Piping Stress Man hour estimation (Detailed engineering)

process for a specific Project

Estimating the project man hour is a very critical activity and should be done very accurately. Any mistake
in this action may result in huge loss to any organization. If more man hours are quoted then the project
may not be awarded to the organization and if less man hour is quoted then the design company may
incur cost in the long run. So one should make a competitive man hour estimates considering all
activities. Piping stress analysis is a very important activity in piping design and separate man hour must
be claimed from client for this. Normally on an average piping stress analysis related activities require
roughly 8-12% of total piping man hour. The man hour estimation is done either during the project bidding
activity or during initial phase of any project. So, hardly any firm data is available while man hour
estimation is done. So sufficient cushion need to be added for rework activity. The following write up will
try to provide a guideline for piping stress man hour estimation process for any project. Broadly there are
three practices which are followed in established EPC organizations. They are:

1. Estimating Man hour based on Stress Packages: Normal practice is to estimate the number of
stress packages from available P&ID, then multiply the same by some constant value (decided
based on experience). Few organizations divide stress packages in three groups, highly critical,
moderately critical and lower critical. Lets for example if for a project 250 stress packages are
estimated out of which 20 are highly critical, 100 are moderately critical and rest 130 are lower
critical then man-hour estimates will be =1.2 X (2050+10040+13030)=10680 considering 50
man hour for a highly critical package, 40 man hour for a moderately critical stress package and
30 man hour for lower critical stress package. The total value is increased by 20% as data is not
firm.

2. Estimating man hour based on Stress Critical Lines: In this method the total numbers of
stress critical lines are estimated from existing P&ID. Then that value is multiplied by a factor
(Normally 12 to 18 depending on experience of existing organization). As for example is the
project mentioned above contains 4 stress critical lines (you have to calculate critical lines from
P&ID) on an average the total number of stress critical lines are 2504=1000. So total man hour
estimated would be approximately 100012=12000.

3. Estimating man hour based on Critical equipment: This method is somewhat similar to the
method mentioned in point no 1. In this method total numbers of equipment are calculated from
P&ID. All equipment are then categorized in three groups-Highly critical (Turbines, Compressors,
High temperature Reactors, Furnaces etc.), moderately critical (Air Fin Cooler, Pumps, High
temperature Columns and Heat exchangers etc.) and Lower Critical (Low temperature Columns,
Heat exchangers etc.). Then the numbers of equipment are multiplied by same pre-decided
(based on experience) factors to get the total man hour.

In any of the above situation the following input documents are required at a minimum:

P&ID (If not available then man hour estimation can be done based on preliminary P&ID or FEED
P&ID)

Line List if available

Equipment list if available

However in my opinion, one should look into the exact scope of working (activity wise) by the stress
department. Then one should consider reasonable man hour (which normally takes based on experience)
for each activity. And finally add all the man hours of each activity together to get the final man hour. This
way one could get the actual man hour close to actual. The first step will be to list out all the activities in
stress scope. As for example from initial start of any project broadly following stress activities has to be
considered:
1. Study of Project Specifications and bid documents
2. Work Instruction and Specification preparation from bid documents if required
3. Rack Loading (Three or Four Stages)
4. Stress System definition from P&ID
5. Master Critical Line list preparation (Will be updated 3 to 4 times during project tenure)
6. Preliminary stress analysis before receipt of vendor equipment data (without proper documentation)
7. Final stress analysis after receipt of vendor equipment data (With proper documentation)
8. Spring datasheet and Spring Index preparation
9. Special support design
10. Datasheet preparation for miscellaneous items, like expansion joint, sway brace, strut etc.
11. Trunnion calculation
12. Review of Stress systems
13. Vendor communication
14. Interdepartmental communication with Civil, Mechanical and Process department
15. TBE of Spring and Special items
16. Job close out report preparation
17. Support Checking of critical lines
18. Support checking of Non critical line
19. Isometric review and issue
20. Other miscellaneous activities which are not listed above