As-Built with 3D Laser Scanning Adding Value to Engineering Revamp Work

As Built from Laser Scanning of Site/Plant

Introduction

As Engineering firms move from the historically time-consuming and inaccurate manual entertainment of as-built documentation for the adoption of as-built laser beam documentation, the revamp landscape is beginning to dramatically change. CGC Converse clients have significantly improved the profitability and risk user profile of commercial revamp (“Brownfield”) projects. According to our rich industry experience, CGC Converse has performed a specific analysis of the key revamp challenges faced by Executive companies and the numerous value as-built laser documentation can offer for cost, schedule, quality and safety, bringing them in-line with grassroots jobs.

Key Challenge Faced by Engineering Firms for Revamp Work

With the adoption of 3D CAD tools and new work processes, the processing industries have liked year-over-year quality and efficiency improvements on capital tasks. In particular, grassroots (“Greenfield”) projects have become substantially less risky with more predictable costs and routine. Quality has even developed to the point where Owner/Operator organizations have come to expect near absolutely no design errors.

Unfortunately, these measurable improvements have not easily transferred to industrial revamp benefit due to many reasons, including inaccurate and unfinished information on physical dimensions and location of steaming and equipment (the “as-built documentation” for the facility), frequent site visits for manual measurements and construction interferences and high remodel rates due to incorrect or missing measurements. The particular following four challenges were identified as the key hurdles in avoiding processing companies from achieving world-class performance.

Challenge 1:  Delivering on Tightening Project Budgets

Job managers are being pushed to control costs as a method to improve capital project success. However, they have also come to expect certain incremental costs on maintenance and modification projects which have to be covered, whether they are budgeted or not. Recreating as-built paperwork is one such object that needs to be completed early in the project to ensure that accurate and reliable information is available for design, fabrication and building. This is an important step in the design process as all succeeding steps derive from this information. Manual measurement processes are time-consuming, expensive and problem prone, which drives up costs and adds pressure to the project routine.

Another cost is the need for field fit-up welds to compensate for inaccurate and unfinished as-built documentation. This limits the amount of manufacture work which can be accomplished before the turnaround and boosts the amount of field routing that must be completed during the turnaround.

There are additional cost savings which can be gained by optimizing the engineer and design processes. However, self-confidence in the as-built documents and inability to effectively share this info across geographically diverse team limits ability to take benefit of some of the non- traditional approaches to reduce engineering costs.

Challenge 2: Meeting the Turnaround Schedule

Provided the inherent obstacles associated with field construction, engineering companies face a considerable risk from turnaround holds off. Lost production can cost a typical processing plant $500, 000 per day or even more, thus the fines for missing the plan can also significantly hurt a project’s profitability. Inaccurate and incomplete as-built documents used for designs significantly enhances the risk of field rework for a lot of reasons, such as as-built documentation that assumes all equipment and structures are orthogonal, pipes is always round and columns that are usually plumb, which is rarely the case in the real world. In addition, many installed components – such as small-bore piping, conduit, wire trays, ductwork and arrangement – are often not documented at all. These difficulties add not only cost, but also time to projects in the form of rework, field trips and re-design.

Challenge 3: Achieving Quality Expectations

Regardless of quality improvement initiatives, it is not uncommon for maintenance and modification rework rates to run as high as 5 to 10 percent of any project’s total installed cost (TIC). There is substantial pressure to bring this quality metric down, but the not enough accurate as-built documentation and resulting rework or interferences cause constructability issues that keep this rate high.

Challenge 4: Protecting Safety in Hazardous Conditions

The inherent safety hazards of working at the plant site increase because of this of having to send crews to the field for prolonged periods to gather as-built documentation. Energetic plant hazards include material exposure, having more staff in the plant for manual data collection and having to measure structures in cramped work environments.

Many believe that any activity that drives up the time spent in the field as a percent of the total task time is bound to negatively impact recordable. Traveling the risk factor even higher is the reality that the majority of Engineering firms and running companies are self-insured. Given the high cost of both medical and liability issues, companies are always looking for ways to improve safety.

Value and Specific Benefits of Laser As-Built

As identified the key sources of value as-built laser documentation for the processing industries fall into four main categories:  cost, schedule, quality and safety.  The table below lists these main sources of value and the specific benefits clients receive that provide the value. 

Category	Specific Benefit
Reduced Costs	Reduced field trips by 75% Reduced fit-up welds by 50% Increased the amount of offshore design by 25%
Optimized Schedules	Reduced as-built documentation collection time by 80% Reduced new design modeling time by 30%
Increased Quality	Lowered rework rates by 1% Increased shop fabrication by 10% Created better pipe routing plans to save one day
Improved Safety	Fewer personnel in the plant collecting data and less exposed to hazardous       conditions