Importance of Detailed Engineering Design Process

Engineering is often associated with the invention, design and construction of structures such as roads, bridges, buildings, industrial plants and more. As part of this, detailed design and engineering, as a stream, needs more exploration. It is an essential process in any project that requires the application of knowledge into action. Detailed engineering is the most crucial process in any project that requires the presentation of ideas and knowledge into action.

Let's delve deeper and have a quick review of the engineering implementation phases to understand detailed engineering design. A project implementation process involves three engineering phases. The first two phases describe the creative models (the appropriate solutions are defined for the analyzed problems). The third and last phase is detailed engineering, in which the results of the previous stages are further processed in reality.

The first two creative phases are conceptual engineering and basic engineering:

Conceptual Engineering

The main concern in any conceptual engineering is the feasibility of the project. It is applied to identify both economic and technical utility based on the previous study by determining project requirements.

Factors to be considered during the conceptualization of the project include:

• Products requirement and production capacity
• Legislations and regulations relevant to the project
• Identify user requirements
• Manufacturing process description
• Installation description
• Plan and block diagrams for material flow
• Ancillary service estimated requirements
• Types of equipment
• Investment valuation of ± 30%

Basic Engineering

It is the second phase, which reflects all the necessary project requirements. The following parameters are defined during this phase.

• Conceptual engineering detailed review
• User requirements review
• Datasheets for different facilities, equipment and rooms
• Thermal loads and airflow calculation within the facility
• List of equipment vs. consumption
• Piping diagrams and instrumentation (P & ID)

Now, the completion of the primary engineering phase lays as the foundation for the next and most crucial step – Detailed engineering.

What is Detailed Engineering?

It is the phase in project implementation that applies all major engineering disciplines such as piping, mechanical, civil, electrical, structural, instrumentation and more.

Detailed engineering is an integral phase for every project that defines and sets the overall cost of the project life cycle. It plays a vital role by delivering high quality, cost-effective solutions and on-time completion of EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) projects.

It is the phase in which the project starts inching closer towards reality and ideas are transformed into actual entities. Every component, subsystem, and relevant part of the project is documented, procured and implemented into practice.

Although it is unlikely to have all the needed information, the detailed engineering phase must be highly accurate. A project is considered to be correctly calculated if the deviation between the estimated budget and actual investment does not exceed 5%.

The detailed engineering consists of the following set of tasks:

• Review, verify, confirm and if required modify the design solutions and assumptions
• The technical, economic and legal information must be provided to the project sponsor.
• Determine important data, construction details and manufacturing conditions and present at this phase.

For a successful design and detail engineering, there is often a need for project managers to control various stakeholders and work towards a common goal.