ENN (Engineering Network) Magazine, Vol. 294, 25 July 2012  

Intergraph 2012 Japan Held in Yokohama

Active discussion on engineering IT for large-scale projects

Intergraph 2012 Japan was held 12-13 July at InterContinental Hotel in the Minoto Mirai area of Yokohama. Due to increased scope and size of plant construction projects, these are usually implemented via joint-ventures with a few different contractors. Such projects involve a huge amount of information, increasing the complexity during implementation. For such large-scale and complex projects, information management becomes increasingly important. Intergraph is a leading company in the engineering IT market, and this user conference featured several informative sessions with 660 delegates attending over the two days.

Increase in project scale Global projects continue to increase in scale, with the need to manage large amounts of information for plant construction projects. Joint-ventures with multiple companies often handle such projects.

Under such circumstances, information management becomes more important to advance the projects based on the planned schedule and cost. In addition, the involvement of multiple companies requires the interoperability of CAD formats. Intergraph solutions have already been implemented at plant owner operators like Shell, where CAD information is utilized throughout the plant life cycle.

Intergraph 2012 Japan reflected recent project trends in the industry. The keywords featured during the conference were interoperability and productivity. Large-scale projects need to focus more on interoperability between different CAD forms for enhanced productivity.

Patrick Holcomb, executive vice president, who accepted our interview during the conference, said, “In the past, large-scale projects meant $1 billion, but recently, this has grown to 20 or 30 times in scale. For such mega- projects, users expect to process multiple CAD formats.”

Intergraph recently announced its support of the data standard format, ISO 15926, with SmartPlant P&ID in April this year. Intergraph had a challenge to unify the CAD formats for both upstream and downstream projects, so it focused on interoperability, particularly for large-scale projects.

In addition, Intergraph has developed a unique tool called VTL (Validation, Transformation, and Loading). VTL is an open solution and is compatible with the ISO 15926 standard. It can be implemented with ISO 15926 or any other standards as required by the user.

Strong regional focus As projects grow in scale, the development of engineering IT solutions becomes increasingly important. In particular, Intergraph regards the Asia-Pacific region as an important market.

Franz Kufner, senior vice president with responsibility for operations in Asia-Pacific, stated that the needs of the region are growing, particularly in Greater China. In consideration of this, Intergraph restructured its business organisation to separate Greater China from Asia-Pacific as a fourth world industry region. The four regions are the Americas, EMIA (Europe, Middle East, India & Africa), Asia-Pacific, and Greater China.

Intergraph has established a development center in China, as well as the Marine Center in Busan, South Korea, where the shipbuilding industry is thriving. Kufner also indicated that a regional focus is important, with development to satisfy regional demands. This is aligned with global strategy.

Kufner also mentioned the acquisition of EYECAD from Asahi Kasei Engineering Corporation in Japan in 2002. There is a possibility that an English version of EYECAD will be released due to increased demand from customers. This will deliver value not only to Japanese customers, but to customers all around the world

ENN (Engineering Network) Magazine, Vol. 294, 25 July 2012  

EPCs focus on information management For implementation of large-scale projects, Japanese engineering companies have to strengthen their information management processes in order to manage the increased scale and complexity of such projects.

Chiyoda Corporation presented its implementation status of SmartPlant Materials, which the company has been using for the last 12 years since 2000. SmartPlant Materials is designed to control material flow needed in plant facilities. The solution provides thorough control of procurement information as it recognizes the procurement status in real-time.

TOYO Engineering Corporation introduced its implementation of SmartPlant Enterprise within the TOYO group, and also covered the challenges of operating in a cloud environment for SmartPlant Materials. This session was led by Chinese and Korean female engineers working at the TOYO head office. They presented in fluent Japanese, which attracted the attendees’ interest.

JGC explained that SmartPlant Enterprise boosted its productivity by 20-30%, along with enhanced data handover to users throughout the implementation. Most importantly, as JGC is a major player in large-scale projects compared to other Japanese engineering companies, their presentation was very impressive and convincing.

Information management plays an important role as projects expand in scope and complexity. This conference highlighted that EPCs are placing greater emphasis on the utilization of engineering IT solutions. It also impressed upon the attendees that IT is an integral element in the management of complex and large quantities of project information in large-scale projects.

Enhancing Support for Large-scale, Complex Projects (page 49)

Patrick Holcomb, Executive Vice President, Global Business Development, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine

We have greatly improved performance for the last two years, from 2009 through to 2011. In the past, a $1-billion project was considered as a huge project. Now, the industry faces projects 20 to 30 times bigger, and Intergraph solutions are used in such projects.

