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Taking o with Icarus Access in-depth

11 December 2000 00:00 Source: ICIS Chemical Business
petrochemicals data
AspenTech has developed a range of software which can accurately and cost-e ectively support the Stay on top of market volatility and inform
process of chemical plant construction, from early concept to project costing. John Baker reports your commercial strategies with pricing,
There are signi cant cost savings to be made in the engineering and construction of complex data, news and analysis.
chemical plants, across the whole lifetime of a project, if the right decisions are made early on.
Plant owners and engineering contractors have for some time been emphasising the importance
➔  Pricing Data (/about/price-
of what has been termed front end engineering and design (FEED), which encompasses the
conceptual and early design stages of the project. reports/)
Historical, current and forecast prices,
###9588### together with commentaries, to help
you track price uctuation and
Estimates from one leading contractor indicate that optimum plant de nition at the concept and design understand price drivers and trends.
stage can bring about cost reductions of 30%, the bulk of this being saved in the later procurement and Make fast and con dent decisions and
construction phases. Now, the FEED concept is being honed even further, with the concept of front end gauge the best time to buy or sell.
loading (FEL), whereby process design and economic evaluations are integrated at an early stage to help
strategic and process decision-making. Request a FREE report (/contact/free-sample-pric
report/?mode=icispricing&intcmp=CHEM-free-
###9589### articles-pages-promo-
pricing&channel=chemicals&commodity=chemica
Following this trend, and with some urging from several of its major customers, Aspen Technology this
September acquired fellow US-based rm Icarus, which specialises in providing software used by the
process industries to estimate plant capital costs and evaluate process and project economics.
AspenTech had already been working with Icarus on some projects as partners, integrating its Aspen
➔  Supply and Demand Data
Plus process and plant simulation tool with the Icarus cost estimation packages.
(/services/analysis/supply-and-
###9590### demand/)
An end-to-end perspective across the
Since the purchase, the Icarus products are being integrated with AspenTech's range of engineering global petrochemical supply chain. It

solutions so they include economic considerations as an integral part. This will, said AspenTech at the provides data on import and export
volumes, plant capacities, production,
time of the $25m deal, 'enable process manufacturers to increase the quality and speed of decision-
consumption and chemical trade ows.
making, while reducing costs, whenever major capital investment decisions are required, such as in
building new plant or revamping existing facilities.'
Request a FREE demo

Arvind Patel, sales director of AspenTech for Europe, Middle East and Africa, and formerly with (/contact/enquire-about-icis-global-

Icarus, explains that the Icarus suite of software tools and database (now called the Aspen supply-and-demand-service/?
Kbase) enables cost estimates to be produced to +/-30% accuracy from very basic process data. intcmp=CHEM-free-articles-pages-
In general, he says, by inputting process simulation results - such as ow sheet and mass promo-sndd)
balances - and an equipment list, the Icarus Process Evaluator (IPE) can automatically develop a
wide set of deliverables. These include detailed equipment designs and quantities,
capital/operating costs, an investment analysis, basic engineering ow sheets, as well as ➔  Market News (/news/)
construction schedules and man-hour estimates. Our 24/7 news coverage keeps you fully
informed of key events in your
The Kbase knowledge database has been built up through many years of experience in use by marketplace as they happen – including
leading producers and contractors, and the content re ects the feedback from actual projects market moves, analytics, data and
where Icarus tools generated initial estimates. Certain major users including BP, Shell and Dow more.
Chemical, and Fluor Daniel, Kellogg, Brown & Root and Kvaerner, plus some fabricators, help to
calibrate and update the data by providing information - including equipment, labour and Request a FREE trial
fabrication costs - on a regular basis. Industry standard design procedures and codes are then (/contact/request-free-trial-icis-
applied, which when combined with a simulation of fabrication methods, enable consistent
news/?
engineering results to be produced.
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free-articles-pages-promo-news)
In this way, producers and contractors can very quickly, and at an early stage in the project
de nition, assess the likely costs of a project. The procedure can be run on several scenarios to
determine the most cost-e ective process/design.

