IRVING, Texas and
ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 13, 2018
/PRNewswire/ -- Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) and IBM (NYSE:
IBM) announced today the use of artificial intelligence-based
systems to predict, monitor and measure the status of engineering,
procurement, fabrication and construction (EPC) megaprojects from
inception to completion. Fluor's extensive engineering,
fabrication, construction and deep supply chain expertise, coupled
with artificial intelligence and analytic technologies from IBM
Watson, forms the foundation for big data analytics and diagnostic
systems that help predict critical project outcomes and provide
early insights into the health of projects.
Large capital projects, especially in the energy and chemicals,
and mining and metals markets, are incredibly complex with enormous
amounts of data, people and moving parts that are constantly
changing and need to be understood to keep a project on schedule
and budget. To gain insights from project data in nearly real-time
and to understand the implications of changing factors, Fluor is
introducing the EPC Project Health Diagnostics (EPHDsm)
and the Market Dynamics/Spend Analytics (MD/SAsm)
systems. Developed with IBM Research and IBM Services, working
collaboratively with Fluor, these innovative tools help to identify
dependencies and provide actionable insights by fusing thousands of
data points across the entire life cycle of capital
projects.
Fluor selected IBM Research and IBM Services to assist in the
development of these advanced systems as part of its global
data-centric transformation strategy. Fluor can now leverage a
wealth of experience from across its entire historical data store
and global workforce to quickly understand markets and monitor
project factors impacting cost and schedule to drive improved
certainty and cost efficiency across the entire project scope.
"Harnessing the power of data to make meaningful insights will
alter how megaprojects around the world are designed, built and
maintained," said Arvind Krishna,
senior vice president and director of IBM Research. "Together with
IBM, Fluor is embracing artificial intelligence as an engine for
transformation in data-driven industries that are ripe for
innovation including energy and chemicals, and mining and metals
construction projects."
"The ability to rapidly analyze and comprehend big data that
drives decisions at any point throughout the engineering,
procurement, fabrication and construction of today's megaprojects
is an imperative for the success of our company and the protection
of our clients' capital investments," said Ray Barnard, Fluor's senior executive vice
president of Systems and Supply Chain. "And to be the best at
predictive analytics and project execution in our industry, we
teamed with IBM to create EPHD and MD/SA, an advanced and effective
set of diagnostic tools and capabilities that rapidly predict
best-in-class pricing globally, project status and outcomes, and
improves the quality of services and decision-making as we serve
our clients around the globe."
The EPHD and MD/SA systems are designed to transform complex
data into actionable business insights using domain-driven semantic
models to guide artificial intelligence-based predictive and
diagnostics modeling. A unique feature of the systems is the
blending of data with domain expertise to learn models that are
operationally insightful. An advanced cognitive user interface
provides seamless access to the data, reports and results of the
analysis, using EPC domain-sensitive natural language
conversational interface. The underlying domain understanding is
used to guide project diagnostics and provide natural language
summaries based on the reports, with data visualization techniques
to ease its quick consumption and understanding.
These tools assess the status of a project by:
- Predicting issues such as rising costs or schedule delays based
on historical trends and patterns.
- Gaining earlier insights from many sets of complex factors
across project execution.
- Identifying the root causes of issues and the potential impacts
of changes as input to the decision-making process including
estimate analysis, forecast evaluation, project risk assessment and
critical path analysis.
"Besides the work Fluor was already doing on predictive
maintenance and construction sequencing, five years ago we began
investing in predictive analytics and artificial intelligence
capabilities to further evaluate performance and determine critical
project outcomes as a part of our data-centric journey," said
Leslie Lindgren, Fluor's vice
president of Information Management. "We will be using these
innovations on select large and megaprojects to quickly discover
trends, patterns and meaning in our structured
and unstructured data that deliver competitive advantage through
the digital transformation of data into critical information with
significant benefits to our clients, other stakeholders and our
company."
As Fluor continues on its global data-centric transformation
journey, the company plans to further develop and expand
EPHD and MD/SA using analytics and artificial intelligence
capabilities from IBM Watson and integrate them into Fluor's
processes.
About Fluor Corporation
Founded in 1912, Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) is a global
engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and maintenance
company that transforms the world by building prosperity and
empowering progress. Fluor serves its clients by designing,
building and maintaining safe, well executed, capital-efficient
projects around the world. With headquarters in Irving, Texas, Fluor ranks 153 on the
Fortune 500 list with revenue of $19.5 billion in 2017 and has more than 56,000
employees worldwide. For more information, please visit
www.fluor.com or follow Fluor on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and
YouTube.
About IBM
For more information about IBM please visit www.ibm.com.
Contact
Jeannine
Kilbride
IBM Communications
jkilbri@us.ibm.com
860-997-6277
Brian Mershon/Brett Turner
Fluor Media Relations
469.398.7621/864.281.6976
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SOURCE IBM