Despite a pickup in project work, margins in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) sector remain under pressure. In these times, it’s worth investing in anything that provides an advantage for winning work and protecting profits. AspenTech recently released V11 of aspenONE^® Engineering, with some key enhancements that will help engineering firms in these important areas. 

 

Risk Analysis

The inclusion of the new risk analysis feature in our powerful estimating tool, Aspen Capital Cost Estimator™ (ACCE), provides critical insight into potential sources of risk for a project. With that information, you can now allocate engineering hours to critical areas, heading off potential problems that add risk to the project budget and schedule. 

The risk analysis tool also helps you make smart design decisions faster, resulting in higher-quality designs that perform better and cost less for your customers to build and operate. And by improving customer satisfaction, you position your firm to win more work and repeat business.

We’ve also improved the ability to more quickly and easily generate powerful reports on large data sets from ACCE, giving the entire project team insight into the estimating process and progress. This, again, helps mitigate risk and head off potential financial problems. 

Finally, we’ve connected our market-leading process simulation and plant planning tools to give designers the ability to more easily see how different design options perform under varying market conditions. Delivering this type of information gives owner-operator customers greater confidence in your designs and in your understanding of the project, which can increase your win rate.  

 

Creating Engineering Deliverables More Efficiently

One of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks during the engineering phase of a project is the creation of front-end engineering design (FEED) deliverables. Typically, thousands of equipment datasheets, equipment lists, calculation sheets and other deliverables are required. Now, with our Aspen Basic Engineering™ FEED solution, you can create these deliverables automatically from within our process simulation and safety system design tools.  

When changes in the design occur, the deliverables can be updated without manual data entry. This can save you hundreds, or thousands, of hours and help you avoid costly mistakes that can occur when entering data manually. 

Together, these productivity enhancements can significantly improve profitability on lump-sum jobs. 

 

Diversifying Revenue Streams

An EPC firm’s profitability can also be increased by keeping talented staff off the bench. With the volatility associated with oil and gas CAPEX work, firms are keen to tap into more steady sources of revenue from operating budgets. 

A survey conducted by AspenTech with the Oil and Gas Journal in March 2018 found that 93 percent of EPC executives in the process industries believe finding new sources of revenue is an important initiative. 

With V11, AspenTech is providing even more capabilities to help EPCs leverage their engineering talent and expertise in new areas. These include:

• Improvements to our batch modeling capabilities to support work in the specialty chemicals segment

• Enhancements to AspenTech’s solution for operator training, including even more event scenarios

• New integrations between our process modeling and plant planning tools, so EPCs can help operators keep their models in sync with actual plant conditions, resulting more accurate plant operating plans  

 

As the industry continues to navigate these promising but challenging times, EPCs must look to tap every available advantage to win more work and generate consistent profits. The aspenONE V11 Engineering suite provides enhanced tools to help you run more profitably and deliver more innovative designs to your customers.

With new cloud deployment options and a comprehensive eLearning offering, the AspenTech solutions are more accessible than ever. Learn more about aspenONE V11 here.