Nord Stream Choose To Support €7.4bn Project With Integrated BI And CPM From BOARD

Nord Stream have chosen BOARD to support their building of new gas pipline across Europe. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) July 02, 2010 - BOARD International, the global leader in Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) toolkit software, is extending its long list of customers to include Nord Stream AG. Nord Stream are currently building a natural gas pipeline to contribute to the reliable supply of gas within Europe. This new pipeline project has an estimated price tag of € 7.4 billion, making it one of the largest ever private investments in European infrastructure. Throughout the project the company's supply chain management and pipeline construction monitoring operations will be relying on BOARD's 'turnkey' controlling and planning solution, i.e. one which requires no further programming work.

Nord Stream AG is a consortium of OAO Gazprom, BASF/Wintershall Holding GmbH, E.ON Ruhrgas AG,, N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and GDF Suez A.S. The new Nord Stream pipeline, scheduled to go into operation in 2011, will connect Russia and the EU directly across the Baltic Sea, transporting natural gas to provide energy to both companies and private households. The Nord Stream pipeline will play a key role in assuring a long-term supply of natural gas to Europe: it will be capable of transporting an annual total of up to 55 billion cubic metres of gas, so is theoretically capable of supplying energy to more than 25 million European households.

Planning and construction work for this pipeline, comprising two parallel lines each 1,220 km in length, is now progressing at full speed. The laying of each pipeline across the sea bed involves the welding of somewhere in the region of 100,000 pipe segments on board a special purpose ship.

Due to the elaborate nature of this procedure - where every individual pipe section weighs over 20 tons and is coated with several different layers - it is self-evident that production bottlenecks and periods of downtime will not only entail delays in the schedule but would also quickly give rise to enormous additional costs. To ensure that each milestone is met and that the correct number of pipe sections are available at the right time and in the right place, Nord Stream is basing its operations on a highly advanced concept.

The supply chain management aspect of this project is being supported by BOARD: the pipe suppliers provide Nord Stream with information about their ongoing pipe production, e.g. the volume produced each day, together with the percentage of scrap etc enabling Nord Stream to analyse, monitor and take action before any issues arise Dr. Werner Rott, Deputy Technical Director, Nord Stream AG: "With a single application, BOARD gives us a precise overview of all our supply chain activities. This helps us to ensure that the pipeline is built on schedule, to identify potential delays at an early stage and to take steps to prevent them from arising. Even a single day of production downtime on a project of this magnitude would lead to massive additional costs being incurred."

From the information provided, BOARD is able to draw up detailed appraisals, to update these on a daily basis and, in so doing, meet the demands of Nord Stream AG in respect of real-time evaluation and the highest achievable level of up-to-date information.

The requisite applications can then be implemented in the shortest possible time with the help of BOARD's zero-programming toolkit approach. This cost/benefit ratio was one of the reasons Nord Stream decided to choose BOARD. BOARD also provides optimum support for compliance, stringently specified for a project of this type and magnitude The elimination of any programming achieves a massive time saving, whilst the intuitive BOARD front-end enables new operators to learn the solution within a very short period of time.

BOARD is also lined up to provide support for the Controlling function. With the help of a budget-actual variance tracker, it is possible to establish the extent to which objectives are being achieved. This ensures that deviations from specified items on the schedule can be identified at an early stage. Any variances found can then be analysed and evaluated precisely, enabling Nord Stream to take swift and appropriate remedial action.

You can find more information about the Nord Stream pipeline by visiting http://www.nord-stream.com

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