Insights / 01
Turnarounds, planned on the twin.
A turnaround is the most expensive week in a plant's life, and most of it is spent discovering what the drawings got wrong. A twin captured before the event, and kept current through it, changes what a shutdown is.
The discovery tax
Every turnaround manager knows the pattern. The scope is frozen from drawings and the last event's notes. Crews mobilize. Then the real plant shows up: a valve that is not where the P&ID says, a tray configuration nobody recorded, corrosion under insulation that the 2019 inspection photographed and filed in a drawer. Each discovery costs crew hours, crane time and schedule, and the discoveries compound because the plan was built on paper.
Capture before the event
The twin discipline starts months earlier. The unit is captured while it runs: terrestrial laser scanning and photogrammetry for the structure, drones for the elevations and the tank farm, thermal for what the eye cannot see. LIIVE SPACE is our autonomous capture system, designed for exactly this work; today the same captures run through our shipped reality capture pipeline.
Inside the twin, scope stops being a spreadsheet argument. Planners walk the measured asset, mark the work on the objects themselves, and measure quantities with xTAKEOFFx instead of estimating them from a walkdown. Scaffolding, tie-ins and lifts get sequenced against the model, including the clearances.
Versioned through the event
Our twin platform treats the event as a branch. The as-found condition is a version. The planned state is a branch. As work completes, releases land against the model, so the twin at any hour of the shutdown answers the only question that matters: what is true right now, and what changed since yesterday.
Inspections stop being binders. A timestamped capture tied to the asset it belongs to is evidence the next event, the insurer and the regulator can all read the same way.
The as-left twin is the product
When the unit starts up, the plant keeps the twin: as-left condition, verified scope, custody and inspection records in place. The next turnaround starts from truth instead of from archaeology, and operations inherits a working record of its own asset, not a promise to update the drawings someday.
Field facts
- Capture inputs
- LAS / LAZ / E57 point clouds, panoramas, drone photogrammetry, thermal
- Planning
- xTAKEOFFx measurements and xBUILDERx scope from the model
- State model
- Records, versions, branches, releases, measurements
- Featured twins
- George R. Brown Convention Center and Houston Smoke Warehouse, live today
Keep reading
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A plant, a terminal, a building, a venue. If it exists in the world, it belongs in the system. Tell us what you operate and we will show you the twin.
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