Bentley Systems – expanding into Australia’s gas industry

Visionary software for the gas industry

Over the past 25 years Bentley Systems has evolved its flagship application MicroStation, which forms the 3D modelling backbone to design, model, visualise, document, map, and sustain engineering assets.

According to Bentley Systems Solutions Executive John Sanins, the latest MicroStation V8i release and its supporting family of engineering design and analysis applications help teams improve the way they design major capital projects – from mapping the area and preparation of new drill site locations through to design, construction, operations and maintenance of today’s complex gas processing facilities.

Mr Sanins says that computer-aided engineering tools provide accurate and up-to-date information for all plant disciplines through the lifecycle, as well as tools for a clash-free design. When combined, these provide significant benefits for plant safety and plant utilisation by improving the overall design of new gas processing facilities.

“The critical thing for today’s plants is to create and allow the safe operations and maintenance for plant operators, the local community and the environment.

“Being able to create the computer model of the facility before you create pipe, pour concrete or erect steel has been a major step forward on the integrity and quality of the engineering design for these major assets,”? he says.

Reducing paper work

Mr Sanins says that using computer systems has revolutionised the way EPC and design contractors communicate with plant owners and operators.

“In the past, paper documentation supplied during plant handover had to be carefully reviewed by the plant owner in order to understand the new facility and then use the supplied engineering data in operations. When it came to making operational decisions to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the plant, they would have to find crucial information amongst the many supplied documents.”

In contrast Bentley Systems’ engineering data repository ProjectWise stores and manages project deliverables created during the engineering, procurement and construction phase of the facility. This information forms the basis for handover into operational systems and the creation of a full data warehouse based on Bentley’s ProjectWise Lifecycle Server.The resulting data warehouse can be used by the plant owner to support plant maintenance, inspection checking, and inventory control for spare parts needed to sustain plant availability during operations.

Bentley Systems in Australia

Bentley Systems have been used my international EPC firms throughout the world. Mr Sanins said that BHP Billiton and Chevron are two major companies to have taken up Bentely Systems technologies on a number of their projects.

Mr Sanins was optimistic that the increase in investment in the commercialisation of Australia’s natural gas resources would enable Bentley Systems to fully support planned future investments in the Australian market.

Speaking of Australia’s major LNG projects Mr Sanins said “Major EPC [contractors] involved in these projects will already be using aspects of our applications, however we want to extend the use of those applications, as well as introduce our new applications into the Australian market.”?

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