Smart Building for the Oil and Gas Sector

Q: How has the industry changed from the perspective of an engineering software and project control solutions provider?

A: The Energy Reform has certainly benefited the Mexican oil and gas market. The last five years were hard for the industry, but this was because of global factors such as the drop in oil prices. Now we can see investment coming to the country. This will benefit EPC companies, which are our main customers, and will therefore help us to get back to business.

To properly face the development of the new market and help our clients become more successful we have transformed our Project Control solution. It is now called Solutions for Project Performance. The idea for this solution is to fully integrate the execution of projects and base them on cost control. It has been implemented by the banking and education sectors. Harvard, for example, is an excellent customer because it has hundreds of projects that must be fully managed to ensure their success. While the oil and gas sector was recuperating, we moved into other areas to further develop our solutions and now that the market is becoming more robust, we are ready to serve it with better solutions.

Q: How does the fact that Hexagon PPM is a global company facilitate its business activities in Mexico?

A: Some of the project developers that are coming into the country are already customers of Hexagon PPM in their own countries. This gives us a strong advantage against our competitors. Nevertheless, we cannot say that it is a victory, because we have also witnessed that most project developers are opening offices in Mexico, and they are not yet doing any engineering for project control and performance. Those activities are being done in their home countries with our solutions. Although we expect them to use our solutions later on, it will take time to make the investment attractive for them. To ensure that they use our solutions in the future, we are approaching those project developers and making sure they know that we are ready to support them.

Q: What solution is Hexagon PPM ready to implement in the Mexican oil and gas market?

A: Most EPC companies will have to build assets in Mexico and with our solutions we can let them know whether or not their projects will be successful from the very beginning of the engineering phase. In this area our Building Information Model (BIM) will be extremely useful. The BIM concept was created in the 1980s but it has not been widely used for infrastructure projects until now. BIM refers to the capacity of analyzing 3D models and mapping information about materials and building models to integrate project control in a much more accurate way, before ground is broken.

Hexagon PPM is not in the business of producing or analyzing the 3D models, but we are working to use the BIM concept to allow our clients to have better control in their projects and to have improved capabilities to ensure the project is properly executed. At Hexagon PPM, this integrated solution is called SMART Build. With our solution, project developers will be able to map budget, instead of starting the project and running out of resources in a matter of months or years. SMART Build will allow project development to be carried out on-time and on-budget. Although oil and gas is our biggest market, we have not yet used the SMART Build solution within it. Instead, we are using it in infrastructure, getting to know how it truly works and what capabilities it brings to the industry, so it can then be safely implemented in the oil and gas sector. We expect to do so in 2018.

Q: What goals have you settled for the coming years?

A: 2018 will be a rough year. Due to the presidential elections many projects may be put on hold. Nevertheless, being a strong company, we have set the target of increasing our revenue by 8 to 10 percent during 2018 compared to 2017 levels. Then we expect to increase revenue by 12 to 15 percent year-on-year over the next three years. To achieve these targets, we are putting strong emphasis on the SMART Build solution being adopted even more in the infrastructure sector, and then we will jump from there to the oil and gas sector.