Addressing interdisciplinary process engineering design, construction and operations through 4D virtual environments

Abstract

An interactive and immersive learning environment that will allow students to explore the design, construction, commissioning and operation stages of processing facilities is being developed. The learning environment makes use of a series spherical images captured across not only the facility site but also across the construction and operation period that allow students to investigate the design evolution of a particular spatial area through time by moving up and down in the time frame. It is intended to allow students to learn how engineers from a range of disciplines work together on key issues and decisions required for that part of the design. Interviews with key engineering personnel and project stakeholders will permit the students to explore the reasoning behind critical design decisions. Four learning environments are being developed and include the construction of a bulk liquid storage facility in Brisbane, a sewage treatment facility in Melbourne, a weighbridge at a truck service centre in Melbourne and the demolition of an engineering building in Brisbane followed by the construction of a new “live” building. This paper explores how it is envisaged that the learning environments will be implemented and how they will be used in practice in the class room.

Introduction

The teaching of design is a vital thread in educating chemical engineers that should run throughout the undergraduate curriculum starting at first year and culminating in a major project in the students' final year. Yet, design is also a topic that is often taught by a series of un-related and un-integrated open-ended problems that fail to make the appropriate links to the bigger picture beyond the individual subject, and certainly beyond the discipline. It is often not until their final year that engineering students get the opportunity to integrate their learning across all their subjects into a capstone design activity. Several studies have been conducted that emphasize the importance of introducing students to design concepts early in their programs (Cardella et al., 2008, Edward, 2004, Nesbit et al., 2005).

Because of the timescale of many major projects, engineering students rarely get the opportunity to experience and understand the complete life cycle of a major engineering design be it a structure, machine, network or a process. The life cycle of a project consists of a number of important stages that may include some or all of the following:

• problem identification - the need for a particular engineering solution which may involve the development of a new process, product, structure, network or processing facility,

• scoping design and feasibility study - in the commercial world there are a series of gates or hurdles that projects must pass through before being allowed to proceed to the next stage. The scoping design and feasibility study takes an idea and examines how difficult it might be to implement in practice. Factors considered include financial, legal, environmental, political and commercial considerations,

• conceptual design and business case - in this stage initial designs are developed and a business case is prepared allowing an informed commercial decision to be made on the project,

• detailed design - here the best conceptual design is taken into the detailed engineering design phase where all necessary equipment, controls and layout issues are decided and where procurement for constructed is initiated,

• execution or implementation - the project is executed and the approved design is implemented. This might involve the construction of some processing facility. It will always be a interdisciplinary activity involving engineers and other people with a range of backgrounds. The project may well involve several iterations of the design before this stage is complete,

• operation - the new process, product, structure, network or processing facility is operated,

• close-out or retirement - at the end of a project life cycle the operation is completed and the main components of the project are decommissioned and recovered or recycled.

Engaging students effectively across all the life cycle stages is extremely difficult in education environments. Engineering educators need novel ways of engaging students with the life cycle stages, contextualizing design and operations, and understanding the important interactions that exist at all levels within the larger design picture. Students need to understand the important decision making processes that accompany life cycle issues and key socio-environmental settings.

This paper describes a novel learning environment which captures the thinking and reasoning around engineering designs across all stages of a project from the identification of a need to the retirement of a project. The learning and teaching environment seeks to present to the student the interactions between and perspectives of not just the engineers but the key project stakeholders that include the community, regulators and financial controllers.