Lotepro Uses ICARUS Kbase™ to Develop LSTK Bids for Air Separation Technologies By Gert Smit
Lotepro Corporation, part of the engineering and contracting division of Linde AG, has reached a significant milestone in their use and implementation of the ICARUS 2000® system.  They now use ICARUS 2000®, part of the line of ICARUS Knowledge-based (Kbase™) products, to prepare firm price Lump-Sum Turnkey (LSTK) bids.  Some of the advantages of Kbase™ technology they have realized are its accuracy, consistency, and efficiency in preparation of these bids.  This enables Lotepro to deliver added value to their customers by increasing their speed in optimizing their chemical process plant offerings.

The implementation of ICARUS 2000® at Lotepro progressed in stages.  Initially the system was run in parallel with estimates prepared using their traditional estimating procedures.  Lotepro compared the parallel estimates and then customized ICARUS 2000® through benchmarking, in which certain costs and labor-hours in ICARUS 2000® were adjusted to reflect those developed by Lotepro’s internal estimating systems.  Mike Monteith, manager of estimating at Lotepro, estimates that it required about 500 man-hours to complete the customized benchmarking.

Lotepro found the effort worthwhile, said Mr. Monteith, “We have successfully customized and benchmarked ICARUS 2000® against our internal estimating systems and found to have reduced the time required to prepare firm estimates by 80% using the ICARUS technology.  Half of those are direct estimating hours and the other half are support hours from different engineering disciplines.  We expect that our customers will benefit from our ability to respond quicker to requests for proposals.  We will be able to provide them with more detailed design information earlier in the proposal process in support of their efforts to justify and plan their future capital expenditures.”

Critical to the successful implementation of the ICARUS 2000® system at Lotepro was the support of the upper management.  They have fully supported its implementation from the start to the finish, including changes made to the estimating work process in order to integrate process with technology.