Integrated solutions rule for plant design

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Amir M. Heshmati, managing director, ImageGrafix Software is based in Dubai.

Image Grafix is a distributor, developer and service provider of mechanical engineering software addressing integrated plant design solutions. In Dubai since 1996, the company's main focus is oil, gas, and petrochemicals.

What sector dominates the ImageGrafix workload?

I would say oil and gas as well as manufacturing industries. Other sectors were power generation and district cooling. This year the workload hasn't changed very much, it's largely the same players. However, we would expect an increase in business in power generation and water treatment projects, as the region continues to push ahead with these.

What are the key developments in plant design?

I think it is the growing interest in developing integrated total plant design solutions. Obvious benefits of an integrated total plant design solution are evident in the fact that data reuse leads to work hour savings and reduced mistakes incurred during manual or semi-automatic data transfer. One of the major benefits of a system that shares all information is that it allows workflow tasks to be broken up and distributed to different project team members and this may be done on a regional or discipline level, between EPCs and owner/operators, or in many other ways.

If all team members can see and benefit from the work of all others, there is no need to face the choice of either having to assign the entire project to a single individual or single group, or risk clashes and other incompatibilities between different team members. This shows that distributive design may well be the true payoff for an integrated engineering system.

What changes are you making to cope with current market conditions?

Our business model has always been flexible, enabling us to cope with situations such as the current market crisis. We are on the right track to achieve our targets including 20% growth in revenues for 2009 and our plans to expand and open offices in major energy centres. We are opening our office in Doha in the first week of May to be closer to our clients in Qatar. How is your workload split around the Middle East?

The UAE is our largest market in the Middle East/North Africa region, followed by Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Over 75% of our revenues come from GCC.

What's biggest challenges your customers are facing?

Our customers are mainly owner/operators, EPCs, consultants and fabricators. Obviously all these companies have been affected by the financial crisis. Despite all these difficulties and cancellations of new projects, they still have a job which has to be done on time and within budget.

Most of our major EPC clients have enough projects to keep them busy until 2010/2011 and with the reduced revenues and lack of readily available financing, I would say, their biggest challenges are to maintain a lean size and at the same time increase their productivity and maintain the same throughput. ImageGrafix has aligned its resources and solutions in the same direction. For example, our company in India is helping our clients in completing their engineering design works through our qualified resources.

What changes have you seen in the region?

More than a decade ago, when we started our engineering software distribution and support in the Middle East, there were only a few EPC contractors who had resources locally to use design software and solutions. Almost all the design work and analysis were done overseas at their head offices and sent to the region for implementation.

Looking at the Middle East now, you will see a lot of players employing thousands of engineers in various disciplines taking care of A-Z of design, construction and commissioning of sophisticated piping structures, platforms, pressure vessels, storage tanks, etc., and in exploration and production. This is a pretty healthy industry which I am confident will survive the current downturn.

What is your fastest growing sector?

Plant design is the fastest growth market mainly because it is adopted and used by downstream owner/operators, EPCs, petrochemical companies, power and utility companies.

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