Smart O&M in Energy industry: interview of Siveco China’s COO by EventLinker

Ahead of the Future Energy & Tech Investment Forum at Spaces Sun House in Hong Kong, Siveco China COO Guillaume Gimonet was invited to interview with EventLinker, a professional tech and innovation event organizer, and shared his point of views on the importance of Smart O&M technologies in optimizing the management of modern high-tech utilities.

Click here to read the original interview news.

Guillaume Gimonet is COO of Siveco China. Siveco has a long track record providing Smart O&M solutions to optimize the lifecycle of infrastructures and to ensure regulatory compliance. Guillaume has been with Siveco since 2008 in various positions ranging from business development to project delivery. As COO, he oversees the company’s project, product and support teams, including the firm’s Shanghai R&D center dedicated to IoT and mobility. Prior to Siveco, Guillaume was working in the paper industry in Shandong province.

Hi Guillaume, thanks for chatting with us. So, tell us a bit about Siveco China.

Siveco China was set up in 2004 to help Chinese infrastructure owners and operators optimize the lifecycle of their assets and ensure regulatory compliance.

We come from a maintenance consulting background, with a long experience in the Chinese power industry, which led us to develop innovative software to address the specific needs of “Maintenance with Chinese Characteristics”. All our projects combine asset management expertise with the use of our Smart Operation & Maintenance solutions.

Our business is rather unique in the region. Over the years, we have since grown considerably in Greater China (we have an office in Hong Kong since 2006) and on the Belt & Road, with over 850 client sites.

Can you explain what Smart Operations & Maintenance is, and why it is so important?

Infrastructures are the backbone of a nation, as they enable its urbanization and industrialization. The sustainability of infrastructures, and facilities in general, has become a national priority in China, as part the “China Dream”, but the same can be said everywhere else. At the core of sustainability, but often ignored, lies maintenance!

Long before the terms “smart” or “4.0” were coined, Siveco was already using IT to help clients optimize their operation and maintenance throughout the life of the facility. Unfortunately the market is plagued by IT projects and overhyped tech that have failed to deliver operational results. So, to us, “smart” denotes not only the use of advanced technologies, but also the fact that management expertise – smart people – must drive improvement projects, not IT.

What are some of the projects Siveco China has developed with Smart O&M, and what have been the results.

In Greater China, Siveco has a long track record in the environment and energy segments. Utility giant Suez NWS has been a client for close to 15 years, in particular for all their waste-to-energy plants and many of their water joint-ventures in the region. We are also helping Chinese State Owned Enterprises such as Capital Environment or Beijing Environment to organize their O&M across multiple sites in the fast-changing Chinese market.

In Hong Kong, we have worked on several projects of the Environment Protection Department (EPD): the Organic Resource Recovery Center Phase 1, the West New Territories strategic landfill, the North East New Territories strategic landfill and the West Kowloon Transfer Station. Macau’s waste company CSR is also our customer.

In the district energy sector, clients include Engie or Singapore Power: we most recently delivered our solutions to the prestigious Chongqing Raffles City complex’s HVAC system. Some of Asia’s largest industrial gas suppliers have deployed our solutions across dozens of facilities, among them Yingde Gases, Baosteel Gases, Taiyo Nippon Sanso, etc. Finally we support power plants and power grid construction all over the world, for example my Shanghai team has involved in 8 Korean-built large-capacity combined-cycle power plants in Algeria and most recently we have signed with China State Grid in Brazil.

Most of Smart O&M project pay off quickly. When initiated during the construction stage, they only use a tiny portion of the total investment and the first direct savings are obtained during startup, in terms of technical documentation handover and O&M readiness.

What do you think the next 5-10 years will look like in the energy and energy tech space?

The energy and utility market is in constant evolution. China is of course still growing, so are many Southeast Asian countries, most with strong involvement from Chinese EPCs. New energies, such as LNG, biomass, waste-to-energy, cogeneration etc. in particular continue to grow rapidly. The stricter regulatory environment is highly favorable to our business. Hong Kong is currently building advanced environmental facilities to deal with its geographical constraints and local authorities are keen to take advantage of the latest O&M solutions, in particular our BIM for Asset Management approach.

At the same time, major owner-operators have experience both with large IT vendors and their shortcomings and with fancy “proof of concept” projects that can never be put into operational use: they tend to be interested by Siveco’s approach. Our experience in mainland China has also become more relevant now that the country is recognized both as an infrastructure leader and a technology powerhouse, which was far from being the case when we set up the company in 2004 or even when we launched our Shanghai R&D center in 2009!

For more information about Siveco China Smart O&M solution and our case studies, please contact our marketing team at info@sivecochina.com.

Tags： smart O&M、lifecycle management、CMMS、asset management、maintenance improvement、waste-to-energy、infrastructures、Belt & Road