Case Study: Ecopetrol Creates a World-Class Refinery with Hexagon PPM Solutions

Ecopetrol Leverages Hexagon PPM Solutions to Create The World's Most Leading-Edge Refinery

Ecopetrol, Colombia’s primary petroleum company and one of Latin America’s largest energy firms, faced a major information-management challenge during the USD$7 billion expansion of its Refinery of Cartagena. With more than one million engineering documents generated by multiple contractors using non-integrated tools and databases, Ecopetrol needed a better way to organize, validate, and connect plant engineering data. Hexagon PPM’s smart plant engineering and asset management solutions were selected to help address this complexity.

Hexagon PPM implemented SmartPlant Fusion for tag extraction, document loading, and quality/compliance checks, alongside SmartPlant Enterprise for Owner Operators (SPO) as a central repository for engineering and asset information. The solution also included SmartPlant Interop Publisher, SmartPlant 3D, SmartPlant P&ID, and later SPO Operating Plant processes, with about 1,200 users actively using the system. As a result, Ecopetrol gained significant efficiency, improved management of engineering information, and began expanding the platform to other refinery areas, with plans to replicate the deployment at its Barrancabermeja refinery and integrate SPO with SAP.

Ecopetrol