Reducing document management

Situated on 20 acres in an industrial park north of San Diego, the state-of-the-art Palomar Energy Project will use natural gas to generate more than 546 megawatts of electricity, enough to power approximately 550,000 homes receiving services from San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). The facility has two combustion-turbine generators, two heat recovery steam generators, a steam-turbine generator and hundreds of other critical systems.

For Bureau Veritas (the consulting firm acting on behalf of the State of California and the California Energy Commission (CEC)), SDG&E, and the project's engineering and construction firms - Bibb & Associates Inc and Kiewit Industrial Co, respectively - one of the main challenges is managing the huge volume of engineering plans.

Both Bibb & Associates Inc and SDG&E deliver design plans to Bureau Veritas for approval. Once approved, plans have to be sent to Kiewit Industrial Co to use during construction. Efficiently tracking, reviewing and managing engineering plans is crucial to project timing. A conservative estimate places the number of engineering documents associated with the project at more than 30,000. Documents include DWG and DGN CAD file formats, project schedules, environmental impact studies and hundreds of other materials.

Traditionally, managing engineering and compliance documents for a project of this size has required dozens of dedicated administrative staff collaborating across firms to copy and route paper.

When engineers worked on a large project like Palomar, they would have to plot, collate and deliver thousands of pages of design plans to Bureau Veritas for permit approval. The engineer designing the plan also had to sign it before multiple copies of the plan were produced and sent for review. As a result, costs and delays could mount as plans were returned to engineers for changes because they did not comply with code requirements.

If plans were approved, Bureau Veritas staff would sign and date the materials and send them back to Bibb & Associates Inc or SDG&E. The originating firm would then forward the approved plans to Kiewit Industrial Co to use when building the plant. Managing paper for a project of this size can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but this is only part of the problem. Project delays due to lost documents, confusion over which documents are approved, or simply waiting for mailed documents to arrive can create additional headaches.

To streamline the management of Palomar documents, Adobe Acrobat Professional software and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) was selected.

With the new software, CAD drawings created in Autodesk AutoCAD or Bentley Microstation software, project plans, and other supporting documents are now converted to platform- and application-independent Adobe PDF files. The compact Adobe PDF files are much smaller than CAD files in native applications, making it faster to download and store files. At the same time, design details are clearer as the software can zoom in or out when viewing plans in Adobe PDF.

Tracking reviews and verifying who has approved content is also streamlined because engineers can digitally sign Adobe PDF files using the self-sign feature in Acrobat or digital signature solutions from companies like VeriSign.

Instead of receiving stacks of engineering drawings on paper, Bureau Veritas staff now receive emails alerting them when plans in Adobe PDF are posted to the company's extranet. Reviewers can download the plans and comment electronically using engineering mark-up tools in Acrobat Professional software such as redlining, clouding and notes.

After reviewers have commented on the Adobe PDF file, all feedback is merged into a single file associated with the plan. The submitting engineer is then notified by email that the edited plan is available from Bureau Veritas.

The improvements are dramatic with review of materials up to 95% faster - in hours instead of days or weeks.

When all plans - structural, plumbing, civil, mechanical and electrical - are approved and permitted by Bureau Veritas, the multiple Adobe PDF files are combined into one file. The documents are easy to manage, and finding information is fast because the file can be searched electronically.

Digitally signed Adobe PDF files offer the added benefit of aiding document control because if content is changed after a file is signed, the electronic signature is invalidated.