Engineering Design Software for Plants, Infrastructure, and Building Information Modeling

The Engineering Design Software for Plants, Infrastructure, and Building Information Modeling (EDS/BIM) global market research delivers current market analysis plus a five year market and technology forecast. It is available in multiple editions including worldwide, all regions, and most major countries.

Engineering Design Software/BIM Markets Continue Strong Growth

ARC’s new research on the Engineering Design Software and Building Information Modeling (EDS/BIM) market includes engineering design, analysis, and project management software and associated services used for the design and construction of physical plants and infrastructure. The EDS portion of the report includes power, process, and marine industries. The BIM market includes infrastructure. The market continued its strong growth in 2022 and is expected to continue to experience high market growth globally. Most of the suppliers of EDS/BIM software have converted from selling upfront perpetual licenses to subscription services. Subscription services have many benefits to the user, including converting CapEx to OpEx, nearly eliminating dependencies on IT support, no more upgrades, and reducing the first-year acquisition cost (including the servers) by about 60 percent.

Engineering Design Software Market Trends

In addition to providing a five-year market forecast, the Engineering Design Software and Building Information Modeling market research provides detailed quantitative current market data and addresses key strategic issues as follows.

EPCs and AECs

EDS/BIM solution providers now offer solutions – particularly digital twins - that address the information management issues resulting from siloed business processes and related inefficiencies. They have extended their solutions to span the various stakeholders, including designers (frontend engineering design and detailed design), construction contractors, and owner-operators (operations and maintenance).

Digitalization and Business Process Management  
Digitalization reduces dependence on paper documents and ad hoc business processes. It enables improved and automated business processes and business process management throughout the asset lifecycle with EDS/BIM software. EPCs and AECs can provide better information management during and after the handover process.

Asset Management  
Information and document management solutions provide the owner-operators with access to engineering models, operations and maintenance documents, and information that supports their asset management solutions. This trend will continue as owner-operators realize the benefits of having comprehensive and well-organized operations, maintenance, and asset information available to them on single-source platforms.

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Digital Twin  
A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical system including its environment and processes. The twin is dynamic through the exchange of information among the physical and virtual systems. Uses span across FEED and design optimization, avoiding rework, preventing bad events, improved decision support, business process management, and cross-functional collaboration.

Process Industry Digital Twins are applied to plants for information and business process management during the design and build project for a plant across potentially thousands of engineering and contractor personnel for engineering, procurement, and construction.

Building information modeling involves design and construction of commercial buildings. After handover, this type of twin can extend into operations for building management including new tenant buildouts, upgrades, office occupancy optimization, HVAC energy management, and security.

Owner-operators    

For new and expensive CapEx greenfield projects, plant owner-operators are increasingly using engineering design solutions at earlier stages in the project to enable continuous transfer of engineering information across the various FEED, design, and construction functions. This improved visibility and management of engineering data avoids use of outdated information, rework, and the associated cost overruns and project delays.

Continuous handover to the owner/operator provides faster time to production with improved revenue and high operational performance for improved margins and profitability. This extends to subsequent upgrades and improvements in the operations and maintenance phase of the asset’s lifecycle.

EPCs are being pressured by owner-operators so they can become involved in the initial stages of plant design. The owner-operators can then submit requirements for handover, including operational and maintenance information and documentation. In this way, owner-operators can take a proactive part in defining handover content and avoid “surprises” when the actual handover occurs.

After handover, owner-operators are increasingly utilizing engineering design solutions along with their asset reliability and asset performance applications for digital twins to optimize operations, improve uptime, and prevent onerous unplanned downtime.