Five industry leaders from across Tetra Tech High Performance Buildings Group – Mason Gangi, Senior Engineer at NDY; Steve Bonser, Director, Manufacturing & Process/Data Centre, Mission Critical at Hoare Lea; William Greenlee, Vice President, Advanced Tech and Mission Critical Sector Lead at Glumac; Sam Khalilieh, National Director – Advanced Manufacturing & Mission Critical at Tetra Tech; and Sophie Page, Director at Tetra Tech – met recently to talk about the challenges our clients are facing on complex industrial projects.
1. Availability of equipment and a skilled workforce
Our clients say: Equipment and labour are in short supply.
Standardise design
We’re seeing equipment on extremely long lead times. Generators, transformers, switchgear and UPSs can be on a 30- to 52-week order. We’re working with clients to rationalise and standardise designs, especially for generators.
Where we’ve got multiple units, we aim to design to a standard generator size and specification. When we get the design streamlined as much as possible, it allows us to procure a number of the same units which provides certainty and speeds up manufacturing time. Manufacturers can book slots for products, get them built and they can then be sent out ‘just in time’ to meet the project program.
Another benefit of standard equipment is that it allows for flexibility in future use. Many customised designs only fit in one place at one point in time. When we use a more standard product, it allows us to switch them in and out as we move through product lines and facilities.
Steve Bonser, Director, Manufacturing & Process/Data Centre, Mission Critical at Hoare Lea
Modular design
Speed to market is important for industrial projects and modular design helps to reduce time on the program. This type of design is increasingly becoming the norm for the sector.
In manufacturing, where there’s a lot of repeatability, a standard size of switchboard or generator can be rolled out throughout the production line.
We know that when we’re designing a building, the production line is going to evolve to keep up with the latest manufacturing equipment. If we design in a modular approach with a given-size unit, we can flex a number of those units to meet the connected load.
Modular design also reduces the number of different components, and spares inventory, needed and speeds up delivery as you’re providing a standard module all the way through. This can also mean it’s easier to maintain as the team are more familiar with, for example, plant room design.
When design can be completed off-site and brought to the site to connect and install, it’s built in a secure and controlled environment where there’s better quality control. It also speeds up construction by parallelling onsite activities and reducing project timelines.
Sustainability
Environmental impact is another huge draw for modular. Equipment is designed with less waste and energy. You’re also building in a cleaner factory production line environment.
Commissioning
Items and modules are tested and pre-commissioned before they’re shipped to site which reduces time and labour – beneficial in a tight labour market. It also speeds up installation and final commissioning, almost becoming plug and play.
Meeting labour supply
We’ve got a number of high-tech projects going on simultaneously in certain regions across the globe that are having a really large draw on limited labour markets. Everyone’s fighting for labour for their projects and there’s only so much to go around. Modulating and using offsite construction is one way of streamlining the process.
Early specification and procurement
It’s essential to pull a specification together early and ask the client to order equipment in advance of the contractor being on board. This requires the design of the space to be pretty well developed as we’re placing final orders for equipment.
2. Energy consumption, power supply, clean energy
Our clients say: We worry about energy consumption and the availability of power supply.
Mason Gangi, Senior Engineer at NDY
Power supply
A number of our clients need to unlock more grid capacity for their facilities. For some, we’ve been assessing demand on a daily and weekly basis to understand shortfalls and identify how capacity can be met. On several projects, we’ve used battery energy storage to bridge the gap.
Depending on the program, grid reinforcement can be many years off. Working carefully to understand loads means we can match building load profiles with battery storage capacity to provide an optimised solution. Getting these calculations as accurate as possible helps negate excessive CAPEX with oversizing.
This approach can unlock a site’s power to enable expansion or increase manufacturing output.
Sam Khalilieh, National Director – Advanced Manufacturing & Mission Critical at Tetra Tech
Clean energy
Sites often use a combination of different systems that can meet both demand and sustainability requirements.
We’ve designed onsite power plants where we’re adding massive capacity with generators. As a lot of these generators operate with diesel or natural gas, we’re trying to balance this with sustainability.
We’ve talked with different clients about the potential of a different system that would combine both the power they need and a more sustainable solution. Hydrogen is one example. Sometimes we’re looking at fuel cells as an option.
While they’re still a few years away, we’re also talking about the potential of small nuclear reactors (SMRs). We’re seeing a lot of interest in these because they allow you to bring your power onsite, removing the risk of power coming from a centralised utility that may take years to upgrade capacity; and reduce carbon to zero in operations.
There’s no one solution that fits all and there are always trade-offs.
Photovoltaics (PV)
We’ve been using PV for a number of years and they work well. As some of our manufacturing clients aren’t manufacturing 24/7 or at weekends, being able to capture that PV in storage systems can help reduce grid demand.
If we’ve got a manufacturing process which is cyclic, and is just running during the day, we can use the benefits of cheaper electricity in the evenings to recharge the battery. We can then discharge it during the day when there may be constraints on the grid or the carbon intensity of the grid’s electricity is higher.
Natural gas
In some regions, natural gas is being phased out. While can remove it from some industrial sites, there are industrial processes that still rely on it and there’s not yet a feasible alternative on such a large scale.
We’re working on a large steam system that uses natural gas and have been working with our client and the manufacturer to have the equipment ready for alternative green fuels that may come onto the market in the future. In this case, the burner that was consuming the natural gas is also ready to be changed over for green hydrogen.
We regularly talk to manufacturers and suppliers about how we can ensure that any new project is future-ready for how the market will change.
Efficiencies
Two questions we ask on each project are:
- How do we specify the most appropriate and efficient systems?
- How do we make sure we’re using equipment in the most efficient way possible?
