Project Summary
With offi ces across the world’s key petroleum
and natural gas extracting regions, VECO is a
leading provider of engineering, construction,
and maintenance services to the energy industry.
One of the company’s largest regional offi ces,
located in Anchorage, Alaska, employs over 1,000
people, including 250 engineering personnel who
use everything from 3D models to laser scanning
and beyond to boost productivity and deliver
better service to clients. Thanks to its advanced
features and interoperability, AutoCAD serves as
the technology hub for all the offi ce’s projects.
Utilizing Autodesk software, VECO is:
• Helping clients save as much as one-half million
dollars in engineering fees
• Effi ciently maintaining accurate documentation
• Creating sophisticated client presentations
quickly and easily
• Delivering value and innovative services to
clients
• Increasing productivity throughout the design
process
The Challenge
Accurate Designs Essential
VECO’s engineering team members use their
expertise to help clients maintain existing assets,
build new infrastructure, and keep infrastructure
documentation up-to-date. Whether they are
keeping Trans-Alaska Pipeline projects on schedule
or designing retrofi ts for offshore gas platforms,
the VECO team must guard against errors. When
they creep into designs, errors not only increase
costs during construction, but they also put critical
schedules in jeopardy.
“Most of our work is schedule-driven,” says
Mark Christenson, VECO’s design technologies
manager. “We depend on our design tools to
perform as expected. Our design software needs
to be able to help us reduce the risk of errors and
be interoperable with the technology we use to
maximize productivity.”
VECO
Customer Success Story
AutoCAD®
Autodesk® 3ds Max®
Autodesk® Raster Design
“AutoCAD serves as the hub of our design
processes. It is at the core of everything
we do from getting started to the fi nal
deliverable. All our engineering disciplines
use AutoCAD to design, create renderings,
and collaborate. Because AutoCAD is so
interoperable, we can do more.”
Mark Christenson,
Design Technologies Manager,
VECO
The Solution
VECO uses a wide array of software to win new
work and move projects forward. For presentations
with prospective clients, VECO creates photorealistic
models with Autodesk 3ds Max. When
retrofi tting existing infrastructure from paperbased
plans, VECO scans the images and converts
them to a digital format with Autodesk Raster
Design. And VECO turns to specialized third-party
applications for certain aspects of plant design.
In every case, AutoCAD is at the center of these
processes.
“AutoCAD serves as the hub of our design
processes,” reports Christenson. “It is at the core
of everything we do from getting started to the
fi nal deliverable. All our engineering disciplines
use AutoCAD to design, create renderings, and
collaborate. Because AutoCAD is so interoperable,
we can do more. It makes using innovative
approaches more practical and error-free.”
Faster As-builts
Helping to maintain the 800-mile-long Trans-
Alaska Pipeline, which runs from Prudhoe Bay to
Valdez, Alaska, is one of VECO’s most signifi cant
ongoing projects. The Alyeska Pipeline Service
Company, the pipeline’s operator, has strict
drafting standards, and until recently, most of the
pipeline documentation resided exclusively on
paper. To meet these challenges, VECO developed
a process that allows its design team to work with
plans in a digital format using Autodesk Raster
Design and AutoCAD.
According to Christenson, “We begin by converting
the plans from raster to vector data using
Autodesk Raster Design. Then we update the
designs in AutoCAD. We created custom standards
and menus in AutoCAD that further accelerate
the process. In the course of doing routine
maintenance, we have converted over 15,000
pipeline drawings to AutoCAD. The client now has
accurate, usable as-builts that they can use into
the future. It has been a very successful program
for us.”
More Time for Engineering
Another recent VECO project that depended
on the interoperability of AutoCAD for success
involved an offshore natural gas platform project.
A fi ltering problem was negatively impacting
the platform’s productivity. The operator
lacked accurate as-builts for the aging platform
and wanted to avoid the expense of extensive
redrawing. VECO turned to sophisticated laser
scanning technology to generate accurate plans.
The VECO design team then imported the data
into AutoCAD to design a solution to the problem.
“Being able to use laser scanning in conjunction
with AutoCAD on the project saved us a signifi cant
amount of time,” says Christenson. “Ordinarily,
redrawing and additional fi eld trips could have
taken up a considerable amount of the project
schedule. We signifi cantly reduced time spent
on redrawing and travel, which allowed us to
devote more of our energy to solving the client’s
problem.”
The Result
Saving Time and Reducing Costs
The interoperability of AutoCAD not only has
allowed VECO to use innovative processes and
technologies, but also has led to measurable time
and cost savings. “For us, AutoCAD is as essential
and dependable as email,” explains Christenson.
“We use it virtually every day. AutoCAD has helped
us to reduce the process of maintaining as-builts
for the Alaska Pipeline from hours to minutes. And
because it allowed us to use laser scanning more
seamlessly on the gas platform project, we were
able to save the client $500,000.”
For More Information
To learn more, visit:
www.autodesk.com/autocad
Try AutoCAD at:
www.autodesk.com/autocad-trial
Provide feedback and input on the future of
AutoCAD:
http://myfeedback.autodesk.com.
“AutoCAD has helped us to reduce the
process of maintaining as-builts for the Alaska
Pipeline from hours to minutes. And because
it allowed us to use laser scanning more
seamlessly on the gas platform project, we
were able to save the client $500,000.”
Mark Christenson,
Design Technologies Manager,
VECO
VECO
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