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The concept of Reference Architectures is novel in the business world. However, many architects active in the creation of complex systems frequently use the term Reference Architecture. Yet, these experienced architects do not collectively have a consistent notion of what constitutes a Reference Architecture, what is the value of maintaining the Reference Architecture, what is the best approach to visualizing a Reference Architecture, what is the most appropriate level of abstraction, and how should an architect make use of the Reference Architecture in their work? This paper examines current Reference Architectures and the driving forces behind development of them to come to a collective conclusion on what a Reference Architecture should truly be. It will be shown that a Reference Architecture captures the accumulated architectural knowledge of thousands man-years of work. This knowledge ranges from why (market segmentation, value chain, customer key drivers, application), what (systems, key performance parameters, system interfaces, functionality, variability), to how (design views and diagrams, essential design patterns, main concepts). The purpose of the Reference Architecture is to provide guidance for future developments. The Reference Architecture incorporates the vision and strategy for the future. The Reference Architecture is a reference for the hundreds of teams related to ongoing developments. By providing this reference all these teams have a shared baseline of why, what and how. It is the authors' goal that this paper will facilitate further research in the concepts and ideas presented herein.

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Abstract. Contractors in the oil and gas industry are experiencing an increased pressure to deliver projects at a lower cost and at a shorter schedule. Extensive requirements combined with strict governing documents restrict project designs. Therefore, contractors need efficient governing processes that capture customers' needs and ensure that system requirements relates to these customer needs.In the execution phase of a project, the engineering degrees of freedom are limited. In the early project phase of concept and study, the basic design is established. The design freeze occurs in the tender phase, based on a best interpretation of customer needs. This causes any changes made in the execution phase to be costly and have the potential to impose severe subsequent consequences. Proper use of systems engineering ensures a minimal amount of late design changes. The most important systems engineering process in such a context, is the capturing of customer needs and definition of user requirements. We researched the processes used to capture system requirements today, and the potential impact of using systems engineering techniques for this purpose. We uncovered multiple gaps in the current process of capturing customer needs, which subsequently led to the definition of system requirements based on international standards and best practices, instead of actual needs. Our research also showed that with a process of capturing customer needs based on systems engineering techniques, as much as 92% of the costs imposed by late design changes are avoidable.

The subsea oil and gas domain suffers from complex and partially incomplete information flows. As consequence, most employees in the involved organizations lack overview of the systems and operations. Using conceptual modeling and A3 architecture overviews, we have reconstructed the overview for the workover system and its operation. The result triggers interest from the suppliers in the oil and gas domain.