Tekla Structures – a holistic solution for structural engineering
Linde Engineering India (LEI) is the largest Linde Engineering entity outside of Germany, with offices in Vadodara, Gujarat, India, and having a strong workforce of more than 1,000 highly qualified and motivated employees.
Backed by Linde Engineering’s cutting-edge technology portfolio with over 1,000 process engineering patents, and the operational excellence of Linde Gas, they deliver superior process technologies and state-of-the-art EPC services to their customers in India and South East Asia. Besides EPC services their portfolio includes customised front-end engineering design (FEED) packages as well.
With over 25 years of experience, Linde Engineering India (LEI) has a strong and proven reputation amongst its customers for technology-based engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) excellence.
Engineering the biggest natural gas processing facility of the world
The project is the Amur gas processing plant in the Svobodnensky district of the Amur region in Russia. Spanning approximately 800ha, the plant will have six production lines. Upon completion, it is believed to be the biggest natural gas processing facility in the world.
The plant is designed to have a processing capacity of 42 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. Sophisticated and cutting edge German technology from Linde Engineering is being used for constructing the gas processing plant.
“Using Tekla Structures helped us with better interface with external partner companies involved in detailed engineering. In addition to the higher functionality and enhanced efficiency for modeling and drawing tasks, all kinds of customizations were possible. Further, there was ease of connection modelling and interoperability with connection design software, better MTD control and change management and easier resource availability. Tekla’s troubleshooting customization and open source utility features are ideal. Finally, Tekla Support Team’s swift service and prompt solutions for every issue played a vital role to the project success.”
- Mr. Nikhil Shah, Senior Principal Design Supervisor, Civil & Steel Structures, Linde Engineering India
Unique challenges faced on the path to smooth completion of the project
- Mega size: With over 62,000MT of structural steel and 254,000 cubic metres of concrete, this plant is slated to be the biggest Ethylene cracker plant in the world
- Critical need for interoperability: The biggest challenge faced by the 85 member executing team while working on this massive project was that the contractor mandated use of E3D solution and required other disciplines involved in the project to work on or integrate with E3D
- Transfer of models, real time: Requirement of daily transfer of structural models to a different software and different set of stakeholders was a prerequisite in order to maintain the real, up-to-date data in review files
- Proper mapping and accurate hierarchy: Mapping in 100% correct hierarchy, co-ordinates and profiles was critical. In the early phase the executing team had faced challenges for example, the orientation of C members got reversed while transferring data
- Data and change management: It was certainly a rigorous task for the project team to manage the massive amounts of date of this mega project along with maintaining the numerous changes
Tekla’s features that enabled the project team to deliver comfortably
- Tekla was the platform of choice for civil & structural works as it provided higher functionality and enhanced efficiency for modelling & drawing tasks
- It’s flexibility to offer customization also played a very crucial role in the project delivery
- It made connection design very easy and offered great levels of interoperability with connection design software
- Using the user interface, the project team were able to transfer the model daily and share it with the external partner companies (HVAC/E&I/Piping) involved in subsequent detailed engineering
- BIM Publisher extension made the process of data exchange amongst solutions extremely easy and it worked beyond the execution team’s expectations
- Automating the mapping/categorization/hierarchy made the task even easier and the user interface requirement further decreased
- A daunting task of transferring 1.5GB data daily to and from Tekla was carried out without any hazards
- Last but not the least, Trimble Tekla’s constant support for troubleshooting and customization ensured the project team was in safe, expert hands, whenever the need would arise