Co-ordinating engineering work

In general a process plant is engineered by a multi-disciplinary team, and the work is further divided into drawing-related activities and other engineering activities such as design calculations, specifications, and equipment purchase. The work of the various engineering disciplines and their members has to be co-ordinated in terms of  

Each discipline has to check and approve the documentation of others, where there is an interface or possible clash due to occupation of the same plant-space. There is no substitute for this process if the individual accountability of each discipline is to be maintained. 

In our discussion of planning and schedule management, we discussed how individual activities were tied together by the logic of information flow. We noted that, even for the sequential performance of engineering, there were inevitable iterations as different disciplines work impacted on one another, and that more such iterations were needed for the usual circumstances when sequential working is compromised to shorten the schedule. 

Engineering work co-ordination centres on improving the interdiscipline information flow in order to shorten the periods of iterations and reduce their number, thereby shortening the schedule (while maintaining the quality of the end-product). It aims to mitigate the consequences of out-of-sequence design development. 

As for other activities, efficient co-ordination starts with a good plan. The plan should be drawn up on a needs-driven basis, and include a list of discipline interface information requirements, specif5dng what is required, and by what date, and who is responsible. It is also necessary to draw up a matrix of review-and-approval requirements, specifying type of engineering document on one axis, and the disciplines concerned on the other.  

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