Siv Engen will defend her thesis for the degree of philosophiae doctor (PhD) in the national joint Programme in Nautical Operations at Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences .
Title of the thesis: «Conceptual Modeling for Architectural Reasoning in the Energy Domain».
Title of the trial lecture: «Challenges in use of system engineering methodologies in projects facing new requirements from the Green Shift, digitalization and leaner work processes».
The trial lecture and defense will be held at campus Kongsberg in auditorium Becker on September 27. The event will also take place digitally on Zoom.
Summery
Subsea systems are large complex systems that shall operate in harsh environments subsea for more than 20 years. Therefore, to design cost-effective and sustainable systems, making the correct decisions in the early phase is crucial. This requires that engineers have a thorough understanding of the system concepts and can communicate them across disciplines.
This research explores conceptual modeling in the energy domain to support decision-making during system development. For four years, we have followed engineering teams in TechnipFMC to understand their challenges in the early phase of system development. Through interactions with the engineers, we have tested conceptual modeling and evaluated how the models can support their needs. The research finds that the visual models support the engineers in communicating across technical domains and with non-technical resources. Further, the models support a mutual understanding, reducing the risk of misconception and increasing the quality of the decisions.
The Ph.D. thesis presents insight from the interactions with industry practitioners. Further, the thesis proposes an approach to guide engineers in applying conceptual models in their daily work.