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Supplier information is some of the most valuable information created during an EPC project.
Drawings, datasheets, certificates, operating manuals, spare parts information and technical attributes describe the equipment that will eventually need to be installed, commissioned, operated and maintained.
The problem is rarely that this information does not exist.
The problem is that it changes hands too many times.
A supplier delivers information to the EPC contractor. The contractor reviews and approves it. Procurement may track one part of the delivery, document control another, and engineering another. At project closeout, the information is transferred to the owner-operator — often into systems that were never designed around the structure used during project execution.
By the time operations needs the information, the files may technically have been delivered while the relationships that made them useful have been lost.
That is the real supplier information challenge.
For a broader view of how supplier information should be collected, validated and governed, see Supplier Information Management.
A large proportion of the final asset information set originates with equipment manufacturers and suppliers.
A pump may arrive with a datasheet, general arrangement drawing, material certificates, performance curves, installation instructions, operating and maintenance manuals, spare parts information and inspection records.
Multiply that across hundreds of suppliers and thousands of tagged equipment items, and supplier information becomes one of the largest information streams in the project.
This is why vendor documentation cannot be treated as a purely administrative procurement task.
The information is needed by engineering during design integration, by construction during installation, by commissioning during verification, and by operations long after the supplier has left the project.
On the Jasmine development, Sharecat was used across 198 suppliers and 297 purchase orders, handling 26.9k supplier documents and 51k tagged equipment items through project execution, commissioning, closeout and operational handover. Sharecat also states that supply-chain information typically accounts for 65–75% of total asset information-management scope. Sharecat
The challenge is therefore not simply to receive supplier documents.
It is to preserve their value across the asset lifecycle.
Most supplier information problems begin long before handover.
The EPC contractor usually defines what documents and data each supplier must deliver through purchase-order requirements, Vendor Document Requirements or a Vendor Document List. These may specify document types, revisions, delivery milestones and other contractual requirements.
Specialist vendor-document systems focus heavily on this stage because missed submissions, uncontrolled revisions and late approvals can delay project execution. Arianna, for example, structures the vendor-document lifecycle around VDL control, delivery status and approval history, while vendor data-book workflows commonly define required documentation from the purchase order onward. Arianna
But even a perfectly controlled VDL does not guarantee that the information will be usable in operations.
A document may be complete and approved while still lacking the metadata or equipment relationship needed downstream.
That is where document control and asset information management begin to diverge.
Procurement systems are good at tracking commercial processes.
They can manage suppliers, purchase orders, contractual milestones and delivery status.
But technical supplier information has a longer life than the purchase order.
Once equipment is installed, operations needs to retrieve that information through the asset itself — not through the procurement history of the EPC project.
A maintenance engineer looking for the operating manual for a pump should not need to know which purchase order or supplier package originally delivered it.
The supplier record therefore needs to transition from a procurement context into an asset context.
That means connecting the supplier, purchase order and document package to the correct tag, equipment record and technical data structure.
Without that transition, valuable supplier information remains trapped in the project that created it.
An Engineering Document Management System is essential for controlling supplier documents.
It manages revisions, review workflows, approval status, transmittals and metadata. Specialist EPC document-management platforms such as PiNOR are built around exactly this need, with vendor documentation and full document traceability through commissioning and handover. RHYTON Solutions
But an EDMS is primarily document-centric.
Operations often needs to search from the opposite direction.
Instead of asking:
Which documents were submitted under this vendor package?
the operational question is more likely:
What information belongs to this equipment item?
That requires a persistent relationship between the supplier document and the asset it describes.
DocBoss, for example, explicitly identifies tag-to-document relationships and required metadata as key parts of vendor documentation management. DocBoss
For Sharecat, this is an important distinction.
The objective is not to replace the EDMS.
It is to ensure that supplier documents remain connected to structured equipment and tag information so they can still be found and understood after the project organization disappears.
A supplier document without asset context becomes harder to use as soon as it leaves the project team.
Consider an operating and maintenance manual for a pump.
During the EPC project, the document controller may find it through document number, supplier name or purchase order.
During operations, the maintenance technician is much more likely to begin with the pump tag.
The information model therefore needs to preserve the connection between:
supplier → equipment → tag → document.
A governed Master Tag Register provides the persistent identifier around which these relationships can be maintained.
If supplier information is linked to the correct tag from the beginning, the relationship survives handover.
If not, operations may receive thousands of approved documents but still spend significant time determining which files belong to which assets.
