Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Digital Engineering Tool in a Project Engineering Company

Abstract

AbstractThe research for this paper focused on the evaluation of digital engineering tools that aid industrial engineering processes. The paper aims to investigate how to evaluate the effectiveness of such a tool to provide insight into how it fits the needs of a project engineering company. The research carried out a case study in a Norwegian subsidiary of a worldwide consulting and project engineering company. The company had previously implemented the digital engineering tool SmartPlant for information management, engineering drawings, interdisciplinary collaboration, and data exchange. The focus of the industry case study was to customize and use an evaluation method in practice on SmartPlant. The research used an evaluation method based on quality characteristics from the ISO/IEC 25010:2011 standard. We collected qualitative data on the digital engineering tools' usage in practice from semi‐structured interviews and a survey. In addition to this, we investigated the appropriate analysis methods for survey results, such as mean value vs. net promoter score. The research concluded that the evaluation method provided the company with valuable insight into the tool's benefits and drawbacks.