We've been receiving a fair amount of interest lately in use of the E2500 approach during implementation and plant qualification. The question has come up as to how this impacts the automation vendors and overall project costs. By requiring greater vendor involvement and detailed documentation in order to leverage it during qualification some believe that it just moves the cost to the vendor without reducing the overall implementation costs.
Yes, that is an interesting perspective. There would certainly be an increase in the cost or spend with the automation vendor, as this process will require additional up-front documentation. However, if by performing more formal testing up front, errors or problems are found earlier in the process and can be eliminated or reduced prior to delivery to the site, the overall implementation costs could be acually reduced. The benefit is earlier discovery of issues that could actually delay start up or cause more churn at site under more cumbersome change management processes.