In the middle of 2005 Fisia Italimpianti acquired an important contract for the planning and construction of Ras Abu Fontas A1 desalination plant in Qatar.
Fisia decided to directly carry out just the basic engineering and to commission the detailed engineering to external suppliers.
Silvio Rebagliati, Engineering Manager at Fisia Italimpianti, relates the following: “Fisia Italimpianti has been one of the first users of ESApro. The first licenses of the software were acquired in 1996, and used ever since in our company and by our external suppliers for the development of the process diagrams P&ID and for the creation of the isometric drawings in combination with the software Puma for the piping materials management. As a result all the companies involved in the project were mandatory required use ESApro Isometrics interfaced with Puma for the realization of isometric drawings and material lists compatible with the company ERP. Except for that Fisia Italimpianti allowed its suppliers to freely operate according to their own preferences, requiring just the classic 2D orthographic views in DWG format as project documents”.

A part of the detailed engineering was commissioned to C.P. Service that as Fisia Italimpianti was one of the first users of ESApro, or better an ESAin beta-tester and so experienced in the use of the ESApro software, to decide then to develop the whole project in 3D with ESApro.
“We had been long verifying that the three-dimensional approach guarantees greater reliability and planning times by far shorter compared to the classic 2D, therefore we decided to develop the three dimensional model of the plant with ESApro 3D Piping, although that was not dictated by the client, in order to automatically obtain the 2D orthographic views and the isometric drawings” Enzo Nietante, Project Manager at CP Service, says.

Used modules:

• P&ID for the development of process schemes
• 3D Piping for the plant design
• Isometrics for the automatic extraction of isometric sketches from the 3D model

“Proud of the experience made through the years and confident of the of ESApro potentialities, we were eager of tackling a large project. Ras Abu Fontas A1 was the ideal opportunity. The project has been developed by four engineers working side by side and using the various modules of ESApro, both for the design of the pipelines and of the piping supports and steelworks, up to get the detailed orthographic views and the isometric drawings with the related material lists, as requested by the client”. Nietante adds.

“Our choice proved to be winning”. Marco Blangero Project Engineer at CP Service says “The execution times matched our expectations, largely shorter than those required in traditional 2D; such an achievement was due to the efficiency of the system in the management of the modifications. In fact, once made the modifications to the piping class or the geometry, it is enough to regenerate orthographic views, material lists and isometric drawings in order to have all the project documents updated. We have obtained a uniform planning with precise material take-offs subdivided by prefabrication and erection components”. Furthermore Ras Abu Fontas A1 has been an effective benchmark for the ESApro software. With respect to systems whose cost is much higher, it has shown the same capability of managing large dimensions models and an extreme simplicity at the same time. “No specialized system administrators are required, no time consuming and complex project set-ups”. Blangero concludes ”A skilled AutoCAD technician with an adequate training, which we usually provide ourselves and which doesn’t require more than a few days, is operative in full autonomy. In the course of the project the system administration activity has been limited to the initial subdivision of the model, to the database set—up and to the management of the revision of the piping classes and of the component catalogue. In that ESApro has proven to be surprisingly efficient”.