Through ProjectWise, contractors can securely access PG&E’s substation designs and collaborate with in-house engineers working “live” in PG&E’s environment.
PG&E Substation Engineering Services deployed Bentley Substation and ProjectWise to approximately 80 internal design employees in 2011 and 2012. This decreased errors on drawings, reduction of the amount of construction rework in the field, and a drop in the average design hours per drawing by 50%.
In order to continue to successfully manage substation work, PG&E needed to identify a process that allowed external contractors to access and collaborate on PG&E’s 3D substation drawings.
Approximately 60% of PG&E’s projects are contracted out to major engineering firms in the United States including GE, WorleyParsons, Schneider Engineering, Sargent & Lundy, Burns & McDonnell, Dashiell, SEL, HDR, ABB, TRC, Mesa Engineering, BPE, Ampirical Solutions, and Black & Veatch.
PG&E also wanted its contractors to use Bentley Substation and ProjectWise to realise efficiency gains and benefits similar to those that it had been realising internally. PG&E sought to maintain strict control over a single, centralised storage database where all PG&E drawings would be stored and accessed by both the contractors and internal designers.
PG&E Substation Engineering Services worked with the PG&E IT organisation and Bentley to evaluate a number of options that would enable effective, efficient, and secure project collaboration with contractors.
After much analysis and a proof of concept, the use of Bentley Substation and ProjectWise via a secure Citrix connection was the solution chosen.
This implementation allowed PG&E to eliminate the need to have a drawing administrator while enabling control over the drawings and projects that contractors are able to see and change. Contractors can securely log into ProjectWise, then check out and work on PG&E’s drawings using Bentley Substation.
The engineering contractor collaboration solution allows for simultaneous design by multiple contractors, as well as instantaneous error-checking between engineering firms.
