Nothing about the CSPC Nanhai Petrochemical Complex is small. The site covers 4.27 square kilometres (1.65 square miles). Once it is completed next year, the complex will include 11 process and utility units, as well as a multitude of other buildings and offices. At its heart is a world-scale ethylene cracker capable of producing at least 800000 tons of ethylene and 430000 tons of propylene a year. In all, the complex will turn out some 2.3million tonss of products annually.

It is no surprise then that the Nanhai project is touted as one of the largest Sino-foreign investments to date. The owner is CNOOC and Shell Petrochemicals Co. Ltd, a joint venture between Shell Nanhai BV (a member of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies), with a 50percent stake, and CNOOC Petrochemicals Investment Ltd (CPIL), also with a 50percent stake. CPIL is owned by CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation, 90percent) and Guangdong Investment & Development Co, 10percent). The project's cost: US$4.3billion.
Three of the largest engineering and construction companies in the world -- Bechtel, Sinopec Engineering Inc (SEI) of China and Foster Wheeler -- formed their own joint venture known as BSF to act as the project management contractor (PMC) for the complex.
Just the information technology and logistics portion of the project alone would make many people's heads spin. Enter Peter Staines, IT and project services manager for BSF. He has been in this industry for 30years and holds a degree in computer science from the University of Westminster. He joined Bechtel in 1981 and has worked in London, Saudi Arabia and several Asian locales.
Staines, who began his current role in March2001, is responsible for technical IT requirements, including implementing computer applications and related customisations, managing document control and installing networks and back-up systems. Project services provided by his organisation include transportation, expatriate accommodations and logistics. Here he discusses the successes and challenges of the Nanhai project to date.
Question: Everything about the Nanhai project seems big. What are some of the project metrics related to your work?
Staines: In addition to the three PMC companies, we have six major international EPC contractors, another dozen or so we classify as asignificant' contractors and about 200 others doing different work. There are in excess of 100 applications in use. Currently, more than 20000 people are working at the project jobsite, with 1500 of those being non-manual jobs. We peaked at just over 1500 workstations across the project, including office workers, engineering, etc. At our peak, we had people in 22 different locations around the world connecting to our network.
Our IT budget on this project is US$16 million with the IT staff peaking at about 30. When you consider all of the dynamics, it is quite a task.
Question: Is this is the largest project you -- or probably anyone else here -- has worked on?
Staines: Without a doubt, it's the most complicated project I have been involved in. Our planning efforts early on paid off. Without this planning, we could have had big problems simply because of the dynamics of the project. We are on a fairly compressed schedule, with the Nanhai project scheduled to be ready for start-up by end of 2005, in a country where nothing like this has been done before -- with a team that has never worked together before.
There were significant challenges. But, from an IT standpoint especially, we have been very successful so far. I think that is because of the effort we put into planning and strategy from the beginning.
Question: How did planning help you succeed?
Staines: It seems elementary, but preparation and early communication with our clients made a tremendous positive impact. The driving force was talking to the owner's manufacturing organisation to understand what engineering data they would need at the end of the day.
We understand EPCs 100percent. We know what information we need to do our jobs. The owner world can be very different. They typically begin by saying they want everything that is in the contract. But the contract is not always well defined enough to determine what aeverything' is.
Fortunately, we were able to sit down with the client even before the project had the official go-ahead. My first meetings were five years ago in Beijing before we won the job. We talked basic concepts and strategies. We got to know each other. Then there was a competitive period where we were not allowed to speak to them. Thankfully, we won the job and were able to sit down together as a team. We had workshops where we -- awe' meaning the PMC and owner representatives -- discussed what our assumptions were based on the contract, compared to their expectations.
It was very important for us to have these discussions and for us not to assume we knew what was required, only for the client to later say, aOh, no, this is not what we want'. Once we understood the requirements, the PMC team went back and looked at what we thought the solutions were.
Question: What did you determine?
Staines: For the money dedicated to the effort, we realised there was an expectation gap. We defined what they could have for the money -- or that they could have more if they would fund it. Up until this point, most of our conversations were not with the team who would ultimately operate the facility. Once we began talking to the Nanhai complex operations and maintenance people, we realised the requirements were actually much smaller than previously defined. Everyone involved in our industry has experienced this kind of capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) issue. If we can ever pull that process forward more and have the O&M people involved from Day1, it will be a in-win for everyone. We need to look at the total cost.
