Read the Nuclear Industry Spotlight - Intergraph

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