Ireland. "Engineers predominantly use the technology; wearing a pair of augmented reality glasses and a tablet, they can check the state of different components without the need for in-depth knowledge, because the system stores a repository of images from different malfunctions. As a other operating procedures. HoloLens will allow DEWA to obtain virtual estimations related to the remote maintenance of the power plant. Microsoft runs a Mixed Reality Partner Program, which includes more than 150 partners – companies developing industry- specific or company-specific applications. One of interest to utility companies is vGIS, whose product vGIS Utilities provides the ability to 'see' through the ground to simplify utility locations and assess hidden infrastructure. In another development, Trimble has worked with Microsoft to integrate the HoloLens holographic computer with an industry-standard hard hat. Irrespective of the application, skills transfer is seen as one of the big winners. Utilities are expected to lose roughly half their workforce over the next 10 years as older employees retire, taking with them a wealth of specialised knowledge and skills. ese new technologies provide an opportunity to plug the gap by digitally enhancing the capabilities of less experienced or new staff. "We hear often from our utilities companies that they have an ageing workforce with a lot of expertise. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the utilities companies having a challenge to Baker Hughes reduces operational downtime e US firm's Smart Helmet brings expertise closer to the field An augmented reality helmet has enabled oil and gas company Baker Hughes to cut operational downtime associated with maintenance activities by up to half, as well as reduce the need to send its engineers across the globe to troubleshoot problems. e Smart Helmet is an adapted hard hat fitted with high-definition cameras that project images onto a visor to enable the wearer to view documents, videos or illustrations needed to complete tasks. Integrated headphones and a microphone allow for two-way audio communication with technical support teams. Baker Hughes, a General Electric subsidiary, wrote its own software for the system and co-created the hardware with Italian developer VRMedia. e device was developed to bring expertise closer to local field service engineers in a way that would fit with the logistic constraints they have to operate in. Lorenzo Tanganelli, chief information officer for Turbomachinery Services at Baker Hughes, told Flex: "We needed something hands-free and capable of working in harsh and noisy environments without putting the safety of our people at risk. By augmenting a traditional safety helmet, there were no big cultural challenges associated with the adoption process." e device proved its worth during upgrade work on an outdated Baker Hughes turbine at a petrochemical plant in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Under normal circumstances, part replacements would halt operations at the facility for at least ten days and cost around US$50,000 to fly in specialists 9,000 miles from the US. Using Smart Helmet, it took just five days and air travel was eliminated by using a single on-site technician, who was monitored and coached remotely, through the helmet, by engineers at a Baker Hughes site in Pomona, California. e system is also underpinning a transition of the workforce, says Tanganelli, by enabling fewer senior engineers to execute a complex outage with remote expert support, or a fresher in a technician role expand their experience in a controlled way. T E C H N O L O G Y result, it can detect any issues, thus dispensing with the use of technical handbooks. " ese tags can be recognised by the tablet's camera and subsequently trigger asset and operational information to be displayed on the screen. With the tags in place, it became possible to attribute different data to those assets: from information recorded at previous inspections, to sound recordings of what a healthy pipe should sound like, or on-screen repair instructions that can be overlaid in real time and used by a more experienced engineer to walk trainees through a fix process without having to be there in person. " e benefits of using tech technologies in the field are three-fold. It speeds up monitoring and controlling activities; reduces field activities costs thanks to the possibility of employing less- specialised labour; and improves the decision-making process through faster interventions. It also makes the work more attractive to the next-generation workforce and in passing on knowledge from one generation to the next."

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