Talking to the operations and maintenance people was a real turning point for us, particularly in terms of data management. When we were able to get our heads around what they actually needed, it became a much more manageable task. There is no need to hand over data that will only sit there and never be seen. It is important to learn what data is valid and needed when operations begin. Once we understood what the client needed, we were able to move forward to deliver.
Question: Speaking of delivering, your team made an important decision when it came to piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) design. What did you choose and why?
Staines: First, allow me to provide some background, and keep in mind the timeframe we are talking about is about four years ago. Bechtel uses Intergraph Plant Design System (PDS) for much of our 3D design. But for how we planned to execute this project, using the older 2DP&ID tools would have made our job very difficult. We knew we would have about 20 different EPCs working on the P&IDs, and each one of those has a Chinese design institute as a partner.
Although it was a very new product at the time, we specified that SmartPlant P&ID (from Intergraph) had to be used. It was a tough decision in those days, because it had not been used on a project of this magnitude. But when we looked at the situation, we could not see any other way. We were awarding EPC contracts worth several hundred million dollars to companies in Japan, Italy, Spain, you name a place. Work was being done all over the world. And we are talking about more than 2600P&IDs for the Nanhai project. In fact, in just one month we produced 5800isometrics.
We needed a tool like SmartPlant P&ID. It gave us the ability to divide the work up in any way we wanted and put it back together in whatever way we needed. What really sold us on SmartPlant P&ID was its worksharing capability -- all tied into us as the PMC.
We can easily understand what is going on from a design standpoint. We could check the status from here on a variety of things. We could electronically see if the mandatory fields were being filled in, for example. With the older tools, that was a manual effort. People would have to go out to the different contractors and perform audits. Now, we can get a pretty good hit from our offices.
Question: It was a new tool then. How did you get over the EPC companies' natural aversion to risk, other than saying, aThis is the way you have to do it?'
Staines: That was the main way. Seriously, we did not see another choice than to standardise on SmartPlant P&ID. Out of the 100-plus applications in use, only a small percent of them were identified in the EPC bids as mandatory. SmartPlant P&ID was one of those. If you did not conform to this in your bid, you had a non-conforming bid and, in theory, you would be disqualified.
The EPCs came into the clarification meeting with questions. They were concerned because they had never used it or even had a chance to test it. We stood firm and said, "No, if you want to work on this project, you need to use this standard." Then they asked us if we were going to help them. We didn't want to be in the position of taking on their implementation risks. This is where we turned to Intergraph.
Question: What role did Intergraph play?
Staines: We knew we needed a team approach. We had already been working with Intergraph for about six months to define what we required of the tool to make the project successful. This was just another step. Our plan was to give Intergraph substantial insight into how we would use SmartPlant P&ID, and then the Intergraph support staff would go into the contractors and help them implement it with the knowledge of what we wanted accomplished.
It's one of Intergraph's strengths -- that it has the kind of global presence to go from China to Italy to Japan to the United States -- and support the effort. If Intergraph did not have this structure in place, we definitely could not have achieved such success on the P&ID issue.
Question: What happens to the engineering information, such as the P&IDs, after handover?
Staines: We will hand it over as a database. We will hand over SmartPlant P&ID, PDS and INtools (Intergraph's instrumentation design solution). These systems will be maintained by the client afterwards. How that will happen is still up for discussion. There may be an engineering services contract, the client may build up its own organisation or local companies may assume the work. We have not defined how, but the information is there, and it will be maintained.
Question: You have years of experience working in Asia and in the industry. What words of advice do you have for others coming to this area?
Staines: You have to listen and you have to build relationships. As I said earlier, this seems elementary. But you can not assume anything. You have to understand what your client needs -- not just what he says he wants. The same is true with your own vendors. Do not assume that just because it is in a contract, you will get what you want. You have to pay attention and watch these things closely. Listening and establishing relationships -- or in the case of Intergraph, expanding a relationship -- as well as front-end planning made a huge difference for us on the Nanhai project. m

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