Use “e” to create an efficient virtual project team

The worksharing benefits to all involved are the same: a reduced schedule, global/local executions, common access and data exchange.

Scheduling demands, rising costs and global markets are prompting owner/operators and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms to use their assets wisely.

This includes using technology to perform collaborative engineering worldwide, often referred to as global worksharing. Worksharing involves collaborating with other project members—regardless of location—via the Internet to create a “virtual project team.”This allows companies to use global execution centers, high-value engineering centers or engineering partners to their benefit and to connect those offices with project sites anywhere on the planet.

The work can be shared vertically or horizontally (by project parts or discipline), but the benefits to all involved in the process and power industries are the same: a reduced schedule, global/local executions, common access and data exchange—all resulting in lower total installed cost.

Schedule compression

Schedule compression is a benefit of around-the-clock work projects. While their colleagues on the other side of the world sleep, engineers taking advantage of multiple-office concurrent design can continue to progress the project scope for which they are responsible.

Fluor Daniel, an EPC giant, used engineering offices half a world away while building the Batu Hijau copper and gold mine. The US$1.9 billion project site is on a small Indonesian island, but Fluor Daniel's mining business unit is in Denver, Colorado USA. With the benefits of Intergraph Process & Building Solutions' products, however, the distance of about 9,400 miles (15,100 km) didn't hinder Fluor Daniel. Despite being 19 time zones apart, no Fluor Daniel office was more than 24 hours out of sync with the entire project.

“With the time difference,”says David Olson, Fluor Daniel's computer integrated engineer manager working on the Batu Hijau project, “I could work on a design in Indonesia and have it available for my co-worker in Denver the next morning."