The Pörner Group Streamlines Projects with Hexagon’s Integrated Solutions

Company: Pörner Group

Description: The Pörner Group is an independent European company for process plant engineering, founded 1972 with headquarters in Vienna, Austria. As a complete plant engineering provider, the Pörner Group offers the full range of engineering services: from project studies and authority engineering to process engineering, basic and detail engineering as well as procurement to construction management and commissioning of the plant.

Employees: 550+  
Industry: Plant Engineering
Country: Headquarter in Austria
Products used: Intergraph Smart® 3D, Intergraph Smart P&ID, Basic Integrator

Key Benefits:

• Database-centric systems
• Interface-based data takeover between P&ID and Smart 3D (i.e., line numbers)
• Quality optimization through one-time data entry
• Real workshare solutions, driven by relational database systems between different branch offices
• Single source of truth, proper alignment with handovers and more important, the digital twin

Identifying Goals

The Pörner Group is one of Central Europe’s leading independent engineering company for process plant engineering. With 50 years of experience in the process industry, the company offers a full range of engineering services for refineries, petrochemical, chemical and pharmaceutical as well as energy and environmental industries.

Pörner works mainly on greenfield projects as well as on construction projects to revamp plants. Its most important objective was to create an optimized workflow from the beginning of the project until the end to enable a truly iterative engineering design environment. The company needed:

• A clearly defined and comprehensive package for its customer
• A well-managed and overall coordinated performance that is tailored to the specific requirements, a well-structured plan for the shortest possible stoppage of production
• smooth plant operation where all production processes are perfectly coordinated and beyond years of working for its customer

Also, Pörner wanted to have automatic data synchronization via the interfaces between the software packages.  

The company has been a Hexagon partner for many years, always looking for optimizations that enable integrated working. The software must be able to seamlessly transfer data to and from Hexagon’s design tools, as well as third-party systems, while providing a user-friendly interface that is suitable for both engineers and administrators.

Overcoming Challenges

Pörner is a global engineering firm with projects across the world.
The time span in which projects have to be completed is continuously decreasing, yet Pörner’s customers do not want to make compromises on the quality of the service. As a result, it was looking for a way to improve its project throughout time — the time between starting and completing a project and at the same time enhancing the quality.

In addition, projects are becoming increasingly large and complex, which means that different Pörner locations have to work together on projects. Pörner is looking for optimization potential of its system-independent CAD landscape, which supports meeting the business-critical project requirements and enables it to integrate data from different sources to eliminate data silos and use the data as input for other systems.

Realizing Results

Pörner decided to continue on its path of Anlagenbau 4.0® as an independent engineering company and expanded integrated digital workflows. The company is always looking for the best solution for planning and designing process plants that would allow it to handle about 500 projects per year — and it has to be usable internationally.

After careful consideration, Pörner decided to optimize Hexagon’s existing Intergraph Smart® 3D and Intergraph Smart P&ID software packages with integrated solutions for process plant engineering and design solutions and linked it to using the basic integrator. The solutions were selected for the following reasons:

• Intelligent software capabilities that support a data-centric approach
• Having used Hexagon’s solutions for 80% of its projects
• Standardization of work processes across different teams, departments and locations
• Cost-effective solution with advanced features
• Integration between 2D and 3D Solutions (compare and update)

The aim was to optimize the integrated working environment to improve the turnaround time for various customer projects. The implementation of Basic Integrator was achieved with internal know-how and support from Hexagon.

Moving Forward

Pörner’s long-standing and successful use of Hexagon’s design solutions speaks volumes about the reliability and efficiency of these tools. With a solid track record and confidence in the solutions, Pörner is committed to maintaining its partnership with Hexagon well into  
the future.

Moreover, its forward-thinking approach extends beyond mere adoption as it actively seeks to enhance the workflows by seamlessly integrating Hexagon’s solutions with its existing toolset. This strategic focus on optimizing tool interfaces demonstrates Pörner’s dedication to maximizing efficiency and unlocking the full potential of its design processes.

Thomas Hermann, Head of Department Layout & Piping Engineering / CAD Coordinator - Pörner Group:

“We have this concept called Anlagenbau 4.0®. In this program, we want to optimize our digital workflows from the beginning until the end of the project. We use Hexagon as our main partner because of years of good cooperation and the commitments made by Hexagon for the future.”

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