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www.bentley.com

Best Practicesin Front-End

DesignA Bentley White Paper

Arvind Patel

Business Development Manager

Conceptual Design and FEED Applications

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Best Practices in Front-End Design 2

INTRODUCTION

Every year, owner-operators in the hydrocarbon and related process industries invest

several billion dollars constructing new plants, revamping existing ones, improving

safety and environmental compliance, and increasing system reliability. They invest

even more in asset management and maintenance programs.

All of these projects must be cost-effectively delivered on ever-tighter schedules by

firms and their project teams dealing with an increasing shortfall in the number of

highly skilled engineers available to tackle these challenges. Its clear that the shortage

affects each project phase from concept, through front-end and detailed design, to

construction, operations, and maintenance. This shortage in engineering talent also

impacts every supply chain link, including plant equipment suppliers, which report

increasing lead-times even for such once commonly available items as valves and pumps.

The ability to secure, in a timely fashion, materials and labor to deliver projects or carry

out maintenance is critical to business success, and requires effective information

sharing among the muti-disciplinary firms typically involved in these efforts.

Unfortunately, today, this often isnt the case. Because information generated by one

discipline at a particular phase of a projects lifecycle is not always shared or reused

at another phase, businesses suffer from inefficient use of capital, poor returns on

investment (ROI), and increased project risks due to inconsistencies in project deliverables

that take time and cost money to resolve.

Engineers are increasingly pressured to make sound investment decisions earlier in a

project, even as the pool of available engineering resources to tackle those decisions

continues to shrink. However, process industries can improve project performance by

Fig. 1. Typical workflow in front-end design projects

Engineers are increasingly

pressured to make sound

investment decisions

earlier in a project, even

as the pool of available

engineering resources totackle those decisions

continues to shrink.

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Early Scope of Bulk Materials

Every cost engineer should receive an early definition of bulk materials from the design

team in order to project a reliable cost estimate for the capital investment. The challenge,

once again, is to define the scope of bulk materials without a detailed 3D plant design

model. However, a conceptual 3D plant design model actually can be generated inminutes using a fast auto-routing application for piping.

Integrated P&ID Development

When it comes to integrated P&ID development, the challenge involves not only developing

P&IDs, but also maintaining data consistency with process information, line sizing

data, and instrumentation and equipment definitions all while providing a flexible

workflow across different geographic locations. This requires a data-centric workflow for

developing P&IDs with complete control of revision and design changes, facilitating

reviews and incorporating comments.

Jump-Starting Detail Design

Jump-starting detail design has become more the norm for FEED projects. Because

owner-operators demand shorter project schedules (Fig. 2), most of them are notprepared to delay the start of the engineering/procurement/construction (EPC) phase.

Clearly, owner-operators would rather jump-start the detail design phase by reusing

FEED data.

Bentleys Approach for Conceptual Design

Most conceptual design projects involve concurrent engineering workflows, with all

design disciplines working simultaneously from a common database. Only a data-centric

approach guarantees data consistency between schematics and design deliverables

and allows:Process engineers to manage multiple process simulation case studies and rapidly

establish the governing case,

Equipment designers to reuse this data to design or rate critical heat transfer equipment,

Most conceptual

design projects involve

concurrent engineering

workflows, with all design

disciplines working

simultaneously from acommon database.

Fig. 2. Site Layout and Construction Must Start Early in the Design

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Mechanical engineers to develop their equipment specifications in the form of data

sheets using Excel worksheets,

Layout designers to try multiple alternatives in response to process changes,

Cost engineers to extract the early bulk materials scope for their conceptual cost

estimates all from a common set of process data.

This is the approach Bentley takes to address concurrent engineering workflows in

conceptual design, where rapid screening of alternative concepts is critical, and

reviewing the impact of changes in the proposed concept must be visualized quickly to

gain approval of the design intent.

Bentley AXSYS.Process for Conceptual Process Design

Bentley AXSYS.Process allows increased evaluation of conceptual design cases and

leverages corporate knowledge to significantly reduce capital expenditure for new plants

and plant upgrades. It is a data-centric, database-driven application that provides

rule-based methods for automating the selection of equipment items and drawing

creation directly from process simulation results (Fig. 4). By combining users best design

practices in the form of templates, the resulting PFDs and P&IDs are automatically

generated with minimum user intervention.

The product supports interfaces to most industry-standard process simulators, including

HYSYS, Aspen Plus, Pro/II, and UniSim Design, along with such heat exchanger design

programs as HTFS and HTRI. In addition, interfaces to Excel-based datasheets and

reports are supported as standard tools. Moreover, preliminary P&IDs generated

By combining users

best design practices in

the form of templates,

the resulting PFDs and

P&IDs are automatically

generated with minimum

user intervention.

Fig. 3. Bentleys concurrent engineering approach

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Utilize existing MS Excel applications: Most companies keep in-housedatasheets and sizing applications in MS Excel. Bentley minimizes retraining by

providing a two-way interface mechanism that links data fields in these applications

with the project data in AXSYS.Process.

Track design changes: This step is critical during the early phases of processdesign. Tracking design change histories helps process engineers review previous

scenarios and demonstrate the before and after case for critical process

changes. Because AXSYS.Process is built on a central process database, it tracks

the who-created, who-approved, and who-issued status on each design property

as well as project deliverables.

Jump-start P&IDs in FEED projects: This is critical to meeting tight project dead-lines. AXSYS.Process provides methods to generate preliminary P&IDs directly from

PFDs, and can provide transfers for both data and graphics to AutoPLANT P&ID,

PlantSpace P&ID, and OpenPlant PowerPID.

Bentley PlantWise for 3D Conceptual Plant Design

PlantWise is a unique suite of knowledge-centric software solutions that enables fast

creation of 3D plant conceptual design models for review and optimization. PlantWise

provides users with flexible 3D modeling and automatic pipe routing to rapidly evaluate

plant layouts in the early stages of conceptual plant design. PlantWise picks up PFD

and early P&ID data from either AXSYS.Process, or legacy data using preconfigured MS

Excel import spreadsheets specifically designed to capture basic line list and equipment

information for use in PlantWise (Fig. 5).

Benefits of Bentley PlantWise

PlantWise is an effective tool for rapidly developing 3D conceptual layouts and presenting

3D visualizations to the project team. As a result, this helps engineers decide on

PlantWise is a unique

suite of knowledge-

centric software solutions

that enables fast creation

of 3D plant conceptual

design models for review

and optimization.

Fig. 5. Bentley PlantWise for 3D conceptual design

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