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SECTION TITLE GOES HERE Case study: PBMR and SNC-Lavalin Nuclear SmartPlant Enterprise: The Right Solution for Nuclear Power Plants Data-driven, integrated and rule-based environment is vital for next generation complex nuclear power plant projects n By Wayne Smith The nuclear power industry is one of the most regulated industries in the world. Traceability of all data and documents that are generated during the plant life cycle is fundamental in the nuclear industry. Data pass through various phases of the product and plant life cycle, beginning from design concept, basic engineering/FEED to detail design, procurement, construction, licensing support, precommissioning and commissioning, operations, refurbishment and decommissioning. For this reason, it is imperative that information integrity is ensured throughout a plant’s life cycle reflecting the design basis. Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) was seeking a technology enabler to assist with the engineering and management of plant data. The technology enabler would allow PBMR to hand over an integrated data model of the entire plant to the owner operator ESKOM, one of the world’s largest utilities. Established in 1999, the PBMR organization intends to develop and market small-scale, hightemperature reactors both regionally and internationally. The 700-member PBMR team is based in Centurion, near Pretoria in South Africa. SNC-Lavalin Nuclear (SLN) has nearly 50 years of experience in the design and construction of nuclear power plants around the world that includes project management and plant life cycle support experience. While assisting in other areas, SLN is primarily involved with the engineering, procurement, construction and management as an EPCM subcontractor for the PBMR demonstration power plant at Koeberg, near Cape Town in South Africa. The PBMR plant design has undergone development since 1993. The plant is scheduled to begin construction in 2010, with the first fuel to be loaded four years later in 2014. Comprehensive solution Together with SNC-Lavalin Nuclear, PBMR’s plant and product realization and engineering groups have implemented Intergraph’s SmartPlant Enterprise suite as the engineering solution for the PBMR demonstration power plant to be constructed at Koeberg. PBMR is focused on using SmartPlant Foundation’s infrastructure and centralized repository for maintaining all plant data and documents. “PBMR is a complex and first-of-a-kind project,” said Aaron Bukhari, a consultant to PBMR and the chief information officer at SLN. “Our primary reasons for looking at the Intergraph products were traceability within a data-driven and integrated environment that will enable PBMR to deliver a plant with all intelligent data and documents.” Bukhari confirmed that SNC-Lavalin Nuclear has used Intergraph technologies from the early days of PDS to the current SmartPlant Enterprise suite. He noted that the savings in man-hours and 12 Insight Insight: Special Focus
engineering effort using SmartPlant Enterprise will be dramatic over the course of a plant’s life cycle. “When the owner operator chooses SmartPlant Enterprise, the plant data handover can be an integrated process that should reduce the overall plant operating cost,” he said. “Using Intergraph tools enables concurrent engineering from multiple locations that translates into significant efficiency and dramatic savings.” With basic engineering (PFDs and P&IDs, including mechanical datasheets) enabled by SmartPlant P&ID and AspenTech Zyqad PFD software, these tools can integrate and share information through SmartPlant Foundation. The ongoing task involves the creation of reference and model data to be used when and where required. For example, five complete line specifications were created within five days using the SmartPlant Reference Data tool. Typically, this would require weeks of painstaking work. A significant time and cost savings was realized by capitalizing the standard ASME piping database add-on. SmartPlant Electrical and SmartPlant Instrumentation also contribute toward an integrated environment. SmartPlant 3D plays a pivotal role by maintaining the repository of the master model for all phases of the plant life cycle. SmartPlant Enterprise’s integrated, data-driven environment is helping PBMR to manage data such as the life cycle of tags, datasheets and workflows, and to integrate data from third party tools such as AspenTech and Tekla. Meanwhile, the constructability team is busy combining data from various sources such as scheduling and SmartPlant 3D tools into SmartPlant Review. Award-winning efforts At the Intergraph 2007 International Users Conference, PBMR received one of Intergraph’s inaugural Icon Awards for using SmartPlant Enterprise solutions to integrate the plant life cycle environment for its next generation reactor design. The award is Intergraph’s highest customer distinction for product innovation, partnership and proven results. Bukhari remarked that the vision behind SmartPlant Enterprise was a major factor in PBMR’s decision to choose Intergraph for its advanced technology nuclear power plant design. One of the immediate benefits to PBMR involves data and document organization. SmartPlant Foundation enables the creation of data fields which can be assembled into documents and presented in reports. SmartPlant Enterprise enables a complete data set to be provided, while reflecting any changes. “Traceability is one of the key capabilities we were looking for in the product, to ensure that everything is captured and nothing will be lost. SmartPlant Enterprise’s traceability, control and workflow management are among our greatest assets,” said Bukhari. Implementation After PBMR chose the Intergraph solution, the software was implemented through a combined effort by the PBMR product realization software team, the PBMR engineering software team and SLN’s plant systems team, with support provided by Intergraph team members and partners in South Africa, Europe and the U.S. Reduced cost is another key benefit of SmartPlant Enterprise for this unique project. “There is no other product that can reasonably cover all the cost areas of construction, operability and maintainability, and provide a cost benefit,” Bukhari said. “The Intergraph solution can deliver this cost benefit over the long-term.” Employing Intergraph’s SmartPlant Enterprise suite of tools will significantly reduce the time it takes for PBMR to bring reactors to market and to deliver plants to owners and operators complete with all data and maintenance information. PMBR considers its relationship with Intergraph a true success story, as it implements its next generation nuclear plant technology. “A broken process results in broken technology,” said Anton Kotzé, the product realization software systems manager at PBMR. “We work very hard to recreate our business processes, workflows and procedures, and to encourage EPC managers to embrace an integrated mindset for working with the fourth generation of engineering. SmartPlant Enterprise is very pivotal to solidify this integrated mindset with the associated work methods.” “We know that to develop an architecture and environment for distributed engineering, we want everyone to draw from the same centralized databases,” Bukhari said. “From this viewpoint, we envision that use of the SmartPlant Foundation repository will increase even more.” From beginning to end PBMR’s vision is for a technology that covers the entire life cycle of a nuclear plant, beginning with conceptual engineering and continuing through to operation and eventual decommissioning. Intergraph’s market-leading technology supports plant life cycle effort. According to Kotzé, PBMR will continue to expand its use of SmartPlant Enterprise as more products are designed and developed. “PBMR believes that Intergraph’s product range supports its vision and strategy 100 percent,” Kotzé said. “This is confirmed by the products we see coming from Intergraph and through much discussion of this topic.” “A successful roll-out of any plant life cycle information management system, from design to decommissioning, requires business processcentric operations – policies, procedures, work instructions, workflows, reports, specifications, catalogs, rules and processes – along with a stable technology base,” said Bukhari. “These are exciting times when vendors such as Intergraph can deliver a vision and align their products with business requirements for the plant life cycle.” Both Bukhari and Kotzé see SmartPlant Enterprise leading the way into a new dimension of what they call the “ERP of engineering.” Wayne Smith is a contributing editor for Insight based in Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. www.pbmr.co.za www.snclavalin.com www.slnuclear.com Nuclear Industry Insight 13
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