IBERDROLA Engineering and Construction, Spain

Iberdrola Engineering and Construction Reduces Design Times with Intergraph Software

IBERDROLA Uses SmartPlant® Enterprise to Complete Power Projects

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IBERDROLA Ingeniería y Construcción (Engineering and Construction), established in 1995, has become one of the world’s leading energy engineering companies. With active projects in more than 25 countries and a project portfolio valued at more than €2.3 billion, IBERDROLA is realizing increased activity from a strategy shift to target the creation of engineering and construction of power generation, distribution, and control facilities. Heavily involved in large nuclear and renewable energy projects, IBERDROLA’s services also include project management, engineering, supply, construction and commissioning, turnkey projects, and operational support.

IBERDROLA began implementing Intergraph solutions in 2003, when the landscape was ripe for expanding its business into new markets. The company wanted to execute international EPC projects much like the ones it had in Spain, and the challenge was to do this while saving time and money in execution in spite of the distance and geographical distribution of its international customers.

Integration is the Key

To access the international markets, IBERDROLA knew it must be more competitive. And, to be more competitive, they focused on one goal – integration. It understood the success of an EPC project depended in large part on the integration of all the components in the project. In effect, this meant coordination between all the disciplines involved in the life cycle of a power plant, from engineering to commissioning.

Within each of its EPC projects, many groups are involved – subcontractors, engineering,
procurement, logistics, construction, and commissioning. Managing the data flow and information is critical in this environment. All the groups have access to view and edit data, and with the SmartPlant Enterprise solutions, the workflow operates smoothly and seamlessly. The firm has also been able to avoid conflicts of information between disciplines, preventing duplication of data and guaranteeing modifications are done in real-time and received across the entire workshare.

“We chose the Intergraph solutions because, as a company, it has provided us a secure
implementation with excellent technical support,” said Fernando Torres, System Manager
of IBERDROLA. “Intergraph has helped us evolve our functionality toward a more user-friendly environment, and we have experienced great performance in our engineering and 3D design efforts. We specifically chose SmartPlant 3D because of its powerful global workshare and automation capabilities.”

For its initial implementation, IBERDROLA chose Intergraph’s PDS, Support Modeler, SmartPlant P&ID, and SmartPlant Instrumentation for its design and engineering functions. SmartPlant Review and SmartPlant Explorer were used to access information for visualization purposes. However, for its goal of system integration, IBERDROLA
decided it made no sense to start that process while it was still using PDS and Support Modeler, so it began the migration from these solutions to SmartPlant 3D, Intergraph’s next-generation, data-centric design solution. IBERDROLA completed implementation of SmartPlant 3D in early 2008, and continued its use of PDS and Support Modeler only on projects that began before then. SmartPlant 3D provided increased functionality, design speed, and better performance on power plant design projects. In the latter half of 2008, IBERDROLA began the implementation of SmartPlant Foundation, and in 2010, it will begin the integration between SmartPlant Foundation and its project document management tool.

Increased Productivity

IBERDROLA has quickly experienced such benefits as reduced learning curves,
expedited design times, and the ability to reuse designs. These benefits, in turn, have resulted in increased productivity throughout the enterprise.

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