Old K says every week – talking about things in the petrochemical design industry. Post 7: Design Management – Management of Basic Design Data

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This post was last edited by henglinkou on 2020-7-26 09:36. Old K’s weekly series – Talks about matters in the petrochemical design industry: Post 1, The development history of China’s survey and design industry: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3031149-1-1.html; Post 2, **Management of the survey and design industry**: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3036417-1-1.html; Post 3, The development of drawing techniques in design institutes: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3039960-1-1.html; Post 4, The evolution of professional division of labor in petrochemical design institutes: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3045261-1-1.html; Post 5, The organizational structure of petrochemical engineering companies: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3050591-1-1.html; Post 6, Contract management in design management: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3054762-1-1.html; Post 7, Management of design basic data in design management. Design basic data, sometimes also referred to as design fundamentals, must be determined before the start of a project’s design process. Errors in these data can lead to serious design mistakes, so it is essential to pay close attention to them. For design basic data, a three-level review system must be strictly implemented; for large-scale projects, there should also be approval processes and company-level evaluations. The basic contents of design foundation data are as follows: 1. Project scale and product plan – This includes information on the project’s scale, annual operating time, operational flexibility, operation mode, and product plan. The project scale is expressed in units such as kt/a or t/d (MTPD); domestic projects generally use units like tens of thousands of tons per year, thousands of tons per year, or tons per year, while some foreign projects use MTPD (tons per day). Since, when conducting design calculations on an annual production basis, the hourly production rate is generally used, it is also necessary to know the number of operating hours per year. Due to factors such as climate conditions, the operating time for various projects can vary; therefore, expressing the scale in terms of annual production can cause difficulties in reusing the design documents in the future. Personally, I think it is better to define the scale based on daily production. Annual operating time: Sometimes it is expressed in days, such as 330 days, and sometimes in hours, such as 8000 hours. Operational flexibility: Values such as 60~110% that are commonly seen actually imply an expansion of the design scale by a factor of 1.1. Design margins are added during the design process, which further increases the scale and thus raises operational costs. Personally, I think a limit of 100% is better; it should be as high as possible. Operation mode: Generally refers to whether it operates continuously or intermittently. Product plan: Some projects involve multiple products or by-products, and it is necessary to specify the output volume of each product or by-product. 2. The specifications for raw materials and auxiliary materials specify the quality requirements for them. 3. The product specifications specify the quality standards for the product and by-products. 4. The utility specifications specify the requirements for water (fresh water, demineralized water, circulating water, etc.), electricity (power electricity, lighting electricity, low-voltage electricity), gas (instrument air, process air, nitrogen, etc.), and steam. 5. The on-site conditions mainly include the geographical features of the site, engineering geology, hydrogeology, seismic conditions, meteorological conditions, etc. It is recommended that the site conditions be compiled into a separate document to facilitate direct reference in purchase orders and other design documents. 6. Material property data aggregates and organizes the property data of the materials involved in this project to facilitate use by various departments; each department usually has dedicated forms for this purpose. Currently, this is generally not included in the design basic data files; I personally recommend including it.