Icarus also has a second software suite, Icarus 2000, which can be used after the process Stay Connected
development stage, this time to determine project costs to within +/-10%, using more accurate
engineering data from the detailed design, procurement and construction phase. And at the very
early decision stages of a project, it o ers its Decision Engineering Analyser to help conceptual Sign up for our ICIS newsletters to receive
thinking on issues such as plant size, location, and funding. the latest market developments, headline
news and insights into chemical price
Patel says Icarus calculates the use of its tools can enable front end studies to be carried out in changes and the impact on markets.
one- fth of the time compared to conventional estimation techniques, and that the man-hours of
preparing proposals can be halved. This enables a company's engineers to focus on pro table
Receive FREE market updates
projects, and the impact of scope changes.
(/contact/market-updates-newsletters/?
intcmp=CHEM-free-articles-pages-
Patel illustrates the claims with several case studies. For example, a conceptual estimate for
which a client spent ten hours with Icarus pricing up 100 pieces of equipment. To verify Icarus, newsletterlink)

the equipment was also priced by mechanical engineering. It took three engineers 30 hours each
to do the same task, and the cost estimates were within 10% of each other and well within the
plus or minus 40% range the client was looking for.
Free Resources
In terms of manpower costs, the di erence between Icarus and the conventional route was
Easy access to a host of downloadable ICIS
worth over $5000. And, assuming 20 conceptual estimates a year, says Patel, the savings would
Chemical resources; including:
run to over $100 000. In a second example, Patel says a client used Icarus to generate civil and
steel quantities for a +/-10% detailed estimate. The di erence between one person using Icarus
Whitepapers
for three months on the work, and a team of four for the same period, was just over $100 000.
Again, assuming four detailed estimates per year, this equated to over $400 000 in savings. Infographics
Webinars
Already, says Patel, companies like Dow Chemical are interested in the integrated o ering, and Podcasts
are looking to see what advantages it can create in terms of using early engineering data to make Blogs
strategic business decisions. Icarus has already found many users amongst the engineering
Special Publications
contractors, which use it to assess quickly proposed projects and to help prepare their nal bids.
He mentions Fluor Daniel, Kvaerner and Foster Wheeler as regular users of the decision support
software. Receive FREE market updates
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The acquisition and integration of Icarus lls a gap in AspenTech's Engineering Suite which has articles-pages-free-resources)
been built up around its core Aspen Plus process modelling package over the years. As Nick
Thompson, business support director for AspenTech in Europe, Middle East and Africa, explains,
the AspenTech o ering in engineering extends from process R&D right through to production. It
now encompasses o erings for process synthesis and analysis, physical property data and
models, steady state and dynamic simulation and optimisation, equipment sizing and rating,
operator training and plant simulation, as well as plant control and startup/shut down.
Acting as a backbone for all these is AspenTech's Zyqad collaborative engineering database, that
allows a complete description of a plant to be built up, stored and modi ed as necessary. Icarus
will shortly be able to map into this database, enabling users to perform cost estimates as
required using the data available at any stage along the project/plant timeline. This will be
useful, for example, for revamps and debottlenecks as well as green eld projects.

The one area that AspenTech does not o er in-house at present is 3D plant design simulation,
but its software packages are compatible with Intergraph's o ering in this area, and output from
Aspen Plus can be transferred to Intergraph's Smartplant system either directly or via Zyqad.
Indeed, the two rms are working together with some clients and have, for example, signed a
strategic agreement with Dow Chemical.

Patel believes that the availability of knowledge-driven engineering software such as that
developed by Icarus is leading chemical producers to take more control again of the early stages
of projects, enabling them to tighten up the project scope before bringing contractors on board.

During the early and mid-1990s, producers were scaling back their in-house engineering
capabilities on cost grounds, leaving more work at the design stages to the engineering
contractors. But with the manpower savings available from the automation made possible with
IPE, some of this early stage work is being brought back in-house. 'Producers can do a lot of
engineering with fewer resources now,' he adds, and are taking more ownership [of projects]
again.

On the other hand, though, engineering contractors are increasingly looking to acquire and o er
process technologies to clients, and this too can be made more e ective with tools such as
Icarus.

And who knows, perhaps the use of the same set of plant design and costing packages will speed
the uptake of producer/contractor alliancing on projects. This long sought for but still rarely used
approach to plant creation is said to bring advantages all round in terms of project costs and
e ciencies. 'But still many contractors and plant operators are wary,' he warns.
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