IV-Consult: Tekla Structures software enables us to work much more cost-effectively
In the stormy waters of the North Sea, oil and gas companies need well-engineered platforms to work and live on safely. Companies in the oil and gas industry rely on engineering design companies to build and develop such offshore platforms.
One of the companies that oil and gas companies often turn to is the multi-disciplinary Dutch engineering company Iv-Groep, which is headquarted in Papendrecht, The Netherlands. Iv-Groep’s subsidiary, Iv-Oil and Gas, designs the offshore oil platforms which, when approved, are then handed over to another subsidiary, Iv-Consult Sdn Bhd. The Kuala Lumpurbased Iv-Consult handles the detailing and produce the workshop drawings for the topsides of the oil platforms as well as their jackets, which are the tubular foundations piled into the seabed to anchor the platform.
Cost-effective solution thanks to automation
According to Robert Van Der Waal, the director of Iv-Consult Sdn. Bhd., Tekla plays an important role in the company.
“Tekla Structures software enables us to work much more cost-effectively,” he says.
“Over the years, we have automated almost all beam-tobeam connection macros as well as polygon welds within Tekla Structures,” Van Der Waal continues. This automation speeds up the designing of basic structures and thus allows the designers to focus on more challenging work.
The 3-D models produced using Tekla software are also used by the fabricators in various ways depending on how the fabrication facility is automated.
“Within Tekla Structures, we have extended the functionality of the user-defined properties so that we can generate a wide range of additional information about the parts,” says Van Der Waal.
”For example, in the last two years, Iv-Consult has offered its clients the option of modelling all the welds of the structure into the detailing model. The properties of these welds include weld type, size, volume, number and length. As a result, an extended weldlist of a particular area, or floor or even the whole stucture can be provided. This is highly appreciated by our clients’ fabrication planning officers as it is a big time saver," Van Der Waal tells.
A reliable partner in workshop detailing
Iv-Consult has been using Tekla for more than a decade, and over the years the company has made extensive use of the software. Iv-Consult has been handling the bulk of the workshop detailing for the Iv-Groep since 1999 and it has been responsible for hundreds of major structures around the world.
“We have found Tekla Structures to be a strong tool to help us produce a quality product. At the same time, it has helped us to meet our clients planning targets that are often very tight,” says Van Der Waal.
“I have a detailing background and started with the company as a detailer myself in 1992. Since that time, the productivity of an average draftsmen has improved enormously with the help of the software programmes. In the beginning, on average you spent 25 hours on one handmade A0 size drawing. Later with the 2D software, this decreased to an average of 15 hours for one A0. Today, with Tekla, we take about seven hours to produce one drawing, which includes modelling time," Robert Van Der Waal tells and summarizes:
“Therefore, it is reasonable to say that moving from hand drawing to 2D, we saved about 40 percent of the time spent on an average project. With Tekla, we have saved another 50 percent as we moved from 2D to 3D.”
Not just oil-rigs
Apart from offshore structures, the company has used Tekla to design the complex steel structure of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre’s skylight, a 4,200-ton cable bridge in Germany, a 1,900-ton hanging cable bridge in Belgium, a 650-ton pipelay stinger used for offshore pipe laying and many other types of steel structures. In the Netherlands, Iv-Consult relied on Tekla to design lockgates that are widely used to channel water in the many waterways of the country. In addition, they are currently designing new lockgates for the Panama Canal. Each lockgate there weighs about 4,000 tons.