Structural Steel Interoperability for the Building and Process Plant Industries

To achieve fully integrated and automated engineering, fabrication, and erection for structural steel for capital projects, effective data exchange standards and standard practices are needed. The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) is completing its Structural Steel Information Delivery Manual (IDM) for the engineering, design, fabrication, and erection processes for the AEC/building community. Currently, no exchanges or data needs are identified specifically for the process plant industry.

A team of subject matter experts will: (1) review the current IDM and further develop it by defining critical data exchanges in the process plant industry; (2) recommend business use cases to implement the IDM; and (3) define work for delivering industry guidelines for structural steel interoperability as well as potential mappings. This project will leverage the process and data requirements results from relevant Roadmap teams such as Automated Design, Integrated and Automated Supply Networks, and Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site.

Benefits

This project will benefit both the building and the process industries by clarifying the information exchanges needed in structural steel design and fabrication. Both industries will benefit by collaborating on defining priority use cases and identifying data requirements for integrating and streamlining structural steel processes. Potential benefits include:

• Improved coordination across disciplines and the supply chain
• Improved detailing, fabrication, inspection, sequencing, and erection
• Reduced time and costs
• Broader capabilities for automated fabrication
• Streamline model creation for large and complex structures
• Improved quality and material usage
• Stronger support by software companies to implement common standards

Opportunities/Status

Interested Fiatech members who have expertise in analysis, engineering, detailing, fabrication, inspection, sequencing, and erection of structural steel should contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . A project kick-off workshop is scheduled for May 31, 2012 at CH2MHILL's office in Atlanta.

Fiatech Staff Project Manager

Faith Junghans, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Project Lead

Bruce Strupp, CH2MHILL

Participating Companies

AREVA, Bechtel, Black & Veatch, Burns & Roe, CCC, CH2MHILL, CIFE at Stanford University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Jacobs, Kaiser Permanente, NIST, WorleyParsons, and Zachry

Deliverables

• Recommended extensions/additions for the process plant industries to the Structural Steel IDM for the engineering design, fabrication, and erection process.
• Recommendations for structural steel business use cases to test implementation of the IDM for the process plant industry (including definition of information requirements and desired analysis results).
• Recommendations for the deployment of the Structural Steel IDM.

Completion Date

Winter 2013