Parsons Brinckerhoff is one of the world's leading planning, engineering, programme and construction management organisations.
With their supervisory skills, global resources and diverse expertise, the company has emerged as one of the world's top programme management firms—seeing projects through their entire life cycles, from cradle to grave.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Power's South African company recently spearheaded the win of a five-year enabling contract with Eskom, to provide engineering and project management support for a new generation expansion programme.
Known as the Medupi Power Station Project it is at the forefront of a quest to significantly increase generating capacity to match the projected demand in South Africa.
Medupi is one of the biggest single power projects in the world and will be built on a greenfield site in the north of the country, 75 km from the Botswana border and adjacent to the coal mine which will supply the fuel.
Parsons Brinckerhoff has been selected to partner with Eskom, providing project management for the execution phase of Project Medupi. The scope of work includes the development of two facilities for the Virtual Design & Construction Management System — one located in Johannesburg (at the project office), the other in Lephalale, the site of the Medupi Power Station.
Contained within the two suites are passive stereo rear projection systems, supplied by two ultra fast 64-bit workstations running 3D visualisation software, which had been used to design the plant and machinery.
Parsons Brinckerhoff's Rachel Arulraj, based in New York, has built many visualisation suites and were uncertain about the availability of skills in Johannesburg to successfully implement the 3D systems that she had in mind, and on a tight budget.
Arriving in South Africa she contacted the local agents for the major projector brands and was referred to Digital Fabric via Christie.
After a precise RFP process Digital Fabric were contracted to provide the design and management skills for the project … however Ms Arulraj wanted a turnkey project, delivered with a single point of responsibility.
"We generally just consult, but are quite prepared for turnkey contracts due to our historical experience," said Digital Fabric founder, Gavin Olivier.
To this end his company teamed up with regular partner Sonic Factory for the integration work and suppliers Tadco and Christie for the equipment. The scope included shopfitting, drywalls and modifications to the existing furniture, while the site work involved converting existing office space into a sealed projection room with a 4.8m Stewart Filmscreen rear projection frame and a work area in front of the screen for the engineers to move around in.
The system uses Christie's brand new DHD700 HD projection units with 0.8:1 lenses throwing directly onto Stewart Filmscreen 150 rearpro fabric surfaces. Two DHD700's, run passive stereo, will be installed in each of the Johannesburg and Lephalale locations.
"Given the short throw we didn't have sufficient space for such large mirrors, bearing in mind that two of them are needed for 3D, set around a central axis," said Olivier.
He explained the requirement had been for a native HD machine, with the capability of operating long duty cycles, and at a good price point. "The DHD700 met all of these criteria and offered a 0.8:1 lens option with remarkably good optics, plenty of image adjustment, and excellent colour performance.
"We anticipated a few issues with lining up the two machines perfectly over such a short distance, but with the DHD's there were none at all."
The large 64-bit PC workstation, with NVidia graphics card, feeds the two DVI streams into Kramer DVI splitters (for local monitors) and then on to a Kramer DVI matrix which in turn feeds the projectors. There is a second 32-bit PC (also stereo DVI) and two laptop points — one permanent and one for guests. The project office also has several hi-resolution streamed site crane camera feeds that can be displayed on the projectors to see actual daily progress. All equipment is controlled by a Crestron system.
SmartPlant and various AutoDesk software packages are used for the content and modelling that takes place in the visualisation suite.
"These are the packages used to design the actual power station so the two suites — one at head office and one on the actual site — are used to review problems, design changes etc," Gavin Olivier explains. As for the crane cameras, these are a series of high resolution camera packs strapped to construction crane towers — set in secure housings with solar panels and WiFi transmitters.
The eight feeds are then streamed back to head office where they are displayed in the suite, as well as on several flat panel screens around the design office to monitor progress.
Rachel Arulraj is satisfied that all the requirements have been met, while Gavin Olivier summed up: "The relationship with Tadco and Christie remains a strong one. Tadco once again pulled out the stops in terms of the quoting phase and delivery to site. Sonic Factory also featured strongly, handling all the integration, custom shopfitting, cabling, racks and Crestron programming – as always on time and without a hitch."