Industrial and process plant

Plant steel is repetitive and unforgiving. A pipe rack is the same bent forty times, which makes an error in the bent an error forty times, and the governing document is usually not a building code but a client specification that overrides it in a dozen specific places — weld acceptance, coating system, bolt grade, minimum member thickness, marking convention.

The specification is the job

The first work on a plant job is reading the specification and listing every place it departs from the base code, because that list is what the design, the detailing and the inspection plan all have to be built against. Where a clause is ambiguous, it is raised before it is interpreted. An interpretation made quietly is the single most expensive habit in this sector.

Documentation depth is a deliverable, not an afterthought

Owners in this sector are audited, so the material certificates, weld records, NDT results and coating records are part of what is being bought. They are collected as the work happens and indexed to the pieces they cover — see closeout documentation for what the package contains, and how we work for the inspection points that produce it.

Equipment vendor data arrives late

It always does. What can be designed around it is designed around it — adjustable supports, holes deferred to a later release, a lot boundary that isolates the affected structure — so that the whole rack does not wait on one vendor's general arrangement drawing.