Two kinds of project
Capital projects come in two shapes. Greenfield projects design a new plant, moving through basic engineering design (BED), front-end engineering design (FEED) and detailed engineering design (DED). Brownfield projects change a plant that is already running: a debottleneck, a revamp, a new unit tied into an old one.
Orbital Plant Design is built for both. On greenfield work it supports engineering teams through each design stage. On brownfield work it starts from something most projects lack: an understanding of how the existing plant really behaves, from the Orbital models that already help optimise and run it.
One unit, many pictures
Ask an operator, a process engineer and a maintenance planner to describe the same unit and you will get three different pictures. The operator sees screens and trends. The process engineer sees drawings and simulations. The planner sees work orders and equipment lists. Each is accurate, and none of them is the whole plant.
Traditional 3D plant models were meant to solve this, but they are built by hand. Specialists model every vessel and pipe over months, at real cost, and the model starts going out of date the day the next modification is made. Most end up as a picture of what was there, rather than a view of how the plant is behaving.
Drawings that drift from the plant
There is a deeper problem underneath. On most plants, the P&IDs and the digital twin are not in sync with each other, and often neither matches the plant. Every shutdown, maintenance job and small modification changes something: a bypass added, a valve replaced, an instrument moved. The work gets done, but the drawings are rarely updated to match.
Over years the gap widens. The P&IDs show the plant as it was designed, not as it is built and run today. Any 3D model or simulation built from them inherits the same errors, and engineers learn to trust the walk-down over the drawing. That undermines every tool that depends on knowing how the plant is actually connected.
What Orbital Plant Design does
Orbital Plant Design builds a navigable 3D model of a unit from the engineering data a site already has, and keeps it connected to Orbital's understanding of the process. Every item in the model links to its live data and to Orbital's analysis. When Orbital spots something, the warning appears on the exchanger, pump or column it concerns.
It also gives teams a safe place to try things. A change can be tested on the model before it is made on the plant, with the effect on yield, energy, quality and run length shown alongside the operating limits that matter.
From drawings to a living model
In principle, Orbital Plant Design works in five steps.
Digitise the drawings. The plant's P&IDs, often scanned or held in older formats, become structured digital drawings: every vessel, line and instrument tag.
Map the plant. It works out what connects to what, which sensors sit where and how material flows.
Build it in 3D. The map becomes a model the team can walk through, linked to live data from the control system.
Add Orbital's insight. Warnings and recommendations appear on the equipment they relate to.
Keep it current. As the plant changes, engineers update the drawings, and the model follows.
Keeping the drawings in step with the plant
Digitising the P&IDs is the first step, not the last. Orbital Plant Design includes an expert workflow for keeping them right. When maintenance or a modification changes the plant, the engineers responsible can update and amend the digital P&ID, with each change reviewed and recorded.
Because the 3D model and the simulations are built from those drawings, they follow automatically. Drawing, model and plant stay in step, and keeping the model current becomes part of normal engineering work rather than another modelling project.
A model is only as trustworthy as the drawing behind it. Keeping the drawing as-built is what keeps everything else honest.
Not a digital twin project
We are careful with the phrase digital twin, because it often means a large, bespoke simulation build. Orbital Plant Design is not that. It is a way to see and question the plant, built quickly from what a site already has, and connected to the same intelligence that drives the rest of Orbital. The value is in the shared picture and the context, not in photorealism.
Trying a change before you make it
Engineers already ask what-if questions every day. What happens if we cut feed by five per cent? What if we raise reactor inlet temperature by three degrees? What if the next cargo is a leaner crude? Today those questions go to a simulation specialist, or get answered from experience.
Orbital Plant Design lets the team ask them directly. It shows the expected effect, checks it against the physics of the process and the unit's operating limits, and says how confident it is. It does not make the change. Engineers decide, and the plant is run exactly as it is today until they do.
The model is not there to replace the engineer's judgement. It is there so that judgement starts from the same picture for everyone in the room.
What teams use it for
Seeing where the problem is. An early warning shows on the equipment it concerns, with live data one click away.
Onboarding people faster. New starters can walk the unit, see how it connects and ask Orbital how it works.
Reviewing together. Operations, process and maintenance discuss the same model in the same meeting.
Keeping drawings as-built. Changes from maintenance and modifications are captured in the P&ID as they happen, not years later.
Planning the next change. The model becomes the starting point for modifications and capital projects.
What we do not claim
Orbital Plant Design starts from the drawings and data a site already has. Where a drawing does not yet match the plant, the model flags the gap rather than guessing, and the expert workflow is how it gets corrected. It is advisory by design: it never writes to the control system.
Availability
Orbital Plant Design is in limited early access.
About the author
Orbital product team
Applied Computing
The engineers, data specialists and AI researchers who design and build Orbital, working alongside the operators who use it.
