Performance Contractors Inc. offers the general services of an industrial contractor across the Gulf Coast region. Offering more than 7,700 projects completed and more than 41 years of experience in the field, they can safely provide construction solutions across the entire industry, including thermal insulation for some of the most essential petrochemical plants worldwide.
Business challenge: Increase the rate of construction, the cost, and the safety of installing the 900,000 feet of pipe in the mega refinery of petrochemicals.
Solutions:
- Trimble Connect
- Trimble XR10 HoloLens 2
- Trimble Connect AR
- Trimble Field Link
- Trimble RTS873 Total Station
- Trimble X7 3D Scanner
- Spot(r), Trimble’s Robotic Autonomous Scanning Solution
Benefits:
- A 10-fold decrease in the amount of labor required for the layout process
- Reduce changes orders and rework 300,000 feet of pipe that are already in place
- A more efficient and secure Materials management QA/QC and project control teams
- Capable of sharing real-time in-built data with clients
- Ability to record and utilize actual layout times to inform future bids
A significant energy firm is expanding an essential refinery for petrochemicals on the Gulf Coast with the help of general contractor Performance Contractors Inc. The expansion involves the laying of the pipe for 900,000 feet and the construction of several structures, which are all underground, while others are at a height of 300 feet. Approximately 3,000 people work at the site of work every day, and each one is assigned a specific job during the entire day.
The task requires sophisticated coordination because there are so many moving parts. Additionally, every team member must be informed regularly while working on various elements that make up the task.
The massive project has been underway for three years and is nearly completed. The team adopted technology that made workflows visually and digitally that connected data and reduced the task. This led to significant improvements in productivity and allowed the project to advance at the speed it did.
The creation of a workflow and environment that makes the process of coming up with ideas for implementation more efficient
Performance Contractors is a seasoned team of construction experts with a proven procedure recognizing that refinery construction is difficult and risky. Their client is determined to use modern technologies available to the industry to enhance the process. “One of the goals was to use technologies that have an opportunity to improve efficiency and costs for the job,” Darby Milius, a Performance Contractors senior field solutions architect. Darby Milius is a Performance Contractors senior field solutions architect.
The team was required to integrate construction techniques into their working methods.
Communication begins with a solid strategy, so the group determined to be prepared for construction even before the first shovel touched the ground. The work was then scheduled for the opening of the final valve. “These technologies [Trimble Connect and Trimble Connect AR] facilitate not just the demonstration or the display of the information but building and creating a workflow and an ecosystem from conception to realization, an entire workflow that gets you through the conclusion,” Milius states.
A significant issue in the industry is the slowness in getting data from the truck to an individual in the field. “Trimble’s products make it so the model information, the status information, the material tracking information, can become available to a person out in the field on a mobile device immediately as opposed to walking in the trailer and getting a piece of paper,” Milius says.
More work is done with less time, resources, or work.
The improved communication results in less need to rework. Trimble Connect/Connect AR puts everything in the hands of team members. The field workers do not have to wait for documents or responses at the desk. As per Matthew Santian, a general foreman of the piping department of Performance Contractors, there have been fewer changes.
“With the transparency feature, we were actually able to see what was supposed to be there [and] what was not supposed to be there,” Santian says.
Thanks to this Trimble SX10 Scanning Total Station, the team was able to spot problems before the issue and got advice on how to handle the case before a problem appeared on the job. The team could go right to work and not worry about any issues.
Rework reductions resulted in a decrease in time and material.
There are a lot of supports working. The team utilized Trimble’s Trimble SX10 Scanning Total Station laser pointer to place dots on beams precisely where supports would be in the real-world. “By clicking on a piece of a pipe, they can tell what that spool is, where it’s supposed to go, and what area that is,” states Lorne Sooley, the information manager at Insight-Advanced Packaging.
If marking the supports by hand, a team could generally keep 5 to 8 supports per day. This was increased to 50-60 per day using the SX10.
Ensure employees are safe and productive with a more efficient QA/QC procedure.
An extensive survey can lead to a more secure project. Specific areas can be difficult or even hazardous to examine. Performance Contractors employed Trimble + Boston Dynamics’ auto-scanning solution Spot to understand better regions they would not be capable of. The chance of injury is decreased because surveyors can read from a robotic scan.
Surveys and scans that are more complete can also yield more precise information.
“We’re confident that we’re making correct decisions when we have accurate, real-time data in front of us,” says Matthew Moradian, a field engineer for Exxon.
When everyone looks at the same data, quality control can be improved. The information can then be transferred out of the field and then displayed within the back office. “You’re basically working in both worlds, in the office, and in the field,” says Roberto Jimenez Martinez, Surveyor at Performance Contractors. Back-office employees “… have access to everything that the team is working on, making it easier to get the job completed.”
The world continues to depend on oil and petrochemicals. Therefore, refineries must make petrochemicals and chemicals safely and efficiently method. Trimble’s products have helped Performance Contractors in multiple ways and have improved monitoring. “I can say with very strong confidence that this job … is one of the most accurately tracked jobs we’ve ever had,” Milius says. This has boosted the efficiency of the company and also increased safety.