Even as the world continues its transition to a greener, cleaner, less carbonized economy, there is no denying that for now, oil and natural gas jointly share the throne of global energy. Each year, in fact, the world consumes approximately 34.8 billion barrels of oil, or 1.3 trillion gallons – about half the amount of water in all of the United States’ Lake Michigan.
Of that enormous energy consumption, about 28 percent of the world’s crude oil is produced from offshore rigs (temporary structures or drillships) and platforms (large exploration, extracting, and processing facilities fixed into area bedrock) in basins around the world. Some of the most productive include: the Asia-Pacific region, the Persian Gulf, the North Sea, and, closer to home, the Gulf of Mexico, with operations centered along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast and farther south along Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, adjacent to the Yucatan Peninsula. Combined, Mexico and the United States are among the world’s most productive offshore oil and natural gas producing nations. In Mexico, oil and natural gas account for 85 percent of the nation’s energy consumption.
Thus, ensuring that the fuel keeps flowing is of critical concern to all parties involved. (Americans, too, as the US imports 9 percent of its oil from Mexico, as per 2018 data.) Safety and efficiency are key, as is the precision measurement of a platform’s thousands of static and moving parts. Recently JK Engineering and its Director of Operations, José Luis, sat down with FARO® to discuss the company’s reliance on a variety of hardware and software solutions including the FARO Focuss Laser Scanner, FARO SCENE Software, FARO WebShare Software and FARO As-Built™ for AutoCAD® Software to develop basic and detailed engineering schematics of a 16” diameter x 2.5 km oil pipeline from the Pokche-C platform to the Pokche-A. The work was completed for JK’s customer, Arendal, an energy industry building company specializing in pipelines, industrial plants, electromechanical works, civil engineering works, horizontal directional drilling and fiber optics networks.
A “Sea-Change” in As-Built Imaging Accuracy
Unlike traditional measuring techniques, including hand tape measures and the reliance on (out-of-date/inaccurate) structural schematics, the 3D laser scanning equipment like the FocusS can scan entire drilling platforms in a matter of hours, reproducing in a 3D virtual space the exact facility layout. This point cloud (which contains millions of unique data points) is exported to SCENE where additional project analysis and data management takes place. WebShare, a cloud-based application, securely shares the data with other stakeholders anywhere in the world.
“When we are using FARO products we reduce time spent on a given project by 30 percent, while improving our quality of work,” said José Luis, whose company is headquartered in Carmen, Mexico — the unofficial “capital” of the country’s offshore oil and gas exploration and extraction operations. “The main advantage with the use of the scanner for our customers is the reduction of engineering development time and therefore, less construction time. WebShare, too, makes an important difference as it helps open a bigger market for us.”
JK Engineering specializes in 3D laser scanning and point cloud generation, offering a variety of basic and detail engineering services for offshore and onshore projects. Founded in 2017 and with customers in Mexico, Europe and Latin America, JK Engineering’s goal is simple: to become one of the world’s leading 3D laser scanning companies, helping their clients achieve unprecedented 3D imaging success.
In this case, Luis’customer sought JK Engineering’s expertise to scan a single level of one of its offshore platforms as part of an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) project. The laser scans taken will prove a useful tool where these impressive mega structures undergo a thorough state review. Performed every five years, the enhanced digital documentation will allow Mexico to share this data with future sub-contractors so that they have accurate as-built information before any changes are made to the structure’s electrical and piping systems and physical layout.
Thanks to the Focuss and SCENE, the entire project took only two to three days to complete, with only two JK employees needed on location for the 40 scans and approximately five hours of image processing. Without a laser scanner capable of handling complex or challenging environments, a similar project would take several weeks from start to finish, requiring up to 10 engineers to travel to the platform or rig, and risk making decisions based on error-prone manual measurements.
It is time and efficiency savings like this that really add up and the high-quality results serve as a proof point that 3D laser scanning represents the future of as-built facilities maintenance and management and is an ideal point of consideration for AEC professionals including structural and mechanical engineers, electrical and plumbing engineers, project and facility managers and others, eager to up their as-built imaging game.
“At this point, we are not looking for work,” Luis added, explaining how busy his company has become despite the virus and the global economic slowdown. “Work is looking for us. 2020 was probably the year with our greatest business opportunities.”
Embracing the As-Built Alternative
In addition to SCENE, engineering companies like JK also have the option to pair the Focuss Series with the As-Built™ Suite Software – a collection of three programs (As-Built Modeler, As-Built for AutoCAD®, and As-Built for Autodesk® Revit®) designed to ensure architects and engineers efficiently create building designs based on precise as-built data that’s fully compatible with their CAD and BIM datasets. It’s also software that enables continuous monitoring of projects with real-time comparisons against CAD/BIM designs and regional standards using 3D scan data, and AutoCAD.
For JK, the company used AutoCAD for the visualization of point cloud data for its engineering models to detect possible interferences. Combined with FARO’s other hardware and software solutions, advantages like this have put JK Engineering ahead of the competition, helping deliver reliable and error-free results and even explore new projects related to archeological ruins, buildings and on-shore oil and gas facilities.
A Tech-enabled Timely Turnaround
Following a 2020 in which the global economy contracted 4.3 percent and oil and gas consumption fell 9 percent, cutting costs, reducing re-work, minimizing on-site injury and saving time will be more important than ever. Energy companies, their clients, and their sub-contractors have their work cut out for them.
In this emerging environment where fewer people on site not only saves money, but could save lives, hardware and software solutions could make the difference between companies that just survive the next 12 months navigating the new normal, or truly thrive.
From humble beginnings in the 19th century when a fledging petroleum industry began building piers on beaches and lakes to extend their search for offshore oil, to today’s $3.3 trillion global enterprise, it’s clear that for the industry to remain competitive, high technology in the form of 3D laser scanning, software-enabled data analysis, and cloud-based remote collaboration, will be front and center problem-solvers in the decades ahead.
For the staff at JK Engineering, who has built their once two-person company into a team of 20 in just four years, they have little doubt that FARO will remain its solutions provider of choice.
“We are very pleased with FARO, its customer service, and their products,” Luis concluded. “We’re happy. Our clients are satisfied. And they know the difference compared to other companies. The amount of projects we’ve completed in fours years, other companies complete in ten.”