The energy industry is driving the growth of such projects. These projects are required to integrate multiple formats. We started to support the data standard, ISO 15926, making it possible to perform clash checks on almost all types of CAD data.

We released SmartPlant Construction in 2009. This solution manages construction resources and materials, as well as project scheduling to meet the requirements of the project management office, construction companies, vendors, and owner operators. It has an intuitive and configurable interface that allows for the design of an efficient work package. Most importantly, it offers real-time, integrated material reports, enabling dynamic rescheduling, which allows the user to make efficient and cost-effective changes to address issues quickly.

Design and construction of the same project can be inconsistent due to the use of different solutions. For example, users may perform scheduling with PRIMAVERA schedule, manage procurement with SmartPlant Materials, and design with SmartPlant 3D. SmartPlant Construction plays a key role in integration across multiple disciplines.

Intergraph acquired COADE Corporation in January 2010 and its solutions: CADWorx, 3D CAD software; CAESAR II, piping stress analysis software; and PV Elite, 3D pressure vessel analysis

ENN (Engineering Network) Magazine, Vol. 294, 25 July 2012  

software. The acquisition of CADWorx means that Intergraph is able to fully cover the entire spectrum of projects, from large and middle-tier ones, to small projects and facility expansions.

Our challenges include how we can continue to address the requirements for large-scale and complex, and how we can utilize mobile technology. We will train our employees as the organisation grows so that they can effectively address these issues.

For the past decade, we have kept our competitive advantage and we will continue to maintain our superiority.

Enhancing Support in Increasingly Competitive China, Establishes an Independent Region (page 50)

Franz Kufner, Senior Vice President, Asia-Pacific, Intergraph Process Power & Marine

I am in charge of operations and sales activity in the Asia-Pacific region. This region is experiencing growth and expansion, in particular the nuclear power generation industry in China and the resources and energy business in Australia.

The markets in China and Australia and highly competitive as not only local companies operate there, but major global companies are also key players.

China is strictly focused on increasing productivity, so they expect our solutions to deliver a boost in productivity. With such fierce competition in the market, we need to enable our customers to react faster to the market in a cost-effective way while maintaining high quality. With “integration” as a keyword, we focus on integration not only internally, but externally with our partners. This major change requires a review of traditional working procedures to find new efficiencies.

Both owner operators and EPCs want to increase productivity in the plant life-cycle management. As such, information management and design are critical components. For example, 3D laser scanning focuses on how measured value should be utilized for improving competitiveness. Owner operators are strongly interested in mobile access and are seriously studying its application.

With regards to business development in Asia-Pacific, I consider that we should separate each regional site from a sales and technology view. Our headquarters is in Huntsville but local business should be processed by itself to some extent. Even if our headquarters set global principles, conditions differ in each country or region so it is important to do business depending on the situation locally and to perform local transformation.

We established a capability center in China, as well as a marine center in Busan of South Korea. Additionally, we have expanded our office in Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia. We are performing sales activities in four regions: Asia-Pacific, Americas, EMIA, and the newly-created Greater China region.

China has restructured its organization three times for the past two years. This is because we recognize the potential in China and we will increase our workforce to ignite business.

ENN (Engineering Network) Magazine, Vol. 294, 25 July 2012  

Valuing Customer Needs, Never Let a Customer Down (page 51)

Rick Standish, Vice President, Information Management & Integration, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine

“We never let a customer down” is a key message from our president, Gerhard Sallinger. Based on this, we place emphasis on our users’ requirements for development of SmartPlant Foundation. Requirements that are related to operations have priority.

We already have a roadmap for product development but we prioritize the requirements that users strongly demand, followed by the requirements that have been raised by the overall user community. There are three user communities: International Advisory Council (IAC), Enterprise Engineering Advisory Board (EEAB), and our technical user forums. Requirements from these communities will be classified and then supported. We have expanded our workforce to address these development requirements accordingly.

The requirements from users are classified into four keywords: safety, quality, interoperability, and productivity. “Interoperability” includes the requirement to consolidate various CAD model functions of multiple vendors such as PDS, PDMS, and so on. We are currently developing a format to exclusively display different vendors’ data.

Our VTL product is the system to check consolidation from system A to system B during data handover. It has been studied by Fiatech in the US, and we believe that VTL can contribute to data handover. VTL itself is an open and commercial package, and can be provided anywhere when needed. It also complies with the standard rules of ISO 15926. Some companies, including Shell, are considering to introduce VTL, and the solution will continue to garner more interest within the industry in the future.