Leica Geosystems laser scanners and Hexagon PPM 3D design software access ‘true reality’

Author: Jesús Bonet Edesa

The quality of every project is defined at its start.

When keeping track of billion-dollar industrial facilities, even small mistakes can have huge, imme-diate financial impact.

An enormous amount of complexity is driven by engineering and compliance, with tens of thou-sands of specifications. That’s why creating a digital reality to simulate the project is so vital to stay-ing on time and on budget.

Cepsa knows this.

The global energy company with integrated operations across the entire hydrocarbon value chain, manufactures raw materials for the chemicals industry from natural sources, and has a renewables business.  Cepsa develops its businesses across five continents and it’s embarked on a strategic project three years ago to digitally capture its facility and fuse it with the digital world.

Highlighting Hexagon’s capacity to leverage its full spectrum of solutions across the project lifecycle, Hexagon PPM provided digital design, and Hexagon Geosystems delivered reality capture.

This places the digital plant at Cepsa’s fingertips.

Going Digital

The first step was the “datafication” of everything to better understand the details of the assets. This involved thousands of scans to capture the entire facility.

With the new Leica Cyclone REGISTER 360, scans can now be fused fully and automatically, wildly faster than anything else in the market.

The clarity is stunning, and the possibilities are limitless.

Patricia Chacon Sangines, Cepsa’s piping department lead, said “The commitment to the implemen-tation of new technologies in engineering design, as Leica Geosystems solutions has been one of the keys to face our digital transformation. This process allows us to perform projects on tight schedules, find a highly cost-effective solution and optimise man-hours, placing us at the forefront of 3D plant design.”

Simple savings

This technology is set to save 1 to 2 per cent on projects, which adds up to huge savings on ventures with budgets of US$100+ million.

“We have further strengthened our position in the market and addressed some major bottlenecks preventing a wider adoption of 3D point cloud processing technology,” said Faheem Khan, vice president of business development at Leica Geosystems. “These bottlenecks range from long pro-cessing times, lack of automation, missing quality control functionality and pure complexity of the task. With Cyclone REGISTER 360, registration is up to 20 times faster with a simple drag – drop – go function and quality management is built into the heart of the product.”

Users can start with registration in their desired local language and produce final deliverables using modern, visual, simple and workflows.

Once the scanning is performed, Cepsa is using Hexagon PPM solutions – such as Intergraph Smart® 3D and SmartPlant Review – to access this true reality, by fusing the point cloud with the facility’s design.

That’s why Cepsa is now empowered to maintain their facilities safe, compliant, profitable.