23rd Jul

How cost data impact the planning of your Engineering

Engineering is paramount during all phases of the project life cycle: initiation, planning and design, implementation and closure. In this article, we have a closer look at the design phase and explore how data can help you improve the efficiency of engineering during the design phase.

Project engineering and design

Engineering translates a set of functional requirements into Design documents: technical drawings and specifications used to construct the plant. From experience, projects that fail in Engineering and Design often end up with construction and field problems, operability issues, start-up delays and significant budget and schedule overrun. This is why you need good planning of the design phase.

Plan the design phase

Throughout the engineering project life cycle, thousands of documents are created and revised, hundreds of decisions are being taken, and endless activities are being planned. To improve efficiency, the implementation of the project must be carefully planned from the beginning by developing a well-thought design phase planning.

Planning the design phase of a project may be quite difficult, because the delivery times for design documents depend on a number of factors, such as the project size and complexity, the need for input or coordination of other disciplines, design changes, and updates. Therefore, the planning will be as realistic as the initial data that has been put into it. Too optimistic schedules may not reflect the reality of a project. This is why it is important to use accurate project data and the lessons learned from past experience.

Use cost data

The use of a good knowledgebase will help you improve efficiency during the design phase, as it provides not only accurate cost data but it can be used as a planning tool as well. An Engineering cost database is built in such a way that various project variables are taken into account, as well as the vast experience of Engineering companies involved in the design phase of multiple projects.

A good tool to use is CESK data. Using CESK Engineering helps you do a proper time, cost and resource planning of the basic and the detailed design phases deliverables. The activities and deliverables are grouped per discipline, and this will give you an estimate of work hours needed to complete the work, also the labor resources needed to complete it.

Conclusion

You need sufficient time and tools to develop a project execution plan that emphasizes a good engineering and design strategy, among others. This would prevent the budget and cost overruns by minimizing the related risks during implementation, such as operability issues and start-up delays.

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