Intergraph Pushes Plant 4D

construction.com June 27, 2001

By Harry Goldstein

SmartPlant Review 4.2 models plants and everything that goes inside them.

Intergraph's SmartPlant Review is the company's successor product to Design Review, a product line that has earned Huntsville, Ala.-based Intergraph 60% of the plant design software market worldwide. Like Bentley's Schedule Simulator, it's a modular product that can link various databases related to plant construction. The software enables you to do dynamic collision detection and integrates with Primavera to create schedule simulations. It allows the user to perform schedule editing on a read/write basis in the construction module. It can also generate drawings for work packages and lets users attach external data such as drawings or equipment data sheets to objects depicted in the model.

Robert Christian, industry consultant, Intergraph Process & Building Solutions, says that more customers are asking for a software program that combines the visualization power of a 4D program with the querying capability of a data-mining tool. While Smart Plant Review integrates with Primavera and Microsoft Project, that's not enough for customers who want an easy-to-use product that integrates all of the databases they use, including materials management databases, procurement databases, field status databases, and lay-down databases. "They want integration of all that data, not just the plant design model, with some kind of schedule," says Christian. "We're talking about many different databases coming together and letting you create queries on all of those at the same time," explains Christian.

Customers are already pursuing that kind of comprehensive data mining and visualization solution, according to Tom Greer, media relations manager, Intergraph Process & Building Solutions. Greer notes that Intergraph is involved in a pilot project with a Top 5 construction firm that is using SmartPlant Review as a 3D front-end to query five different databases that have been merged into a datawarehouse solution. This allows the user to query, for instance, all structural steel over 10 ft in span or all the pipes of a particular size that are supposed to be installed by this time next month, and returns results in 3D highlighting those pieces. "We're yoking the warehouse and the 3D interface together," Greer says.

SmartPlant Review costs $5,000 per license per user. There are various pricing models to accommodate the addition of other Intergraph modules, which include modules for construction, photo-realism, simulation and visual effects, on-site drawing generation, smart sketch drafting, an Application Program Interface (API) module, and a collaboration module. The program can import and export data in a variety of formats, including AutoCAD .dwg, Microstation .dgn and, of course, Intergraph .pds.

Christian says that users of the SmartPlant Review's 4D capability are unusually tight-lipped about the product and refuse to talk about their experiences even at user conferences, apparently for fear that their competitors will catch on and start using the same software. James W. Winters, manager, AP600 Engineering, Westinghouse Electric Co., Pittsburgh, Pa., and Jill Clelland, Advanced Plant Information management lead, Westinghouse, were willing to speak about their experiences with SmartPlant Review in an e-mail interview:

Construction.com: What attracted you to the concept of 4D?

Winters and Clelland: Building a nuclear plant is an expensive and complicated proposition; by building a "virtual plant" first, we hope to drastically reduce problems on the job site.

Construction.com: Why did you choose to use SmartPlant Review?

Winters and Clelland: We use the Intergraph Process and Building Solutions family of software; it's a natural selection since it has feeds built in from their other products.

Construction.com: Describe the first project you used SmartPlant Review to manage and what the initial implementation entailed.

Winters and Clelland: The AP600, an advanced nuclear plant design. Our concentration was on the "nuclear island," which is the main construction set that is on the critical path for the entire plant installation. We have over 2,000 elements in the model, down to 1" pipe, and use Primavera Project Planner to manipulate the 5,600 activities involved

Construction.com: Has the program helped you build a project faster with fewer glitches, saved you time and money? What about communications within the project team?

Winters and Clelland: Building one of our AP nuclear plants is still in the future for us. However, we've found SPR to be a great tool for helping potential investors, regulators, and others to see how the plant is actually going to be built. Construction experts have come to us, expecting that our schedule is too optimistic, but after watching the construction, come out feeling that we're on the conservative side. Their reviews also give us a further "sanity check" on the construction techniques and the scheduling logic. We've also caught some issues, both in the design, and the logistics, that were not clear from standard drawings, or even the 3D model, and the schedule. One of these issues allowed us to actually remove one whole month from the construction schedule, which is just a fantastic savings (over $2 million) that we can pass on to our customer. It definitely facilitates communication on many levels.

Construction.com: What are the limitations and what improvements would you like to see, particularly as regards the 4D functionality?

Winters and Clelland: We're still converting from Design Review (the predecessor to SmartPlant Review), and are still working on ensuring that the functionality doesn't degrade. One simple function that seems to be lacking in SPR that was there in DRv is the ability to change the time increments while in the process of doing a schedule review. However, we've found that Intergraph is usually quite responsive to our problems, and we're still working with them on this and other issues.

Images courtesy of Intergraph Corp.

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