This is one reason supplier information should be treated as part of the wider asset information model rather than as an isolated document package.
The second major problem is that supplier information is not only documentation.
A datasheet may contain dozens of technical values such as manufacturer, model, pressure rating, material, capacity and operating limits.
If those values remain only inside the PDF, the document may be easy for a person to read but difficult for operational systems to reuse.
This matters because EAM, CMMS, digital twins and other asset-management platforms depend on structured equipment data.
The supplier-information process should therefore capture both the document and the relevant structured data behind it.
This also improves quality control.
A required equipment attribute can be validated against defined information requirements instead of waiting for someone to discover later that the value was missing from the final data load.
The objective is not to eliminate PDFs.
It is to prevent important asset data from existing only inside them.
A further challenge appears when data from many suppliers is brought together.
Manufacturers naturally use their own terminology, attribute names, classifications and formats.
One supplier may use one description for an equipment characteristic while another uses a different term for the same thing. Units may vary. Model and manufacturer names may be entered inconsistently.
These differences are manageable within an individual supplier package.
Across hundreds of suppliers, they become a major data-quality problem.
This is why supplier information needs to be validated against governed requirements and reference data before it becomes part of the owner's asset information environment.
Master Data Governance and controlled reference structures provide a common language between suppliers, EPC contractors and owner-operators.
The aim is not to force every supplier to use the same internal systems.
It is to ensure that the delivered information can be interpreted consistently once it enters the project.
One of the most expensive supplier-information mistakes is leaving reconciliation until project closeout.
By then, the engineering teams responsible for the equipment may be demobilizing, suppliers may consider their contractual deliveries complete and commissioning teams may be focused on startup.
Missing metadata, incorrect tag relationships and incomplete documentation become much harder to correct at that stage.
A stronger approach is continuous validation.
Supplier information should be checked as it arrives: is the required document present, is the revision correct, is the metadata complete, is the equipment reference valid, and are the required technical attributes available?
This makes handover the confirmation of an information set that has already been controlled throughout execution rather than a final attempt to reconstruct it.
The Jasmine project provides a practical example. Sharecat was used through execution, commissioning and closeout, and information was continuously transferred into the operator's systems via API rather than held back for one final bulk handover. Sharecat
The most important transition happens when supplier information stops being project information and becomes operational asset information.
The supplier may think in terms of a product or serial number.
The EPC contractor may think in terms of a purchase order or vendor document package.
The owner-operator thinks in terms of an installed equipment tag and asset hierarchy.
Those perspectives need to connect.
If they do, the supplier's information continues to support maintenance, inspection, spare-parts management and future modifications.
If they do not, the information becomes increasingly difficult to retrieve after handover.
This is why successful supplier information management needs to preserve relationships between product identity, asset identity, documents and structured technical data.
The goal is not simply to hand over everything the supplier delivered.
The goal is to hand over information in a form the operator can use.
A better process starts before the purchase order is issued.
The owner and EPC contractor define what documents and technical data are required and how they should be identified. Suppliers then submit information against those requirements rather than inventing their own project structure.
As information arrives, documents and data are validated while the responsible supplier is still active. Records are connected to the correct equipment and tags, and approved information becomes part of the wider engineering information environment.
The EDMS continues to provide authoritative document control. Structured equipment data can feed the systems that require it. Operations receives information through the asset context rather than through the temporary project structure.
This creates continuity from supplier delivery to operational use.
It also reduces the need for major information-cleanup programmes after handover.
Sharecat provides a connected environment for collecting, validating and contextualizing supplier information throughout EPC execution and operational handover.
Supplier documents and technical data can be requested against defined requirements rather than collected as uncontrolled files. Incoming information can be validated and linked to the correct tags, equipment records and related engineering information.
This means the document remains controlled while the information inside and around it becomes part of the asset information model.
Sharecat's Supplier Information Management capability is designed around this process, connecting supplier deliveries with documents, structured data and equipment information.
The Jasmine project demonstrates what this looks like at scale. Sharecat supported supplier-information workflows across 198 suppliers and 51k tagged equipment items, with complete supplier information delivered before offshore commissioning was finished and continuous data handover into ConocoPhillips' operational systems. Worley reported at least £1.32 million in direct information-management savings on the project. Sharecat
The important point is that supplier information should not end its journey in the procurement system, the vendor portal or even the EDMS.
It should end up connected to the asset.
The supplier delivers the information once. Operations should be able to use it for years.
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