Reprinted from October 2010 | HydrocarbonEnginEEring |

The hydrocarbon processing industry is a pragmatic world rooted in results, not pronouncements. In this industry people want to be shown what works. In this world ‘ought’ and ‘should’ will not

cut it. When it comes to the adoption of technology, this creed of requiring proof is even more obvious. This is not only referring to the latest leading edge or emerging technologies, but basic technology that is available now and that can deliver benefits immediately. That may be why, specifically in plant design and engineering, the burden of proving results is much greater, meaning that currently implemented technologies and practices are often favoured longer than they should be.

What is technology? According to the Encarta World Dictionary, technology means:

� The application of tools and methods, devices, machines, and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes.

� A method of applying technical knowledge or tools.

� Machines and systems: machines, equipment and systems considered as a unit.

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| HydrocarbonEnginEEring | Reprinted from October 2010

synonyms it cites include skill, knowledge, expertise, know how, equipment, machinery, or tools.

More pragmatically, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, it refers to technology as the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life or to the change and manipulation of the human environment.

Technology: cutting edge or bleeding edge? some technology enthusiasts, or geeks, can only relate to technology if it is cutting edge. Often these ‘cutting edge’ tools are actually more ‘bleeding edge’ technologies because they leave the largest onus on the implementer rather than the supplier to provide the often enormous resources required to ensure implementation success.

In hydrocarbon processing industries where 20, 30, or even 40 year old refineries are not considered old and where projects can take years to complete, plants and facilities are developed for the long term and the deliverables produced are referenced for decades after the plant goes onstream. In this environment, there is no appetite to try out and test exciting new technologies.

availability: key to success with technology For the purposes of this discussion, here is a streamlined definition of technology: The use of the available best tools, knowledge, and capabilities suited for the situation’s context. ‘Available’ should be emphasised because to make a difference, technology has to be within reach of the person, community or organisation at the time its application might provide benefits. For example, who would argue that a hand pump and a few metres of pipe bringing up water from an

aquifer to a village starved of water is not technology? And repellent treated mosquito nets are definitely a technological advancement for those who are in danger of losing their offspring from insect born diseases.

so this article looks at what is currently available in plant engineering and design and how these technologies can save money now.

Technology verses adoptability In the article ‘plant design for the people’, which appeared in the October 2009 issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering, the author discussed how greater integration and interoperability has led to the democratisation of the tools available to create quality plant design and engineering deliverables.

no longer do companies, especially small firms, have to make the stark choice between a five or more year payback on acquired technology, or employing labour intensive and mistake prone practices just to ensure the short term viability of the firm. now even small firms can adopt the technology needed to deliver the quality and quantity of output that the industry is demanding.

Project size determines solution What is important for companies to ask is if their deliverables produced are focused more on projects of relatively short duration or on projects that are large or complex. For example, does the company primarily design, build, fabricate and deliver specialised units and technology for standalone facilities or is it involved in larger jobs or processes? short duration projects are typical with firms subcontracting for a facility owner operator or for large engineering and procurement companies (EpCs).

For a large EpC or owner operator working with a subcontractor; has the company been pleased with the quality of the documentation deliverables, including their legibility and accuracy? Are they always delivered on time and within budget? If not, then the following discussion may give these companies the ammunition and confidence to specify to contractors the minimum technology requirements needed from them to ensure that what they deliver benefits the greater whole.

Also some larger EpC and owner operator companies may have smaller jobs and tasks that, because of the timeline and project size, are currently completed in 2d with material counts and isometrics created manually. If so then a consideration of readily available and easily implementable technology is definitely in the company’s best interests.

Look for platform and delivery standards What the hydrocarbon processing industry engineers and designers produce needs to be read and accessed by others during subsequent engineering and design phases and throughout the life of the facility. That is why it is so important to select tools that are able to deliver in formats that are accessible and considered to be the industry standards. For example, drawings and models in AutoCAd® or Microstation®; data in programs and formats such as Microsoft® Excel® or Access®, sql, and Oracle®; and documentation in Microsoft Word or Excel, are all examples of what are generally considered to be standards in the industry. There is little point in ‘reinventing the wheel’ when doing so could cause problems with system compatibility and provide no additional benefits to the users.

Setup should match project scope In the industry, there is little value in settling on a solution that takes months to set up and train staff to use effectively when the project itself requires less time than it would take to ramp up. There is no budget for such an investment because the immediate overriding goal is to

Figure 1. instituto Mexicano Del Petroleo (iMP) focused on integration and interoperability using available tools and standards to produce accurate and cost effective designs.