We carry out studies to determine what’s actually being used and where there are inefficiencies. We then provide fairly straightforward measures to correct them. This can free up more power from an existing power source.
Identifying the right electrical distribution system within the facility also minimises losses and increases efficiency. A lot of manufacturing equipment operates more efficiently when heavily loaded.
Our design philosophy works to ensure that our completed design isn’t oversized or over delivering. One way we do this is to identify areas of a facility that don’t need to have strict temperature and humidity control.
In cooler regions, we can leverage the local climate for free cooling, bringing air straight in to cool a space without having to use additional energy to achieve those internal conditions.
Sharing energy
Energy is precious and being able to reuse any waste energy from a process to benefit another should always be investigated.
The process of manufacturing can generate a lot of heat. Being able to recover that heat and use it elsewhere makes sense; it could be pumped into a district heating system and shared with neighbours.
One of our projects in Canada had a tremendous amount of waste heat and we’ve done 3 things with it: heat up the office space, create domestic hot water and de-ice.
Heat recovery reduces energy consumption and cost, improves energy efficiency and lowers emissions.
3. Technology and resilience
Our clients say: How can we avoid technology obsolescence soon after project completion?
Technology
Clients are rethinking their capital investment as technology and AI evolve. They need to know what to spend money on so their systems won’t be obsolete in a few years.
We’re seeing a lot of this is happening in data centres where the equipment that’s being used to support these facilities isn’t responsive enough or capable of handling the massive fluctuation that you see from AI technology. While this isn’t happening in advanced manufacturing yet, it will soon.
When it comes to the mechanical and electrical equipment, the most future-ready gear tends to be the most expensive. Clients are reluctant to invest in this when there’s the possibility it could be obsolete in 5 years.
There’s a discussion between manufacturers, researchers and consultants as we try to better understand what technology will be needed in the future and how we can meet its needs using the right equipment.
Resilience
Our clients often ask for advice on the level of resilience a system requires. This is unique to each project and depends on the uptime requirements of their manufacturing process and level of downtime they can allow for. The more resilience we design into a building, the more CAPEX is needed, often increasing plant space and operational and maintenance costs.
At the beginning of a project, we seek to understand what sort of downtime is allowed during operations and the meantime to repair a system. If a system does fail, can it be down for a couple of hours or more? Understanding these timings allows us to refine and optimise our design.
As we move away from snowflake design, our clients are understanding how standardisation can help build resilience, especially in terms of preventing issues where equipment and spare parts aren’t commonly available.
If there’s a failure on a piece of equipment, we want it to be able to be pulled out and replaced without losing any overall capacity. In a worst case, if the CAPEX is low and it’s not possible to allow for redundancy, then how we can create resilience by isolating one area from another so that portion can be repaired while the rest continues as normal. Once the repair is complete, the area that was faulty can be brought online with the rest.
If you didn’t have that sort of mentality in design, you could be left in a situation where one single point of failure could mean that the entire facility goes down.
Short-term plans
Our large clients used to have plans and budgets that span up to 10 years. They’ve kept condensing down and now tend to be focusing on the next 6 months to 2 years.
Program changes
When you know the direction a project is going, you can predict changes and add it into the design. You want to have flexibility to be able to move partitions, drill into concrete floors and set new systems as well as swap out equipment when demand increases and needs change.
We’re talking to a couple of different clients who need downtime for certain equipment to be no more than a few hours as it impacts the entire line. System design needs to be flexible so if the equipment does fail, you have a quick disconnect on all the equipment that’s connected to the skid, pull it out and – within a few hours – you have the skid up and running and the line back in production.
4. Project coordination and mitigating risk
Our clients say: I want to derisk the project by focusing on detail, pricing and coordination early.
Strong project coordination is about having good communication channels established between the owner, operator, security and maintenance teams, designers, contractors and sustainability consultants – all of whom have different priorities and constraints. It’s about understanding how information will be transferred accurately and ensuring no-one is operating in a vacuum.
Design management role
When taking on the lead management role, we’re working closely with a contractor who’s very conscious of costs and demanding a high level of coordination to reduce risk. We need to set this up early in design phase.
The contractor wants to make sure that the architect, services and structure teams are talking to each other so critical items are resolved early. This helps them more accurately price a project.
As engineers, we’re entrusted to create a constructable set of drawings that allows our clients to build their facility. A portion of the project is working with construction teams; we need to understand their needs to be able to give them documents and models that are pragmatic, buildable and cost effective.
Live models
We’re also seeing clients eager to jump into a 3D model, walk through the spaces with the consultant team and give feedback. This is fantastic; it streamlines approvals and transition to the next design stage.
We use platforms that are often live and allow designers, contractor and client to, simultaneously, have a view of what’s going on.
Clash-free design
It’s much easier, cheaper and quicker to correct something in design than in construction. So, there’s a strong push for this coordinated clash-free design. Building information modelling (BIM) is a key part of this.
In offsite manufacturing, all modules have a maximum width and height and are designed to fit on the back of a truck. When designing the main service runs in a manufacturing building, you can put spatial allocations into the model at an early stage. This gives you a boundary to design your services within.
Quite often, as design evolves, walls will move and floor heights may move up and down. But, with extrusions in the model – which show boundaries of where the services can go – the chance of a clash reduces.
Single project leader
Having one project leader and point of contact for as many services as possible means that coordination can take place internally. This means there’s upfront coordination of design across all disciplines and coordination with contractors before construction begins.
Early risk assessment
Risk is one of the most critical things that we talk with our clients about as early as possible. This isn’t only across design but also the supply chain, regulatory compliance, stakeholder coordination and contingency.
By identifying potential challenges during the initial stages, we can proactively develop mitigation strategies, reducing the likelihood of delays, cost overruns and quality issues.
