Ok, so daratechPLANT2008, in its 15^th year [and its 12^th in Houston], witnessed the changing of the guard from Cambridge, MA-based industry admiral, Charles Foundyller to H-town's own TradeFair Group captain, Sean Guerre.  Both the daratechPLANT series & the TradeFair Group were purchased last year by Access Intelligence, the domain-accretion engine funded by Veronis Suhler Stevenson.  Among Access Intelligence's armada are Chemical Week, Chemical Engineering, and Energy Daily banners, to which is now added the TradeFair Group's fleet including POWER Magazine and the Clean Gulf, Clean Atlantic & Clean Pacific conferences.  The daratechPLANT acquisition definitely provides AI with a flagship for rallying many of its capabilities, most interestingly, those of SRI Consulting.  As for this observer, I will mostly miss sagacious Foundyller's information-packed “Industry Outlook” presentations and his hosting [and on occasion, stoking] daratechPLANT's CEO Roundtable, which in the past has proven akin to refereeing kick-boxing kangaroos.  Charles, we'll miss you! - but hopefully not too much, as Mr. Foundyller will be continuing with TradeGroup's stewardship of the show in a consulting capacity [kinda like a proud padre giving over his 15-year old princesa to dance with her novio, but still under Daddy's watchful eye].

Speaking of Clean Atlantic & Clean Pacific, I'm reading the Path between the Seas, by David McCullough, about the efforts to build the isthmian canal bridging the two oceans, begun by the French in the late 1800's and then completed by the Americans - Sweetie picked up a copy autographed by the author at last year's 39^th ECC conference.  Embedded within this tale of international arbitrage, diplomatic derring-do and political intrigue, is the epic drama of a vast, global engineering feat unparalleled by any  peacetime effort within its century.  Particularly inspiring is the untiring efforts of the French patriot engineer, Phillipe Bunau-Varilla, who championed the Panama case versus its Nicarauguan alternative, first as a newly-minted engineer working in the malarial Panamanian jungle and then as a lobbyist extraordinaire, criss-crossing oceans and touring the U.S. to extol the virtues of the Panama route.  The historic 1902 Congressional decision opting for Panama was swung in some part by Bunau-Varilla's last-minute “going postal” - he circulated a current Nicaraguan postage stamp that featured an erupting volcano, thus dramatically underscoring the dangers of any route through that country.

 Among the many other pearls of project wisdom found within the pages of McCullough's Panama story is this, attributed to an instructor at Exeter Academy: “If I had five minutes in which to solve a problem, I would spend three deciding the best way to do it”, which is a 100+year precedent to the 21^st century concept of Front End Engineering & Design [FEED].  If it's not already, Path between the Seas should be required reading for CH2MHill University, being that that storied firm has the contract for the Panama Canal Expansion Program, and is certainly recommended reading for anyone involved in trans-global projects.  In any case, FEED was a prominent sub-theme of daratechPLANT and has emerged as its own category of projects being awarded to EPC's, featuring an accelerated approach to  better planning, optimized engineering and accurate cost estimates for new facilities.  SNC-Lavalin with vendor ASD (www.asdglobal.com), demonstrated a knowledge-based, automated pipe router applied to a FEED project that delivered more design iterations faster than could be done using existing manual methods or detailed design 3D CAD tools . . . hmmm, FEED for thought.

Segueing, the daratechPLANT feed out of the main Raphael Ballroom at the Wyndham exited attendees straight into Autodesk's booth, where the developer of desktop-standard AutoCAD and AutoCAD-based vertical solutions was lauding the combined use of its Civil Design 3D, Revit Structural & Inventor products to address various phases of the project lifecycle (www.autodesk.com).  Both Autodesk & peer Bentley Systems (www.bentley.com) are positioning  retrofitted Intelligent P&ID products as front-and-center to the FEED process.  Now, try not to get confused, but the Autodesk product is AutoCAD P&ID whereas the Bentley product is AutoPLANT P&ID, but “CAD” makes not the difference as they both run on AutoCAD 2007 or 2008, whereas “PLANT” contributes to the difference in that AutoPLANT P&ID has companion AutoPLANT for 3D products whereas AutoCAD P&ID has yet to be joined by an AutoCAD 3D Piping product.  Another difference is Bentley's embracing of  ISO 15926 and Autodesk's inclusion of P.I.P. & ISA workspaces above and beyond the standards supported by both P&ID products.  And if that's not enough P&ID in your porridge, Bentley announced a new OpenPlant PowerPID, the only commercial P&ID solution to be natively based on the completely open 15926 Data Model.

