As components start to arrive ...

Since September of last year, the first components of the ITER machine have been arriving at the construction site. For the time being, the crates, drums and boxes stored in the temporary storage facilities are easy to manage and easy to identify.

But the storage facilities will soon be filled with hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment—some as small as screws and bolts and some much larger, like the recent delivery of a transformer weighing 87 tonnes.

To help with the complex and daunting task of managing the components at the ITER site, the ITER Organization is implementing a set of software solutions from Intergraph, a global software supplier to the power, process and marine industries.

These software solutions will not only help manage the components during construction and testing, but will also cover all technical documentation and data created during this time period.

Intergraph SmartPlant Materials was in place for the first in-kind deliveries to the ITER construction site—high voltage electrical equipment supplied by the US Domestic Agency in September.

The data for every single component that will arrive on the site needs to be captured in advance and the shipments need tracked from the factory to the ITER site (through a live data feed received from Daher, ITER's Global Logistics Partner). When the delivery trucks arrive, the details of the components are checked and preparations are made for final inspection and warehousing. 

The data on each component is then ready to be interfaced to another Intergraph product, SmartPlant Construction (SPC), which will be ready to use later this year. This software solution manages workface planning, meaning that it will plan and track the future construction work in accordance with the project schedule. For each package of work, it will enable the planners to determine the actual availability of required materials and will automatically reserve them for construction when needed.

In addition, a third Intergraph system—SmartPlant for Owner Operators— is being implemented at ITER to cover technical documentation and data management for the testing, commissioning and operation phase of the project.

The ITER Organization has signed a contract with Intergraph for five years, with options to extend further so that ITER will be fully supported well into the construction phase of the project.