Modern Mining January 2017

TECHNOLOGY

WorleyParsons RSA develops 5D project As WorleyParsons’ global centre of excellence for mining, WorleyParsons RSA expends a substantial amount of energy and resources on developing advanced solutions for its customers that will increase accuracy and efficiency while reducing risk.

T he project delivery and engineer- ing consultancy has been develop- ing a 5D project design platform that integrates sophisticated tech- nology tools in order to provide a greater degree of predictability throughout the lifecycle of an asset, ultimately increasing profits, even in the ongoing volatile commod- ity market. “We ‘orchestrate’ the best available standard systems so that they can plug into each other,” says Henry Jonker, General Manager – Mining at WorleyParsons RSA. “There are a number of powerful engineering design processes and pro- grammes that are used to improve efficiencies in the mining and other sectors. We are one of the first engineering consultancies in the min- ing sector to develop methods that integrate these products to combine the benefits of using them together. Essentially we’re taking individ- ual puzzle pieces and figuring out how to slot them together to show our customers the bigger picture of their project.” WorleyParsons RSA began developing its integrated design project platform over five years ago, by integrating 3D intelligent design data mapping with over 20 different engineer- ing design processes and programmes to create a visual 5D design scope that incorporates schedule and cost. This 5D integrated project platform approach has already been applied to a number of projects, and is proving to save cus- tomers time and money. Mushir Khan, Manager of Engineering at WorleyParsons RSA, says that by applying the integrated technology to the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) contract for Royal Bafokeng Platinum’s second phase 100 kilo- tonne per month (ktpm) Merensky concentrator, the project was completed successfully and expediently. “This is the first project where the integrated technology was applied to its fullest potential and it has proven to work efficiently. We were able to quickly identify value improvements by picking up optimisation from the previous design by using 5D technology. Optimisation is

usually done after a project is finished – in this case, we used 5D technology in parallel with optimisation, saving the customer time and money, while concurrently identifying risks and value improvement propositions.” Khan explains that the norm is to first com- plete a feasibility study and then address all the risks that were identified in the feasibility stage, followed by establishing value improvements to bring costs down and improve construction schedules. For the Royal Bafokeng Platinum Mine (BRPM) project, by using the integrated technology model, WorleyParsons was able to do the feasibility study and value improvement simultaneously and determine 90 % of the dimensions and costs, enabling the next phase – the detailed engineering – to be undertaken quickly and very accurately, resulting in a pre- dictable construction cost. Khan says that this high level of accuracy is obtained by plugging in real-time costs into a 3D parametric design module to create a cost-based estimate. “We can now seamlessly integrate 3D parametric design in a 5D plat- form, making detailed engineering much easier and quicker, and enabling us to give our cus- tomers a far clearer overview of their projects,” he says. WorleyParsons RSA has been using para- metric design for some time, particularly for bulk material handling, to simulate how pro- cesses will work based on specified parameters entered. Parametric design is a type of 3D mod- elling which can demonstrate how a product or process will function based on varying param- eters or values. Parametric design models allow

This 5D integrated project platform approach has already been applied to a number of projects, and is proving to save customers time and money.

22  MODERN MINING  January 2017