Production • Processing • Handling
A new plant design suite can help reduce wasted engineering hours, says Derry Vaughan.
Según Derry Vaughan, un nuevo paquete para el diseño de plantas puede ayudar a reducir la pérdida de horas de ingeniería.
Eine neue Anlagenkonstruktions- Suite kann helfen, verschwendete Arbeitszeit zu reduzieren, sagt Derry Vaughan.
Cutting the downtime with plant design suite
A
Fig. 1. Aerial view of a process plant, with DWG underlay and photorealistic views.
lthough the oil and gas industry has not suffered as much as some sectors over the past few years, the quest for efficiencies and
best practices - quite rightly - remains as intense as ever. Tis is especially the case when it
comes to overheads such as the re-design or renovation of assets. Most operations of significant size have a rolling schedule of maintenance and refurbishment, but
the rising cost of materials combined with missing tight deadlines can eat into a budget whatever the size of the programme. Plus, while the current downturn in
other parts of the economy has eased shortages of design skills in this area, in the UK there is still a tendency towards relying on contractors and freelancers to do the planning and design. Meanwhile, there’s also a slow-burn time bomb in the background as it is predicted that globally up to half of current design engineers will be retiring over the next decade. Te goal, therefore, is to stick to a core
team, avoid the need to keep adding extra bodies to help meet deadlines and keep wasted design time to a minimum. However, until recently this has been easier said than done. Despite the conservative nature of the industry, software developers have found fertile ground in plant design. Consequently, it is one area where different software is used all over the globe. But whereas there are a number of established vendors in this area who specialise in solutions which manage the complete plant lifecycle, many plant design engineers still use plain AutoCAD for some or all aspects of plant design. Tis is especially the case on small and medium-sized projects as well as on schematic designs. Te difficulty arises when these different
software solutions are no longer supported or only work with earlier versions of AutoCAD rather than the latest release. Specialist, non-standard software has its
place. However, if 80 per cent or more of the engineers working on a plant project are freelancers - as is often the situation - then the bill for training can be excessive. Tese are a few of the reasons that
Autodesk has just consolidated its commitment to plant design with the release of the Autodesk Plant Design Suite. Tis includes AutoCAD Plant 3D and integrated AutoCAD P&ID software.
www.engineerlive.com 43
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