Process Tech, Inc.

Engineering service provider saves Client, a major energy company, significant time and money by helping keep project construction “on schedule”

With several years’ experience in providing engineering services for process- related projects such as Gas plants, Refinery units, and Chemical and Petrochemical plants, Process Tech, Inc. knows the significance of providing timely customer service and responding quickly to construction-driven schedules.

It was imperative to implement a software solution that would not only provide quick answers to field queries in just minutes or hours, but also to provide the Client with an optimal solution under these demanding situations. Process Tech used Foundation3D to respond to just such an event while performing engineering services to design and install a natural gas processing unit.

Problem Description

Its Client, a major energy company, hired Process Tech, Inc. to furnish engineering services required to design and install a natural gas processing unit in an existing gas plant. Structural design of foundations to support the necessary equipment and pipelines in the natural gas processing unit was an important component of the overall engineering design.

The Client provided Process Tech with “partially” correct soil data to complete the foundation design. Based on its engineering expertise and past experience, Process Tech realized that these designs might have to change, depending on the new soil test data that was requested to complete the final design. But what Process Tech did not know was when this soil test data would be made available to them.

Process Tech received the soil test data from the Client just one day before the scheduled concrete pour of the foundations. A quick check of the foundation designs completed earlier against the new soil test data revealed that only one out of four foundations were properly designed.

Process Tech was now faced with a daunting challenge to not only complete almost all of the foundation designs using the new soil test data, but to provide the designs and drawings to the Client in a matter of hours prior to the scheduled concrete pour. Process Tech knew that delaying construction would cause the Client significant amount of time and money. It wanted to proactively respond to this crisis by providing the new foundation designs and drawings as quickly as possible to the construction crew.

Implementation

Process Tech previously used to complete the equipment support and pipe support foundation design on its process focused projects by using hand calculations and in-house developed spreadsheets. However, Process Tech knew that in order to meet this challenging task of providing last-minute designs to avoid construction delays, only a plant design-focused software solution could help meet its rapid design, sketching and drawing needs.

Once the new soil test data was available, Process Tech opened the foundation design files that were created with the “partially” correct soil data in Foundation3D and entered the revised soil test data. With just a few mouse clicks, Process Tech was able to complete all the foundation designs including many “what-if” scenarios to come up with an optimal design solution for each foundation design. Because Foundation3D follows an engineer’s work process in completing a plant-focused foundation design, Process Tech found it very easy to use, requiring virtually zero learning time.

Roy Young, Director of Engineering at Process Tech, Inc. says that

“One of the biggest advantages that Foundation3D offers, as compared to the way foundation designs were being completed prior to its usage, is that it allows rapid design of concrete foundations using a common basis with an excellent documenting and reporting capability.”

By using Foundation3D, Process Tech completed all the foundation designs in less than two hours after the new soil test data was received and provided the Client and the construction crew with new designs, sketches, drawings, and material quantities via email in two hours. As a result, the concrete pour of foundations commenced “on schedule” the next morning.

Results

Completing this project of the design and installation of a natural gas processing unit in an existing gas plant was a "win-win" situation for both Process Tech and its Client.

Using Foundation3D, Process Tech was able to positively react to the last-minute foundation design changes requested by the Client as a result of the new soil test data. Completing these designs on time or ahead of time, thus helping keep concrete pour construction “on schedule,” provided Process Tech a great sense of achievement and self-satisfaction.

Knowing how costly construction delays can prove to be, Process Tech provided its Client with superior customer service along with its legacy engineering expertise and experience by closely adhering to the construction schedule and saving thousands of dollars that its Client may have incurred had they not helped keep construction “on schedule”.

With an integrated software solution like Foundation3D, Process Tech was able to save its Client over $10,000 in engineering costs on just this one project. Knowing that they can use Foundation3D on many projects from the same client, Process Tech will add significant overall savings to the client's engineering costs. Says Ray Young,

“We will continue to use Foundation3D on our fast-paced plant design projects because we can use it not only for original project estimate and project proposal phase to estimate initial project costs and complete preliminary designs, but also for detail design and construction phase of the project when we can quickly respond to last minute design changes on construction-driven projects, such as the design and installation of the natural gas processing unit project.

" Using the same solution for multiple phases of our projects increases our productivity significantly."