Page 36 - 47
P. 36
The Opportunity behind the nents are striving to adapt their language to a
Problem more engineered approach, while, on the other
hand, most of the piping engineers are reluctant
In the last decades, safe and corrosion free to modify their approach to the piping discipline,
conveyance of water and chemicals drove the when it requires understanding new materials,
growth in installations of pure thermoplastic pi- new standards, new selection criteria, and rele-
ping with basic and more engineered compo- vant design, jointing technologies and installation
nents, like special fittings, hand operated and recommendations (figure 1).
actuated valves, instruments, in different mate-
rials: amorphous cementable polymers (PVC-U, A common Platform serving
PVC-C, ABS), weldable polyolefin (PE, PP, PVDF) the Industry Community
and fluoropolymers (PVDF).
Each material has some peculiarities, which can Modern high-level software environment like
influence its choice as the preferable one depen- SmartPlant® Reference Data is the ideal platform
ding upon: the chemical to convey, the operating enabling technical information sharing among all
pressure and temperature conditions, the fore- stakeholders; regardless the stakeholder is a de-
seen isometric layout of the pipeline, the outdoor signer addressing an engineering, procurement,
or indoor installation, above ground or under- and construction project, or a technician executing
ground. plant operation and maintenance.
When all the above factors lead to a multiple op- However, pre-condition to achieve - so that sof-
tion, jointing technology becomes the decision tware platform works with highest expected effi-
factor, together with considering time of instal- ciency - is that people animates it by exchanging
lation, required expertise, traceability, visual exa- living experiences and allow deep understanding of
mination, or even non-destructive testing, as per the information as a tool supporting business work
recent achievements. processes, and not only as a data in frozen static
A good practice for design and installation is no- repository.
wadays widespread among the various techni- Two elements helped Georg Fischer in achieving
cal stakeholders of industrial projects, mainly at understanding as such:
OEM’s side. • strong GF own business experience;
However, the knowledge and core activity of the • new contacts with both Clients and Techno-
piping engineers are still predominantly on me-
tallic materials. logy providers that have happened in the pri-
Therefore, despite the fact that thermoplastic pi- vileged atmosphere of the Intergraph German
ping systems have more than fifty years of proven Partner Community, promoted by both Inter-
successful applications, and specific information graph PPM and Bayer Technology Services.
is available regarding any technical aspect re-
quired by the piping discipline, a full knowledge Both Intergraph PPM and Bayer Technology Ser-
transfer from the thermoplastic piping provider to vices facilitated establishing the so-called “Inter-
the design engineer, or even the end user, has graph German Partner Community” as a common
not been fully achieved yet. platform, so that:
Most of the vendors of plastic piping compo- • materials stakeholders from different sides had
the possibility to meet and talk, enabling real
life experiences came to the surface, pains di-
scussed and analyzed, problem solving emer-
ged as a living discipline and solutions identi-
fied and worked out;
• German chemical process industry adopts a
standardized piping environment with consi-
stent piping data by using a highly professional
materials management system.
Fig. 1 – Set of Georg Fischer Piping Systems components Georg Fischer agreed to join Intergraph Partner
Community in order to make available state-of-the-
art plastic piping technology and relevant informa-
tion about components, so that it could become
part of the discipline for the piping engineers at end
user side.
Software platform provided by Intergraph has re-
sulted to be a unique opportunity for meeting qua-
lified professionals with real needs and common
interests, while bringing thermoplastic components
34 Impiantistica Italiana - Luglio-Agosto 2016
