VECO, a leading provider of project services to the energy, resource, and process industries, used 3D modelling and laser scanning technology to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on a gas platform equipment retrofit in Alaska’s North Cook Inlet field. The project – Tyonek Production Separator – won VECO a BE Award in the category “Plant: Technology for Retrofit.”
The BE Awards of Excellence, which are selected by an independent jury of industry experts and presented at an evening ceremony during the annual BE Conference (www.be.org), honour the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure. These projects set benchmarks for their industries, and showcase the imagination and technical mastery of the organizations that created them. This year’s BE Awards of Excellence ceremony takes place May 22 in Charlotte, N.C.
Space is always in short supply on offshore gas platforms, which makes equipment additions a real challenge. The trick is to fit the new equipment into the existing plant while avoiding interferences. Fewer interferences mean less rework – and fewer dollars spent hauling people and equipment to and from the platform via helicopter.
“Our ability to perform interference checking on the 3D model and point cloud reduced the amount of rework required in this project to less than 1 percent,” Mark Christenson, design technologies manager for VECO says. “We calculated that our ability to detect a fit problem with the nozzles saved $206,000 in rework. We also found interference problems with a coalescing filter that saved $166,000. By nearly eliminating interference on piping, 3D modelling saved another $72,000. Finally, the improved communications provided by modelling saved $36,000 in trips to and from the platform.”
Retrofits are particularly difficult on older platforms since accurate as-built drawings or models generally don’t exist. Often, engineers and designers end up making numerous trips out to the platform in order to model the existing design. This gives them a starting point for the new design work. Even then, up to 40 percent of the project may still need to be reworked, which significantly drives up construction costs.