Efficient 3D modeling is essential in the Oil & Gas industry, where an extremely accurate plant or rig design can save the company money in the long term and during the construction and procurement phase of the project, according to a leading global provider of engineering and geospatial software Intergraph.
According to Intergraph, the cost of projects in the capex phase is about 10-15% into engineering design, 35%-40% in procurement, and 35% to 40% in the construction phase.
“The benefit of doing efficient modeling at the design phase is that if you do that right from the beginning it helps the procurement and construction phases. It has a very strong impact downstream, if you can save 5% of the total installation costs of a plant, of which, for example, the entire capex is around $10bn, you don’t think twice you just go and do it,” said Philippe Marceau, EVP, EMEIA at Intergraph.
Not only does efficient modeling help in the construction and procurement phases, but can help with maintenance, uptime and preventing extensive unplanned shutdowns.
“If you take a plant that is up 100% of the time there will be planned shutdowns and unplanned shutdowns and the planned shutdown is about 8% of the time of the plant, but equally there is another 8% of unplanned shutdown and that 8% can be lowered to the absolute minimum if you have the right information available at the right time, so that you can plan better,” said Marceau.
The right information includes being able to find out exactly which part in the plant is faulty and being able to check immediately whether the part is available.
“BSF, one of our German customers says that for them one day of planned shutdown is about a $27m loss, $27m a day is massive, so 10 days it is $270m and when it is unplanned, that is when you need to find the information as quickly as possible, it is a true benefit and all that planning capability and information is all coming from the modeling software,” said Marceau.
