HOUSTON, Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- AVEVA Group plc is pleased to announce the winners of its 2007 "Engineering Excellence to the Extreme" award: AMEC Paragon, for delivering significant project savings as a result of using AVEVA's integrated suite of applications; and DuPont, for its rapid design of a new world-class DTT (DuPont Titanium Technologies) plant in Dongying, Shandong Province, China.

AVEVA's annual "Engineering Excellence to the Extreme" awards recognize AVEVA customers and the engineering excellence and problem-solving that goes into realizing process plant and marine projects, whether it be scope, environmental, safety, risk, completion time, or other factors. The recipients were honored at AVEVA's International Symposium for Engineering IT (ISEIT) held in San Antonio, Texas, October 22-24, 2007.

AMEC Paragon (http://www.amecparagon.com/), the Americas' oil and gas hub for AMEC, the international project management and services company, was honored for its Integrated Project Execution (IPE). IPE is a work process that has allowed AMEC Paragon to measure and deliver outstanding time and cost savings across multiple projects. AMEC Paragon's IPE strategy enables the collaboration of all parties involved in an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) project -- across all applications and executed from multiple locations -- safely, efficiently, and effectively. AMEC Paragon's IPE strategy delivered the following results on a retrofit offshore project:

-- 20% reduction in spool piping field welds -- Zero rework of piping and structural clashes within the new installation -- Project savings of approximately one month of offshore hook-up time at completion -- 5% reduction of material waste due to lack of interferences, clashes, rerouting, etc. -- Reduced Engineering time by up to 10% -- Reduced Offshore Visits by up to 70% -- 50% reduction in Procurement group man-hours for major equipment packages -- 90% reduction in Procurement group man-hours for bulk material packages -- 50% in Document Control man-hours for client handover -- 95% reduction in reprographic costs related to client handover -- Creation of weight management reports in less than five minutes instead of four hours

DuPont (http://www.dupont.com/) a science-based products and services company, was recognized for its rapid design of a world-class titanium dioxide (TiO2) plant in the City of Dongying, Shandong Province, China. The plant will be wholly owned by DuPont and will be the company's largest single investment project outside the United States. As a result of DuPont's history utilizing AVEVA's solutions, DuPont Titanium Technologies was able to extract existing PDMS (Plant Design Management System) models and arrange them together in a new model to represent the planned Dongying facility. This process greatly accelerated development of the first study model, which evolved over time into the current 3-D facility model. Front End Loading of the project was further accelerated because DuPont was able to hand over a fairly complete 3D data model of the plant to the project EPC contractor within 12 months.

"AVEVA's customers design and build some of the most complex and important projects in the world," commented Rob Glasier, head of AVEVA Americas. "These awards are our way of recognizing the hard work and achievement that goes into these projects. We congratulate AMEC Paragon and DuPont Titanium Technologies, and look forward to honoring more of our great customers for next year's 'Engineering Excellence to the Extreme' awards."

For more information on the Engineering Excellence to the Extreme awards and to download a 2008 nomination form, please visit http://events.aveva.com/iseit08/extreme_2008.doc. The deadline for submissions is August 30, 2008.

About AVEVA Group plc

AVEVA Group plc is one of the world's foremost and fastest-growing lifecycle engineering IT solutions and services providers to the oil and gas, paper and pulp, power, chemical, pharmaceutical and shipbuilding industries. The Group reported pre-tax profits for the year ended March 2007 of GBP 24.7 million on revenues of GBP 94.9 million. The Group has grown consistently since 1967 on the strength of pioneering engineering technology that protects the information assets of its customers from the volatile nature of the IT industry.

CONTACT: Joseph Krol of AVEVA, +1-713-977-1225, Joseph.Krol@aveva.com;
or Becky Stevens of Virtual Marketing LLC, +1-713-444-6860,
Becky.Stevens@aveva.com, for AVEVA

Web site: http://www.aveva.com/
http://www.amecparagon.com/
http://www.dupont.com/