Figure 2. Petrolinvest used intergraph CADWorx Plant and intergraph CAESAr ii to make the smooth transition to intelligent 3D plant design.

Reprinted from October 2010 | HydrocarbonEnginEEring |

implement a solution that empowers the companies to meet or exceed the quality of deliverables that stakeholders expect.

deliverables: the measure of productivity some feature lists or articles espouse the fantastic ability of a particular solution to place a reducing tee or an elbow in the model more quickly than other products. While this may be a positive, these claims must be put into perspective. surely designers’ time is not wholly taken with the placing of components. This type of promotion claims this as the key to success when, on its own, it is not. While all savings in time add up, this type of productivity advantage makes the operation of the software flow more freely and be less annoying for the operator. This in itself is a great advantage even though it may not deliver the greatest productivity gains.

Expect something for nothing As stated productivity gains that focus purely on software speed performance or the speed of placing components are not realistic nor do they focus on the true aim of the job to be done or on what the designers and engineers need to produce so that they get paid. For example, for a designer, besides banging in components and laying out facilities, a lot of time is spent in research, meetings, site visits, reviews, and much more, all of which have to be taken into account. That said, what is a couple of milliseconds going to do for a company? Well not much.

Where plant design and engineering solutions should score major points and where the payback should be focused is on delivering the free ‘stuff’ that needed to be produced anyway and that adds up to true productivity gains. These ‘free’ deliverables and advantages include 3d models, clash detection, p&Id/model continuity checking, automatic bills of material, automatic isometrics, model reviews, 2d layouts and drawings, team model collaboration, output to engineering for analysis, input of analysis data affecting the design, and so forth.

Efficiency should be contagious In the design and engineering world, no person is an island. In varying degrees, all players must interact with other team members to get the job out and allow them to do the tasks for which they are responsible and to create the deliverables required of them. That is why it is so important when leveraging technology to look at the integration and interoperability opportunities that can be used to deliver maximum ROI.

An example of integration and interoperability is Intergraph® CAdWorx® plant design suite, an AutoCAd based plant design solution, with its bidirectional links with Intergraph CAEsAR II®, the world’s most widely used piping flexibility and analysis software. These links not only enable pipe stress engineers to import lines for analysis directly from the design model but also allow them to view the design model’s associated pipes, steelwork and equipment within the analysis environment. These available technologies allow engineers to make judgment calls on any changes needed based on the actual model, thereby removing guesswork, reducing mistakes and ensuring optimum project coordination. by sharing information throughout the project, engineers and designers can streamline work for both.

likewise if savings and efficiencies can be shared or extended to other departments or work groups, the productivity benefits will quickly multiply. The article ‘bespoke software’, which appeared in the March 2009 issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering, discusses more about how interoperability and integration expand productivity benefits.

What about the competition? The vast majority of companies are holding back and waiting to see what others in their segment are doing. That being the case, is there any need to rush into an accelerated adoption of plant design and engineering technology?

The competitive landscape has been shifting for some time and in significant ways that are hard to predict. India and its role in engineering and design is an example of this. during the last couple of decades, outsourcing to India grew as us and European companies looked for ways to reduce costs and save time. These companies were doing two things: setting up Indian branches of their enterprises so they could offshore some of their projects to these offices and/or contracting with one of the growing number of India based engineering firms to undertake entire projects or portions of the engineering and design.

Many viewed efficiency as just a matter of hourly labour costs. One manager of an engineering firm explained the thinking quite clearly while talking to a solution provider representative at an industry conference. ‘Why should I buy this software to become more productive? Our designers and engineers are 50% of the cost of those in Europe and the us, and these companies are happy with their savings.’ At that point the provider’s representative reminded him that, while that may well be the case at that time, if any one of the other engineering managers or owners in the room employed these software solutions, he (the engineering firm manager) would then be twice as expensive.

Almost a decade later, many companies in India and other developing countries realise the need for global as well as local

Figure 3. Smaller companies and work groups would be best focused on the efficient production of deliverables rather than on ‘bleeding edge’ technologies.

