The integrated future of engineering 

A leading design and consulting company in the fields of oil, gas and petrochemical engineering, the Petrochemical Industries Design and Engineering Company (PIDEC) of Iran has used Tekla Structures BIM (Building Information Modeling) software since 2002. Tekla has had a key role in integrating all necessary software that the company uses for structural engineering as well as provided a solution that enables the detailing of reinforced concrete model, too.

Structural engineers can use Tekla Structures software to widen their role in building projects, increasing the value of structural engineering and ensuring the highest-quality end results by moving from design-oriented to construction-oriented engineering. The Tekla model can be used to offer more services for other disciplines in the project, such as the contractors and subcontractors, to support the whole design-to-construction process. For cast-in-situ/place concrete, Tekla Structures integrates reinforcement information with building materials information, and follows the entire project from design through to construction. It is the only solution where reinforcing bar bending schedules, for example, can be integrated with and used for construction purposes.



Error-free design and detailing

The most important reasons for PIDEC to start using Tekla Structures software were to avoid the errors that had been generated in their 2D software, the complexities of their previous 3D software solution, and speeding up the creation of steel shop fabrication drawings. “Working in 3D, the drawing styles are totally different from our previously generated drawings, but our confidence in the correctness of Tekla drawings and related report generation compensates for it, totally,” says Ali Karimzadegan, Senior Structural Engineer at PIDEC.

Integrated project delivery

We integrate Tekla with systems like ETABS, SAP2000, PDMS and AUTOCAD. Tekla has a key role in integrating all those software. It is actually the core of our process! As an engineering office we can push the Tekla 3D model for the project life cycle form start to finish to benefit other project disciplines too. We have started to use this process believing that all parties will receive the time, cost, and quality benefits of model integration. We haven’t had any big problems with model transfer between several solutions through Tekla Structures.” Says Farzad Mohareri, Structural Department Manager at PIDEC.

Decreased cost of labor

All of our detailers are trained to work with Tekla software,” says Karimzadegan. “Without using Tekla Structures, we would need to increase our resources by 40% in the detailing stage. In addition to achieving accuracy and integration in both concrete and steel design, for the steel part we believe that we have saved about 2000 man-hours in each project, which means preparation of around 3000 tons of steel structure shop fabrication drawings.”

Increased productivity and quality

"By adopting Tekla Structures software we have achieved 30% increase in productivity and efficiency and more than 60% increase in accuracy of shop fabrication. As a matter of fact, in previous projects we encountered erection subcontractor claims for the problems that we had in our fabrication drawings that lead to wrong fabricated members; these kinds of problems have been totally removed," confirms Karimzadevgan.

"For steel design we have created macros for the ladders, handrails and many other connections. For concrete design, we almost only use the custom components that we have created, which fit our standards."

Reinforced future

"Our main goal is to use Tekla for most of our reinforced concrete structures," says Karimzadegan. "We’ve used Tekla for our concrete structures and equipment foundation for about a year, and now we use it in one of our projects for all concrete structures and foundations."

"We believe that in the future, as we succeed to integrate Tekla with our software in engineering (piping, mechanical, electrical and instrument departments), management (planning and project control), as well as construction, we can achieve even higher efficiency, profitability and competitiveness, and the best ranking among EPC contractors," says Mohareri.