Plant designers demand fast and simple software

3D process plant design and layout systems are essential tools for CEL International, a UK-based project management and design engineering firm primarily serving the food, pharma, biotech and chemicals industries.

With over 400 employees and a fee turnover of £28 million a year, CEL wins projects by providing fast, reliable plant design, and delivering results in the way the clients need them - often using a specified plant design system. In particular, one regular client uses Bentley Autoplant and specifies that the design team works in Autoplant: other projects have specified Intergraph 3D systems.

Currently, though, CEL’s own system of choice is the CAD-Schroer MPDS4 - not only among designers and users, but also amongst project managers. In a recent open vote, 10 out of 11 project managers said they preferred to tackle all of their plant design projects with MPDS4. CEL currently has 14 live MPDS jobs, and has used the product in around 50 contracts to date.

Most of the other major 3D plant design productswe’re familiar with are so complicated to use that you have to have an external trainer in

CEL deploys MPDS4 Advanced with supporting modules in all the plant design disciplines, including steel design, process piping design with ISOGEN, electrical design, ducting design, hangers & supports, P&ID, factory layout, mechanical handling and engineering review.
Large projects
On larger plant design projects, there are, typically, 10-12 designers using the software simultaneously out of a project design team of 50-60 people.

CEL’s in-house CAD team of 82 people is regularly augmented with contract designers who provide the flexibility to deal with peaks in demand and critical project phases. On large projects, up to two-thirds of the CEL design team may be made up of contractors, who are expected to get up to speed with the CAD system in about a week after only a day’s in-house training.

“MPDS is easy to learn and one of the easiest packages to teach somebody,” explained Dave Latchem, CAD administrator at CEL. “Most of the other major 3D plant design products we’re familiar with are so complicated to use that you have to have an external trainer in.”

CEL has a huge catalogue, with over 300 of its own drawing routines. The company also boasts one of the largest custom catalogues in the industry, with well over 50,000 individual components from over 30,000 unique geometry records.

“We’ve automated our design processes extensively, with catalogue-driven parametric drawing routines for things like creating the three-way valves and tri-clamp fittings common in pharmaceutical plants,” said Latchem.

For example, on a new biofuel plant project involving four different contractors, CEL modelled the building, the slab and the area around it from 2D drawings. It then used the ’Factory Layout’ module in MPDS4 to produce 3D building models based on 2D layouts.

CEL used this model to coordinate all the other disciplines, such as the steelwork and the process designs from two other contractors. It ran clash detection, and routed all the services, including the electrical cabling and all the interconnected pipework, to tie in the process components - slotted into modular frames - inside and outside the building.

“The typical biotech plant we work on might consist of between 2,000 and 5,000 miles of pipe; 28 miles of cable; 500 tonnes of steel; over 1,000 m3 of concrete, 50 drives, 1,500 valves and inlines, and over 100,000 site hours worked by contractors,” said Nigel Barnes, MD of CEL, and an experienced engineering project manager and former vice-president of engineering at GlaxoSmithKline.

CEL recently designed and project managed the construction of a state-of-the-art vaccines production facility for a major pharmaceutical client. The 15,000 square-metre building consisted of two floors with laboratories, production and processing areas and harvest lines, and four building services floors. The design included miles of cable trays and pipework, with over 6,000 individual pipes.

The design team consisted of about 60 people, with 12 of them working concurrently on MPDS4

The design team consisted of about 60 people, with 12 of them working concurrently on MPDS4. Mechanical designers used it for the entire plant, modelling everything from HVAC and piping to cable trays and even the pre-assembled skids that were delivered to the site.
During this project, CEL discovered a time-saving way to communicate with the piping specialists on site.

“We had MPDS on a computer on-site, and taught the piping contractors how to bring up the bit of the model that they were interested in, spin it around and print out 3D views,” explained Jamie Gower, senior mechanical designer. “There were colour views of the model stuck to each tank, and, of course, we had provided the isometrics. They could walk into the building, look at the model, and work to that. We saved [very many] hours by not having to produce any piping drawings.”

Many projects CEL works on rely on highly accurate isometrics, as all the pipes have to be manufactured off-site, local welding being prohibited. The automatic production of pipe isometrics from the models is a key benefits of MPDS, as many other systems cannot even deliver the fully dimensioned pipe isometrics.

“It takes about four hours per iso, if you have to draw it in 2D. The number that MPDS can push out per day is only limited by the speed of the printer,” said Gower.

The senior designer cites a project for a big stainless steel line; “They were very nervous about it, and insisted on not having field fit welds, as they were not allowed to weld on site. It was quite expensive for them to send stuff away, get it tweaked and brought back. [Instead] they built the line to iso and it went straight in on a Saturday; 40 metres of stainless steel pipework connecting an existing vessel and two different pumps.”