Identifying goals
Schwartz Hautmont (SH), a leading company in steel construction was contracted to work on an Advanced Hydrocracker Project for one of the leading global oil and gas companies. Once ready, the unit will upgrade heavier hydrocarbon by-products into cleaner, higher value finished products. SH oversaw the delivery of the modular units to the refinery.
The scope of the project included prefabrication, erection and testing of all the mechanical, piping, equipment, steel structure, instrumentation and electrical work on the modules, that were later shipped from SH‘s Tarragona facility to Rotterdam.
One of the key goals of the project was to deliver all the units on time, without any unfinished work to ensure that no extra labor would be needed on-site during the assembly. In addition, SH wanted to implement a paperless approach to document and information management for the spool and welding process with an advanced level of automation to provide real-time and error free documentation of good quality.
Overcoming challenges
Schwartz Hautmont wanted to digitalize the document management of the following disciplines during the project, including: steel structures, piping, material certificates, nondestructive testing (NDT) reports, coating and welding traceability, among others.
To do this, the company decided to interface Octave OnSite Spool Design with its in-house SH Pipenet software. OnSite Spool Design was chosen for the project because of its scalability for a larger project in a client server environment, the ability to customize the software based on Schwartz Hautmont’s needs, and the compatibility with the client’s 3D suite (another Octave software, Forte 3D).
With OnSite Spool Design, Schwartz Hautmont was able to retrieve all the piping data from the 3D models and integrate the information exchanged between the different disciplines and subcontractors into the same database. OnSite Spool Design was used to import piping data and export it in a customized format that included all the information provided in the 3D models. With this information, SH could visualize the isometrics routing and welding location on its own 3D model and follow the progress in real-time. During the project, an improved execution strategy was implemented by importing all project data from OnSite Spool Design into S.H.’s own software.
The enhanced functionality included:
Having a real-time updated 3D model embedded within a simple web browser for all construction disciplines to view and access
Erection strategy based on real data obtained from the 3D model
Automated piping quality control on:
Weld maps (in combination with a barcode implementation)
Welding procedure selection
NDT assignment
Welders KPI
Welders induction plan
Tracers follow up (additional inspection in case of rejected welds)
Similar to S.H.’s management system, isometrics were linked to test packs and test packs were linked to turnover systems, enabling having a clear view of the project status at any time. Compared to the previously used manual approach, Schwartz Hautmont was able to dramatically improve efficiency and productivity.
After only three weeks of training, the employees were ready to use OnSite Spool Design – SH_Pipenet combination that managed large amounts of data at once, including:
283,000 dia. metric inches
11,000+ isometrics with 3,000+ revisions
10,000+ material certificates
22,000+ NDT reports for piping
6,100 delivery notes
1,000 + test packs
4,300+ material commodity codes
With the help of OnSite Spool Design, Schwartz Hautmont was able to implement a paper free approach to documentation management and simplify the previously complex and time-consuming process by automating information exchange.
Moving forward
After four years, the combination of OnSite Spool Design and SH_ Pipenet continues to be used for all Schwartz Hautmont’s modular projects as OnSite Spool Design is capable of exporting data from different 3D solutions and from different clients.
Miguel Joglar, Corporate Engineering and IT Manager Schwartz Hautmont, says: “We chose the combination of OnSite Spool Design and SH_Pipenet to enable a real-time strategy for welding and construction while automating creation of most of the quality documents. With this integrated approach, we could avoid wasting resources and having disorganized pipe spools. All the fabricated elements automatically match a logical construction sequence enabling us to optimize the welding process and avoid idle time.
Sharing all the data from different subcontractors and disciplines in one digital database allows us to coordinate work better, enabling us to:
Reduce the lead time in piping production by 40%
Reduce the time needed to produce the piping by 10%
Reduce the amount of indirect staff required by 30%
Spend 60% less time in managing documents and ensuring document quality
