The worldwide market for Engineering Design Tools for Plants and Infrastructure is presently quite strong in almost all sectors, and will continue to exhibit good growth according to a new ARC Advisory Group study.
Owner/operators of both plants and infrastructure assets, many of which are nearing the end-of-life phase, are being pressured to manage the assets.
Owners are increasingly utilising engineering design tools to prolong and extend the life and efficiency of assets in the brownfield case.
“Although engineering and design tools historically were developed for design and engineering users such as AECs or EPCs, engineering design tool offerings have evolved into more robust asset management information platforms that can be utilised by owners and agents for the entire lifecycle of the infrastructure or plant asset,“ according to Senior Analyst Dick Slansky, the principal author of ARC’s “Engineering Design Tools for Plants and Infrastructure Global Market Research Study”.
Activity in the Power, Process, and Marine sectors is led by the energy sector, primarily oil & gas, followed by electric power generation.
Another factor impacting the plant design landscape is the metals & mining sector where project activity is driven by the need for additional refinement of natural resources that are used for both plant and infrastructure construction.
While the shipbuilding industry remains relatively flat at this reporting, the marine sector is currently being sustained, primarily driven by the offshore portion of exploration & production (E&P) sector of oil & gas as population growth and emerging middle class market drives the search for energy sources worldwide.
In developing regions, the basic first step to growth is the creation of the primary level of infrastructure —- it’s a precursor to industrial asset creation.
As such, there will continue to be a huge demand over the next 10-15 years in developing regions. Most of the population growth in these regions will be centered in urban areas where some predict 96% of the population will live.
In developed regions the maintenance and securing of existing and sometimes ageing infrastructure assets is a continuing challenge, especially in the face of flat or declining public funding.
Developed regions are also looking to install new hi-tech approaches to manage infrastructure assets as well as design and build new age assets or retrofit legacy infrastructure components.