Virtual Multilocation Collaboration & Real Scale Digital Immersive Plant Design Review
Authors: Riyaz Mahamad , Fiore Nicoletta , Chiari Francescosaverio 
Published: November 2024

Implementing industrial scale technology and easily adoptable solutions in the field of Virtual Reality has been challenging for the energy industry. Designing and developing a solution to unlock the capability of engineers virtually meeting each other in 1:1 scale digital plant and executing a high-fidelity design review to make sure the design meets specified requirements and address any potential issues before release is the goal of this new technology development project.

This project is a cross functional team effort including experts from plant design, project engineering, installation & service engineering, quality, cyber security, enterprise architect and enterprise CAD systems. Well detailed Technology development roadmap and technology adoptability strategy was prepared defining the success criteria and validation of value proposition. The solution developed is a four-step process; 1) Data preparation 2) Data publish to server 3) Design review execution 4) Report generation. During data preparation phase project engineer will gather inputs for design review like 3D model, checklist, documents, team list and project information. This data is published to a cloud-based server using a web portal and CAD plugins without any data loss. Project engineer will then set up a 3D design review meeting and invite required attendees using the same solution. With this solution engineers located globally can join the virtual meeting with just one click using virtual reality headset and all participants can access the data published depending on access granted to them. The participants can virtually meet and discuss through representation of their avatars in real time and can perform the plant design review in 1:1 scale with high quality 3D visualization. Participants in the meeting can collaboratively simulate installation and maintenance sequence, check accessibility, measure dimensions and capture comments if any to make changes to design. The solution will automatically generate the report out and list of actions from the review.

More than 150 engineers from about 10 industrial energy companies had the opportunity to test and use this solution. Many functionalities providing immersive user experience for industrial use cases were explored pushing the limits of VR. It was observed that we can reduce 50% of cost of quality related to field modifications. Further we can reduce 50% engineering 3D model rework by early identification of clashes in the model. This solution can also lead to 30% reduction in travel costs by adopting virtual meeting instead of physical meeting, eventually reducing CO2. It was concluded that design review performed in a virtual immersive environment, significantly improved the ability to ensure a flawless design that meets all the requirements and significantly improve the ability to communicate the design intent.

As the organizations are moving towards more digital product and plant design, 3D models enriched with process, material, design information interlinked with various product life cycle management systems, makes use of virtual simulation tools inevitable. Further data captured from real operation of the plant can be used to optimize and improve various key elements by integrating with these 3D models moving to the real digital twin.