PlantWise™ Installations Pass 100 License Milestone, 12 Fluor Offices Worldwide
Software Speeds Costing and Optimizes Layouts While Reducing Man Hours
October 2001 – Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR), one of the world’s largest engineering, procurement and construction companies, has surpassed the 100 license milestone in its worldwide use of Design Power’s PlantWiseTM software. The growing use of PlantWise, licensed for concurrent use at 12 different Fluor offices, underscores its value in speeding the creation of optimized plant layouts and price quotes for complex chemical and hydrocarbon process plants.
Fluor is known worldwide as an industry leader in the use of computer systems to improve the efficiency and quality of its work processes. The company worked with Design Power to create a custom version of PlantWise, which it has used for six years, in order to speed early development of extremely accurate and optimized piping and equipment layouts, providing significant up-front reductions in project cost and schedules.
The Fluor PlantWise application, called OptimEyessm, enables the engineering team to quickly review multiple equipment and piping placement scenarios, to identify the most cost-effective plant layouts, and to check for operability and maintainability. OptimEyes is used to produce highly accurate material take-offs (MTOs) and to automatically create computer-based three-dimensional (3D) models, which are used by the project team and the owner to better understand and communicate initial design concepts. The software automatically makes logical and accurate configuration decisions based on years of experience, freeing engineers and designers from tedious design tasks.
The 12 locations where Fluor uses OptimEyes are South Africa; Vancouver and Calgary, Canada; Mexico City, Mexico; Perth and Melbourne, Australia; Camberley, England; Haarlem, The Netherlands; Hamilton, Ohio; Sugar Land, Texas; Greenville, South Carolina and at the headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
The application is driven by the Design++TM software engine, which captures configuration and engineering knowledge into a knowledge base. This enables PlantWise applications to make intelligent design decisions based on engineering rules and best practices and allows companies such as Fluor to customize libraries and automation rules to match their own “best practices.” The software links to commonly used computer-aided design (CAD) software to automatically generate 2D drawings and 3D models.