Engineering Practice

Engineering £ Construction (ESC): Modeling Integration Enables Optimized Execution

As ESC companies strive to develop Building Information Modeling (BIM) 6D models
for the owners and operators of CPI facilities, strong efficiency gains benefit all parties
Stephen Wyss Bechtel Corp.
Truly transformational change is upon the engineering and construction (ESC)
industry, and some consider the trends that are occurring today to be enabling the
most significant evolution in history. Cumbersome document based project execution
is transitioning to robust, data centric execution, as innovators seize Opportunities in
emerging technologies and ongoing expansion in cloud based environments. E&C
contractors that embrace, define and drive change will flourish, while those that
dawdle will find themselves in the undesirable position of reacting to change. Several
contemporary studies [1] document how E&C industry productivity has lagged over
recent decades relative to other industries, and identify the catalysts that are driving
this change. Collaboration is a dominant theme in the path to in- creased productivity.
Opportunities tor productivity enhancing collaboration are presenting themselves in
many spheres — regulatory, organizational and contractual. Of these, one of the
contractual paths stands out — the path to BlM 6D (For more on BlM 6D models, see
the sidebar on p. 59).
Once E4Cs evolve their processes as part of this data centric paradigm shift, they will
be able to deliver a BlM 6D model to the owner upon construction completion,
populated with relevant building component information, such as product data and
details, maintenance and operation manuals, cut sheet specifications, photos,
warranty data, web links to product online sources, manufacturer information and
contacts, and more. Data will be accessible via tools (devices and platforms) and
From cloud based data sources, to facilitate operation and maintenance of the facility.
This article distinguishes the regulatory, organizational and contractual aspects of
project management and the trends that are driving the path to 6D, and offers
recommendations for how ESCs can use this path to implement paradigm shifting
work process changes that can significantly enhance productivity.
• Regulatory collaboration entails proactive public and private partnerships (P3),
with parties working together to create and facilitate conducive environments

• Organizational collaboration involves E4C entities seizing internal productivity-

enhancing opportunities relating to innovative software tools and cloud-based
environments, and using these

Advanced capabilities to redefine the traditional relationships and responsibilities

that exist between engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning
functions
• Contractual collaboration entails parties altering execution and relationships to
facilitate information exchange and share risk so as to minimize information-
sharing barrlers and to be more nimble in implementing executional variation
The drive toward a 6D model
Approximately two decades ago, owner and operators throughout the chemical
process industries (CPI) began requiring a 3D model as a deliverable from E8Cs
whenever a capital project was handed over for operation. In the near future, F4C
contractors can expect to find owners and operators requiring delivery
Of a 6D model as the key deliverable with the facility at handover. Why is that?
While a 3D model has historically enabled owner/operator personnel to maintain and
update a centralized engineering database of the facility, the delivered facility still
came with volumes of documents and manuals produced from a document centric
execution process, and all of those support materials needed to be managed through a
centralized control and storage organization. Owner operator maintenance and
operations personnel needed to access key plant information from within this
document storage and organization system, whether via hardcopy documents and
manuals, or via an electronic data management system (EDMS) — a cumbersome
process in either case.
By contrast, a 6D model produced using a data-centric execution process centralizes
and streamlines information access for all stakeholders, because it is object centered,
not document centered. Whereas in a document-centric environment, an operator or
technician might need to chain through multiple documents to find the information
sought, whether it was a maintenance log of a pump or a list of parts for an
instrument, a 6D model with fully developed at- tributes at the object level — the
operator's pump or the technician's instrument — enables that individual to visualize
the object (a pump or instrument, in the example above, or any other object) via a
model viewer, and directly access linked information from the object through
associated attributes.
Model viewers during the design phase of a facility, 3D models are constructed using
Sophisticated design-authoring soft- ware tools. These allow the model to evolve as
E48Cs design the facility. Parties not involved in the design process, but who have an
interest in monitoring the design evolution (such as the procurement staff,
construction staff and others), are able to monitor this evolution vía the use of model
viewers (Figure 1).1
Model viewers display the 3D model much the same as the design authoring software,
but do so from a static file that is created on a regular basis (generally daily, with the