Earlier this month, Black & Veatch launched BVInfraIQ, a digital tools platform that combines artificial intelligence with Black & Veatch’s deep engineering expertise and voluminous library of infrastructure asset and project data.
Created as a platform for infrastructure owners, who do not necessarily have to be clients of the engineering company, BVInfraIQ uses over 100 years of Black & Veatch project insights to try to help owners and operators improve the performance of their assets, strengthen resilience, accelerate decision-making and contribute to long-term sustainability. The first targeted application of the platform is the management of liquefied natural gas infrastructure.
Beyond the monitoring and management of a single facility, BVInfraIQ turns operational data into intelligence about how entire systems work together, providing recommendations to improve performance, reliability, uptime and cost efficiency across integrated assets such as combined cycle generation plants, pipelines and liquefaction stations.
“Ultimately, we will incorporate some of our other solutions, such as water and grid, but our first deployment is in the LNG space,” says Justin Ellrich, associate vice president and manager of liquid natural gas technology at Overland Park, Kan.-based Black & Veatch. “[The system is] Augmented or Enabled AI. So we will have some data processing capability, but what the initial build will be will be physics-based models that come from our deep experience in LNG and using our PRICO. [technology].”
Ellrich stresses that the platform isn’t just a data dump for AI algorithms to process and make recommendations. “What we’re really bringing in is making Black & Veatch’s engineering and technology expertise a little more predictive.”
Ellrich adds that the platform’s intelligence and insights can be presented to operators in real-time so operators can view operations data hourly or multiple times per shift.
Black & Veatch sees BVInfraIQ as a natural extension of the consulting and advisory services it and other large engineering firms have come to provide to operators and owners in recent decades. Ellrich emphasized that while the insights are based on Black & Veatch’s institutional learnings from 100 years of projects, there is no actual data from projects owned by previous BVInfraI clients.
Advances in LNQ liquefaction at BVINfraIQ, such as its proprietary PRICO liquefaction technology, form the basis of Black & Veatch’s advanced liquefaction architecture announced on September 14 at the GasTech Conference in Bangkok, Thailand. Ellrich says BVInfraIQ’s pricing will be based on various services customers can choose from on the platform.
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