AspenTech's update to its integrated process engineering software includes several features that aim to ease the cost estimating process.

The release, officially known as aspenONE 7.0 for Process Engineering, is built upon what AspenTech is calling "the seven best practices of engineering excellence." These cover concepts such as operations decision support, process modeling and integrated conceptual engineering workflow, the latter of which is best demonstrated in a screenshot of the aspenONE v7 activity pane.

As the screenshot shows, economic analysis is a key part of this workflow. In the past, notes Ron Beck, product marketing manager at AspenTech, each product stood alone -- and, thus, so did each specific function within a project's workflow. The clearly defined workflow, on the other hand, "support[s] moving around the pieces of software by task and taking the data sets along with it."

The workflow lends itself to an integration of the cost estimating and modeling processes. Beck provides two examples of new functionality in aspenONE v7 that makes this happen:

• Chemical engineering firms draft dozens of models and typically have to wait a while for the cost estimates to come back. With aspenONE v7, process engineers can, as Beck describes it, "run a model, hit a button and get an estimate." This figure won't be as accurate as the data the cost estimator produces, mind you, but it will a) give the process engineer a rough idea of the feasibility of a model and b) ensure that cost estimators aren't wasting time with models that will never see the light of day.
• The biggest cost element in a chemical plant is piping -- and, depending on the material that is needed for a particular series of pipes, those costs care vary widely. aspenONE v7 lets cost estimators put together a preliminary piping layout and determine its cost. Again, this preliminary cost data won't be 100% accurate, but, Beck notes, it will give cost estimators a figure to work with as they communicate with the rest of their organization.

Along with these enhancements, AspenTech has introduced a Microsoft Excel-like interface throughout aspenONE v7. This is particularly useful for applications such as Aspen Capital Cost Estimator, a product in the company's Economic Evaluation family, as it helps bridge the gap between spreadsheet-based estimating software and more purpose-built software, Beck says. (Capital Cost Estimator used to be called Kbase. It is but one of many AspenTech products to get a new name that's more directly related to what it does. A full list is available in the aspenONE V7.0 Product Name and Installation Guide.)

Other aspenONE v7 features not specific to cost estimating include plant operation simulation software, a model for calculating carbon offsets and virtualization support for Microsoft SoftGrid, VMware and Citrix. Virtualization lets corporate servers run several different versions of Capital Cost Estimator, Beck says.