Qi2 Elements incorporates 360 Visualization in Pre-and-Post Tank Inspections
Inspecting and repairing storage tanks is imperative for oil and gas companies to maintain operations, ensure up-time, and reduce environmental impacts. By incorporating Visual Plan’s 360 photogrammetry and digital twins into the tank inspection process, Qi2 Elements saves their oil, gas and petrochemical customers time, creates project certainty, increases efficiency of repairs and ensures worker safety to prevent shutdowns, failures and ecological disasters.
Visual Project Certainty
Faster Decision Making
Reduced Downtime
Key ROI & Outcomes
High Tech Tank Inspection Program: Incorporating 360 Scanning Into The Process
An industry leader in developing, evolving and adopting new and innovative technologies for accurate, reliable, repeatable and comprehensive tank inspections, Qi2 Elements is now incorporating 360 photogrammetry and remote oversight via Visual Plan into their workflow.
Experienced inspectors and technicians, equipped with Ricoh Theta Z1 360 cameras, capture comprehensive interior and exterior visual data during the integrity inspection process, and again during the post-repair inspection, to produce a virtual walkthrough, or Digital Twin, of the tank site. The captured visual data is geo-tagged using latitude/longitude bearings to expedite future locating of the specified tank within the terminal; and remote oversight through 360 visualization and in-environment annotations ensure consistency and quality of the inspection and repair process.
The visual data can be shared widely and easily across teams to facilitate understanding, communication, comprehension and decision-making. Conducting remote inspections, documenting progress and worker collaboration has never been easier for the oil and gas industry.
“With comprehensive, 360 virtual access to the tank, we can leverage expertise from across all areas of our team to review the inspection data from a single, comprehensive visual source, resulting in an unparalleled level of project certainty and quality assurance for our customers.” – Kevin Kupitz, President Tank Resources Group, Qi2 Elements
360 Visualization: Better Business Decisions at Every Stage of Tank Inspection and Repair Process
Historically, each stage of the tank inspection and repair process required numerous contractors and employees to physically locate and perform a site visit in order to evaluate a tank, review repair recommendations, develop quotes or confirm repairs completed and compliant. By incorporating Visual Plan’s 360 photo capture and asset visualization into the process, Qi2 Elements streamlines the decision making processes by empowering stakeholders to make informed decisions remotely – and safely.
STAGE 1
CLEANING
Exterior 360 scans provide spatial context for the tank equipment staging and storage and safety requirements.
STAGE 2
PRE-INSPECTION
Inspection scans capture interior and exterior surfaces, assets and tank components, generating spatial relationships and visually orienting the locations of needed repairs.
STAGE 3
REPAIR QUOTING
Site visits are reduced from third party contractors, as a virtual walkthrough of the tank and inspection results can be provided remotely to service providers, expediting decision-making and reducing the number of individuals on site.
STAGE 4
REPAIRS COMPLETED
360 visualization of inspection repair lists provides universal understanding from a single visual record of required and quoted repairs. Virtual access can be shared to all stakeholders remotely, to confirm punch lists and repair locations.
STAGE 5
POST-INSPECTION
Post-repair inspection 360 scans provide comprehensive visual confirmation that all repairs were performed appropriately, and timestamps can be compared side by side for efficient review.
STAGE 6
RECOATING
360 walkthroughs can be provided to the coating repair contractor for visual confirmation of before/after, as well as provided to organization stakeholders as dynamic and comprehensive as-builts.
“The 360 photos give us the ability to perform virtual walkthroughs, providing tremendous value in developing the scope of work after the pre-inspection is complete. This effectively eliminates errors, confusion and the need for multiple site visits, translating to realized cost savings.”
– Oil & Gas Customer
See Immediate and Long-Term Value with 360 Visualization for Tank Inspections
“Our customers can hand off our comprehensive and intelligent annotated 360 scan report to efficiently inform contractors about required repairs rather than having 20 different contractors arrive on-site to walk the tank again. The customer can send a link to the tank walkthrough, so the repair contractor can send them the quote.” – Blayne Bryant , Regional Manager of Gulf Coast, Qi2 Elements
360 VISUALIZATION BENEFITS | VALUE |
---|---|
Remote access to tank via virtual walkthrough | Minimizes job site travel – no need for project leaders, management or contractors to travel to site to see issues or provide quotes. $$$$ Savings |
Provides clearer details of internal and external tank features | Expedites decision making and provides visual project certainty. $$$$ Savings |
Establishes spatial relationships of assets and components | Reduces need for additional data collection of still photographs; provides clear and measurable environmental data for contractor and repair pre-planning. $$$ Savings |
In-environment, spatially placed dynamic annotations | Provides more data for development of assumed scope of work for estimating and planning for out of service repair projects. $$$ Savings |
Visual comparison of before and after repair conditions | Better traceability of repairs, easier verification for tank integrity audits, and comprehensive as-built walkthroughs. $$$ Savings |
Comprehensive, single visual source of data | Saves communication time for project leaders, designers, engineers, contractors and management by decreasing the number of needed clarifications. $$ Savings |
Creating More Accurate, Safer Workflows
Qi2 Elements’ intelligent inspection with Visual Plan builds a Digital Twin of oil, gas and petrochemical storage tanks, so the entire team – from management and project leaders to engineers and contractors – can have a comprehensive and entirely remote visual from which to make decisions. Incorporating 360 visualization into the integrity management process improves performance and safety across all tank lifecycle phases and operating conditions, from first construction to decommissioning. Visual Plan’s 360 photogrammetry eliminates inconsistencies between finding descriptions, communication gaps and confusion by creating a single visual source of record for the entire team.
With this level of comprehensive, detailed access to the site available on demand, using Visual Plan has created safer workflows with less people on site:
- Walkthroughs and planning can be performed without travel
- Remote visibility means faster on-boarding of new team members
- Fewer people driving to remote sites means reduced windshield time
- Less required regulatory and safety training needed for site access
Qi2 Elements: Delivering Intelligence to Optimize Integrity Management
Qi2 Elements is a focused team delivering a new generation of technology-enhanced inspection and integrity management services to benefit operators of pipelines and aboveground storage tanks, pressure vessels, shop-built tanks, and high purity equipment. They fuse the development of advanced inspection process automation and robotic technologies with their expansive knowledge of NDE, tank systems, and pipeline inspection. This equips Qi2 Elements to bring a higher tier of inspection, intelligence assembly, and asset integrity management to oil and gas industry customers.