Requirements Engineering for Retrofittable Subsea Equipment

Abstract

This paper highlights the requirements engineering approach tailored to the unique complexities of developing system requirements for the retrofit of subsea equipment used in offshore deepwater operations. A feasible system in this application must satisfy demanding stakeholder needs in safety, reliability, availability, maintainability, retrofittability, deployment timelines, interface compatibility and regulatory conformance. Additionally, the system requirements must be defendable against the industry's decades-long established regulatory, cultural and technological legacies. To objectively define the system requirements within these constraints, the conventional INCOSE requirements engineering process including analysis, allocation, refinement, and traceability was tailored specifically to the project leveraging aspects of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). A novel approach for tracing specific clauses contained within industry standards and regulations to system requirements is discussed, including a methodology for capturing conformance, equivalence and alternative means of compliance. The tailored requirements engineering process utilizing commercially available systems engineering software tools is presented.