Design Workflow plays a very vital role during the Design Planning & Optimization process and involves the key steps of: Common Design Workflow Checklist, Engineering Data Deliverable to Construction, Managing Piping Systems through Project Information Flow (PIF), and Workflow Mapping of engineering deliverables to construction.
The Common Design Workflow Checklist deals with the workflow from: Conceptual phase to Detailed Design phase, to Construction phase, to Startup-Commissioning phase, to Handover phase and helps to increase efficiency both in the construction phase and later in the operation and maintenance phase. At the same time, the Common Design Workflow Checklist provides a useful tool to make a gap analysis of Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) and WorkFace Planning (WFP) at project level (E2-2, page 2-5).
The Engineering Data Deliverable to Construction table tracks and shows the use of common labels in the deliverables from engineering to construction planning for 4 different work groups and at the same time, workflow mapping of engineering deliverables demonstrates its graphical counterpart (E2-3 & E2-9).
Information flows are where the greatest increases in efficiency and cost-saving effects can be achieved – or missed. The article on Managing Piping systems through Project Information Flow shows an approach to tackle and solve that problem. Under Fiatech tutelage in 2017, a team chose an approach to use existing ISO 15926 tools to create “PIF” (Project Information Flow) software to modernize the handling of piping between engineering and construction on a project. A key goal was to transition from the old Isogen “ISO” file standards to a newly defined PCF (Piping Component File), and finally to the Super PCF file format which the team successfully defined and tested to enable smooth, fast, and error-free data transfer directed by efficient workflows (E2-5, page 15).
PIF scope spans all phases of a project including all piping data transfers from design to operation. Different interfaces and technical considerations must be addressed for each phase of a project such as engineering (isometrics, 3D data, materials and welds), contractual requirements (population of the Electronic Document Management System or EDMS), verifying integrity of data, legal requirements), and planning (4D, scheduling activity). The engineering scope defines standard naming used to address process properties. This scope extends also to define material and weld properties. By standard naming it is intended to have an agreed upon template from the IIP (ISO 15926 Information Pattern) project that clearly and uniquely defines a process property through harnessing the reference data library information (E2-5, page 16).
In summary, this research project discusses how significant Workflow Mapping and Project Information Flow (PIF) can improve data transfer between project phases and encourages the various parties involved to exchange intelligent, structured data rather than documents.