Servelec Controls wins Best Data Science Application at 2018 Hackathon

Friday, April 27, 2018

Servelec Controls is pleased to announce its talented Real Time Information Systems Specialists have won at the annual PI Visualisation Virtual Hackathon. Servelec Controls is a select partner of OSIsoft and more than half of the OSIsoft accredited engineers in the UK are a part of Servelec Controls’ team of industry specialists.

Clients trust Servelec Controls to integrate safe and reliable systems that visualise real-time data and events, enabling them to make critical decisions relating to national infrastructure. At the core of this offering is the PI System software from OSIsoft, who organise an annual PI Visualisation Virtual Hackathon to showcase the industry’s talent using the system.

Servelec Controls submitted three entries to this year’s Hackathon, with one of those entries winning the prestigious Best Data Science Application.

The virtual hackathon required competitors to develop interesting and innovative visualisations within the PI System, using a preview of PI Vision 4.0 and its extensibility functionality, for a data set of their choosing and to submit a video showing their visualisation in action.

The three groups of engineers from Servelec Controls’ Aberdeen office fought off stiff competition from nine other teams from international industrial IT, process control and automation companies, for Servelec Controls’ Team 2 to receive the accolade of Best Data Science Application.

Servelec Controls’ Team 2’s winning entry was specifically created based on its future real-world application and their perceptions of the potential benefit to clients. Titled the Servelec SQC (Statistical Quality Control) Chart Symbol, the visualisation uses statistical methods to establish baselines (control limits) to plot data and detect process variations. It then highlights instances where process data runs outside the control limits so that a user can look for changes in performance over time on the chart - something that hasn’t existed until now.

According to the team, who valiantly completed the challenge one team member down: “This is functionality some of my customers are very interested in,” and: “The PI Vision extensibility options allow Servelec to create innovative visualisation, which in turn allows customers to utilise the data being collected in their PI System in a way which brings benefit to their business.”

Following last year’s success in the competition, 2018 saw a 50% increase in the number of Servelec Controls’ engineers volunteering to enter the 2018 Hackathon, all citing the team-building benefits of the competition as a huge part of the appeal.

Servelec Controls’ Team One’s entry consisted of a custom symbol that could be used by any PI System Administrators to monitor the health of PI Interfaces.

Monitoring both overall status and all the underlying data, the system presents a user-friendly traffic light visualisation that offers an easily-read Good vs Bad status on the health of the system.

Team Three’s entry is entitled VISNAV, which stands for Visual Navigation. The tool gives an overview map of assets and their data, located at specific geographical locations.

Allowing the user to zoom in or out, potentially as far out as a view of the entire globe, it can be used as an alternative to traditional menus and tree views across a range of industries such as Data Centres, Power Stations, Oil & Gas Installations or indeed anywhere with multiple assets in multiple locations.

All of the entries can be viewed in more detail on the PI Square community.

Servelec Controls’ winning entry was chosen based on their performance against criteria including creativity and originality, potential business impact, technical implementation, data analysis and insight and UI/UX (user interface / user experience).

Following the results, Ronald Holden, Divisional Director of Servelec Controls said: “On behalf of the company, I congratulate all our teams; the skill and passion of our engineers is exemplified in the quality of all three entries.

“The PI System is highly valued by our clients for managing and visualising their real-time operational data and this is why Servelec Controls remains a long-standing partner of OSIsoft. Our accredited engineers are continually striving for improvement as demonstrated by their involvement and success in this event.”

Servelec Controls has been an OSIsoft Partner company since 2002 and has more than 50% of all accredited installation engineers in the UK.

Servelec Controls is one of the largest independent systems integrators, established with many of the leading automation equipment manufacturers worldwide. Servelec Controls specialises in industrial control, safety and real-time information systems delivering full turnkey engineering solutions and is an industry leader in the design and implementation of functional safety systems.

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