How can you involve your team in a plant layout project?

Ensuring that the entire team thoroughly reads the Scope of Work , Basis of Design, and design basis is paramount before proceeding with the development of the plant layout. These documents provide essential guidelines and specifications to be followed, including safety distances between equipment. Moreover, understanding technical information provided by the owner, such as location details, topography, prevailing winds, and nearby population centers, is crucial. This information informs decisions regarding personnel safety, adherence to local statutory regulations, and the overall design approach. By having a clear understanding of these factors, the team can develop a layout that prioritizes safety, compliance, and operational efficiency.

During this definition stage we will also make sure to split the work load among team members based on their skill set and availability. This line of sight is important to prioritise our tasks and deliver it on time.

You have to spell out about the resources like the product, machines if involved and the process involved. What will be the level of employees. What will be the project time. The bottlenecks in execution and what are the plans to overcome.

Site surveys play a pivotal role in the development of plot plans as they provide crucial information about the actual conditions of the site. By conducting thorough surveys, project teams can accurately assess the available area, existing infrastructure, and potential constraints that may impact layout design. It's vital to consider nearby camp facilities and identify underground utilities, overhead transformers, and roads. This understanding enables proper planning of tie-in details and ensures that the layout is optimized to minimize conflicts with existing infrastructure, preventing construction complications. Integrating survey data into plot plan development ensures an informed, efficient layout tailored to project needs.

With this site survey we simply capture as is condition in our digital tool (Simply in 2D CAD or as a Point cloud data). Sometimes data collection regarding takt, buffer stock, Product BOM, Plant BOM are necessary before creating a layout. These data is used to determine space requirement in future proposals. And also collecting site specific civil related parameters such as floor load capacity, power cable routing, heat and ventilation, lighting and safety equipment provisions are must before defining production layout.

Ensuring cost-effective pipework and supporting steel while maintaining safety is paramount in plant design. This objective can be achieved by organizing plot plan review workshops involving multidisciplinary teams and key stakeholders like clients. These workshops foster collaboration among professionals from different fields, such as design, engineering, and operations and maintenance (O&M). Through interactive discussions, group activities, and practical exercises, participants can share their insights and address design challenges. This collaborative approach enables careful positioning of equipment ,maximize the use of common maintenance equipment and laydown areas ultimately reducing plot size.

In my experience I option is never enough to have a good layout. Bringing at the table different scenarios will allow everyone to contribute to the project. I had never finished a layout before attempting minimum 10 versions. The reason, you need to understand the needs of the process at all levels, and involving all parties (team and internal clients) bring me to adjust it until me meet all requirements possible.

Initially team should create number concept layouts involving major space occupying equipments and products. Because in this stage of project we may not have all the necessary required inputs to create detailed layout. So, then and there we will receive few updates from project team regarding equipment revisions and some optimization happen with the help of simulation tool. These iterations helps us to find the best solution for our needs.

Sometimes modularity should be strategically factored into the layout early in the FEED process, assuming reducing field labour costs are important during the construction phase. If done early, the risk of change to the layout is minimized.

Yes construction cost and space availability plays an important role in finalization of plant layout and more so when it is a brownfield project.

Now we have various concept layouts and few detailed layouts in our hand, we have to choose best option for our requirement. This option will have to satisfy execution timeline, cost of implementation, productivity and some times modularisation of factory for different products. Cross collaboration among various team is a key to choose best option and identifying minor flaws.

Key & experienced personnel from every dept(Civ,mech,elec,Inst,HSE) should be incorporated on the team. Interference resolution during the layout itself is critical for smooth execution later on.

This is always considered on offshore projects since both, field work and real estate are at a premium. Also all maintenance work is expensive and takes longer time.

In this stage few team members have to make series of execution drawings, that includes defining steps involved in execution, sequence of equipment commissioning and so on. Always there is a scope for improvement, while layout execution we will find some deviation from our digital drawing and actual physical layout. This is because of dimensional stock up errors this can be avoided by choosing proper datum references for detailed drawings. Finally document the updated layout and make comparison with old proposals to identify measurable benifits.

Team Selection criteria 1. 65% People should be from Shop floor. 2. At least 1 person from the Each department required. 3. Team should have all level people from Junior Engineers to Managers To get involved people actively you should award Best suggestion of the Project and active participant award etc.. Make a team rule like welcome all suggestions instaed of rejecting suggestions instantly.