The challenge
In 1896, John F. Corrigan founded his neighborhood plumbing shop, Corrigan Company, in St. Louis, MO. His guiding principle was to provide customers with quality work carried out by skilled craftsmen within a designated time at a fair and reasonable price.
Today, Corrigan Company is one of Missouri’s leading full-service mechanical contractors specializing in plumbing, HVAC, refrigeration, and process piping. Its steadfast commitment to exceptional performance on challenging, quick- turnaround projects of every size has helped propel the firm to high levels of experience and capability. Corrigan addresses a wide range of markets and industries, including chemical, food, manufacturing, municipal, power, health, and education.
Fabricating complex piping systems for process plants is one of Corrigan’s specialties. Whenever a new project is won, a key component of the construction process is generating fabrication spool drawings for the workshop. “We used to prepare these drawings by hand or by using AutoCAD,” said Dan Abbott, vice president of Corrigan’s Design Engineering Department. “Electronic data was not available at the time from design engineers. We had to obtain dimensioned vendor drawings for every component on the project to prepare shop spool drawings. It was an arduous and time-consuming process to say the least.”
Project objectives
Prepare drawings using the 3D method with field scanning of existing conditions
Implement a faster, more accurate process of generating shop fabrication spool drawings using OnSite Spool Design
Enable the automatic production of bills of materials (BOMs) to assist in ordering and sorting field and shop material
The solution
In 2005, Corrigan won a contract to assist with the construction of a new brewery in St. Louis for Anheuser-Busch, one of the largest beverage producers in the world.
“Anheuser-Busch made the decision to prepare drawings using the 3D method with field scanning of existing conditions,” said Abbott. “The job was bid with instructions to the contractors to use Forte Review. After Corrigan was selected as the lowest bidder, Anheuser-Busch, suggested we use OnSite Spool Design to produce the spool drawings for the workshop. It was a tool their contractors had successfully used before on other major construction projects.”
URS Washington Division, the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm on this project, supplied piping data files in the form of IDFs. Corrigan used OnSite Spool Design and these files to print out a construction drawing of each line. The construction drawing was then divided into spools using Smart Review to determine the best position for field welds and field-fit welds.
The marked-up construction drawing was returned to the Corrigan Pipe Detailer, who used OnSite Spool Design to produce the final shop pipe spools. The field engineer shop then gave spools a final review prior to submitting them to the fabrication shop.
Next, the pipefitters in the field received the construction drawing and copies of the pipe spool drawings, along with color snapshots from the 3D model, as a guide for installing the pipe spools.
OnSite Spool Design was used to fabricate more than 11,000 feet of above-ground and underground piping for carbon dioxide transfer and utility pipe at Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis facility.
“OnSite Spool Design has transformed our workflow,” said Abbott. “It is a significantly faster and more accurate process of generating shop fabrication spool drawings than using AutoCAD or manual drawings. The bills of materials OnSite Spool Design produces are very helpful in ordering and separating out field material from shop material.”