 In a variation of the old setup line to a waiter, “What's that fli doing in the soup” – an undisclosed source discloses that undisclosed IP assets of ACPlant have been acquired by Autodesk from fli out of Baton Rouge for an undisclosed sum; this pundit first posited this possibility in a January 2007 posting at www.aecnews.com [it's still there].  I expect that ACPlant concepts and technology will show up in the yet-to-be-disclosed AutoCAD 3D Piping product and that this will probably not be the last acquisition that Autodesk makes in this area; another undisclosed source opines that it's the P&ID-to- 3D model connection that was the motivation for the ACPlant IP acquisition.

 And bringing up Autodesk University, PI did represent the home-team out at this past November's AU where we christened AU's new Plant Design pavilion with our presence – by “we” & “our” I mostly mean AEC Design Group, Coade, PI's German laser-scanning colleagues, kubit, and PI ourselves.  PI customers were well-represented – in attendance were Valero's David Ybarbo &  bride, Alliance's George Terrazas &  bride, Gulf Interstate's John Hennessy & bride, and Commonwealth sole baron, Larry Glover; also wizards Tim Sparks of ABB Lummus [uhm, I mean CB&I] and John Henderson of GDS [uhm, SNC-Lavalin].  Autodesk had its own plant marquee at the head of the aisle which was very busy for the “Nice Tee” shirts they were giving out – I grabbed one up for each of my boys.  Other than that, the Autodeskers were showcasing their commitment to the Plant Design industry with the AutoCAD P&ID product introduced at the previous year's AU, only updated & enhanced for AutoCAD 2008; Peter Quinn did, however, give a sneak-peak at the yet-to-be-disclosed 3D Piping product Autodesk is planning to introduce in beta mode by this year's AU.

 And speaking of my boys, what a Super Sunday, starting out with Scout Sunday for Thing #1's new Boy Scout troop joined after his Arrow of Light passage from Cub, followed by mine and Sweetie's attending “Love, Janis” at Houston's Alley Theater [even posthumously, there is no love lost between Janis and her hometown, Port Arthur], and then the whole fam damily again to watch the Super Bowl [“Oh Lord, won't you buy me, a color TV”] at Van Laan's no-longer-banned Thujone Zone where I was able to finally congratulate Tom in person on Insight Venture Partners' $42M investment in Coade [uhm, I mean COADE] ... wow!, that's really big and assuredly takes COADE off the aecnews.com thread of possible acquisitions by Autodesk.  Now with the acquisitive shoe on the other foot, IVP members added to COADE's board are calling around to plant design ISV's to see what purchases might make sense to add to their portfolio [“Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz”].  And speaking of singing in Houston's Theatre District, both Thing #1 and Thing #2 will be in the chorus for Houston Grand Opera's production of Billy Budd, April 25^th to May 9^th [Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town”].  I don't know how we pied Pughs'll yet again traverse spring's familial minefield of Opera rehearsals vs baseball practices, but Pony League's starting up again, too.

GPR- ground penetrating radar, now that may be handy in traversing any minefield and has proven helpful in pinning down locations of lost graves as recent participants in a Rice summer course discovered; joined by Prairie View A&M students and faculty, lecturer Allison Henning & professor Dale Sawyer, both of Rice's Earth Science department, acquired and interpreted 59 GPR profiles in Wyatt Chapel Cemetery not far from PVAMU; might be useful in locating underground piping as well - either of which might qualify GPR as a session at the upcoming SPAR2008 Conference [in its 5^th year in Houston, see www.sparllc.com].  Besides its robust offering of presentations, panel discussions and  exhibits centered around brownfield and offshore platform use of 3D laser scanning [Sweetie says to say “Capturing and Managing Existing-Conditions for Design/Construction/Operations], the SPAR conference has a Historic Preservation track, plus the InterContinental Hotel venue is co-hosting  the International Association of Forensic & Security Metrology's Symposium 2008 featuring applications of laser technologies in accident reconstruction, CSI & security.  The next Plant Design blog will cover highlights of SPAR2008 – in the meantime, “Prove that you love me and buy the next round”.