Figure 4. Being able to access and report on design and engineering information, without bespoke tools, is vital to smaller work groups.

| HydrocarbonEnginEEring | Reprinted from October 2010

competitiveness. The point of this story is that making a technological decision based on the lowest common denominator is dangerous. If a company does so, it ends up at the bottom. To be competitive a company wants to be in at least the top quartile where it will not have to rely upon other firms’ failures to ensure its own success, or minimally its survival. near the top, companies are better able to call the shots when it comes to the competitive landscape.

doing technology right in Southeastern EuropeA fairly recent example of readily available technology paying off is the case of petrolinvest, an engineering company based in the city of sarajevo. The novi sad oil refinery in serbia had been basically destroyed during 1999 due to nATO bombing. It has since seen extensive reconstruction. petrolinvest was hired as part of a us$ 25 million project to design a light gasoline isomerisation addition to the refinery to produce the high octane components required for unleaded gasoline, therefore reducing benzene and aromatics emissions into the environment.

previously, petrolinvest had used a generic CAd tool without a third party add on for its projects. This meant it had to maintain a large library of 2d standard piping components and typical arrangements. This led to the company having to first develop plans and layout and then finally create manual isometrics, which was the only way it produce complete bills of material. This traditional approach was very time consuming and and the company could never be sure of the accuracy.

After a thorough review of the technologies available, petroInvest chose Intergraph CAdWorx for design and Intergraph CAEsAR II for engineering analysis because of their ability to collaborate bidirectionally, and because they were easy to use and less expensive than other alternatives. by leveraging technology, the company could automatically produce accurate isometric drawings and bills of material that perfectly matched the original plant model, eliminating many possible mistakes and slow design times, finishing the project in only three months.

Leveraging available technology in MexicoInstituto Mexicano del petroleo (IMp), a provider of research, engineering modification and as built services to refineries, petrochemical plants and other facilities, employed available technology

to successfully finish the engineering and design for a us$ 100 million project in Tabasco state, Mexico. One of the largest strategic projects ever done for pEMEX Exploration and production Company, the project involved oil storage tanks in a gun barrel arrangement and included a symmetrical ring portion to connect tanks with eight inlets involving a highly complex configuration of piping, steel structures and related ancillary facilities.

IMp’s goals were to find a design and engineering solution that was easy to configure, manage, customise, and use, and had bidirectional links between piping design and stress engineering.

After some deliberation, IMp chose Intergraph CAdWorx for plant design and Intergraph CAEsAR II for pipe stress analysis because they were the only technologies available that actually could meet all of the requirements listed. Even though budget was less of an issue than it might be for some, these tools proved to be less expensive than other software solutions.

significant productivity improvements became quickly apparent for IMp. Instead of building a 3d model from scratch, it was able to use 2d data to build an intelligent 3d model and extract isometric drawings quickly. The company exchanged information back and forth between the plant model and pipe stress analysis and reduced its construction costs, thereby ensuring efficient engineering, review and modification.

by using the 3d Model, IMp was able to produce deliverables such as plans, sections, automatic isometrics, sections and elevations and detail views, and extract accurate bills of materials. It performed detailed engineering in only three months and output 80 piping drawings and 690 isometric drawings in record time, all from leveraging available technologies.

Solution goals for small workgroup For the smaller companies or fast tracked project groups of major EpCs or owner operators, there is no longer the stark choice between manual mistake prone practices and enterprise wide global workshare plant design solutions. It goes without saying that clients’ expectations for deliverables on smaller projects are not as demanding as for large or mega projects. What is true is that these clients are expecting, and sometimes demanding, the same quality of deliverables they have received on larger projects. For clients, small is no longer an excuse for lower standards but an opportunity for efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Along with the efficient and accurate production of deliverables, the selection of a plant design and engineering solution for the smaller workgroup should also focus on fast startup and low ongoing overhead. Regardless of the level of technology a company feels it can afford, implementation should be a major consideration and not taken lightly. In a fast paced environment that may host many projects a year, there is little point in reinventing the wheel because the set up and learning curve have the potential to eat into a large portion of the project’s budget.

The final thing to consider is product support. hopefully a company will settle on a solution that is easy to learn and set up, thereby reducing many of the issues that typically require support. That said, a company should still check for readily available end user avenues to get questions and concerns answered, e.g. blogs, videos, online tutorials, discussion forums and websites, as well as more traditional methods such as phone and email. When a company thinks it has found a solution, it should take time to fully evaluate and test it against its own needs, and not those of others. The bottom line is that there are available tools out there that can help any workgroup, regardless of size, to become more effective and that will help it to produce deliverables often indistinguishable from those of larger companies, which in turn will make it make it efficient, competitive, and therefore viable over the long term.

Figure 5. interoperability allows even the smallest design and engineering groups to develop true efficiencies through seamless workflows.