The Planning Guide to Piping Design

This title covers the entire process of planning a plant model project from conceptual to mechanical completion, and explains where the piping engineer falls in the process along with his roles and responsibilities. Critical topics covered in this handbook include FEED study and key plans, the importance of CAD support and model reviews, tools for automatic spool generation and linking to automatic fabrication of pipe spools and construction of equipment installation and commissioning.

Richard Beale has over 35 years of plant layout and piping design experience on heavy-oil facilities, refineries, gas plants, pulp and paper facilities and pipelines. Starting as a junior piping draftsman in 1974, he has witnessed the progression of piping design and drafting from manual drafting to 2D CAD and 3D CAD. During his career, he has been a drafter, designer, squad leader, overall project piping lead, and design and drafting department manager with several major engineering consulting companies, as well as technical support to fabrication and construction companies. He has also been an instructor in piping drafting at the polytechnic school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where he lives and serves on the advisory committee at this same institution for the Engineering Design and Drafting Technology program as an industry representative. He is currently employed as an advisor to a major oil and gas producer. Paul Bowers started in the piping design business in 1981 as a junior draftsman on-site at a refinery in Montreal. His areas of plant-piping design experience include chemical, pulp and paper, industrial gases/cryogenics, refining, mining and heavy oil. In 1998, Paul founded PipingDesign.com as a way to educate, inform and connect with those interested in piping design, and he is a member of ASME. Now residing in Calgary, Paul is co-president of SPED Calgary. Peter Smith is an independent consultant with more than 30 years of experience in the onshore and offshore sectors of the oil and gas industry. He has worked on the design, construction and commissioning phases on refineries, offshore platforms, pipelines and FPSO projects in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Having worked for both major operating companies and international EPC contractors on projects that were designed using manually produced drawings, he has witnessed the evolving CAD era and appreciates the advances and advantages of this new technology. He is also aware of some of the short comings that new technology brings, which prompted him to begin writing this piping series.