What Does a Truly Optimized Modular Design Look Like?
Your project is modular. Equipment is being assembled off-site, and modules will arrive for installation. Yet the design still includes long piping runs, extensive cable routes, and numerous field connections.
Has the project captured the full opportunity of modularization?
The answer depends partly on how the facility was designed. Transferring construction into a module yard can improve execution, but optimizing the physical design creates additional opportunities to reduce material quantities and the work required to complete the facility.
Understanding the differences between stick-built design, box modularization, and optimized modular design helps project teams recognize those opportunities early.
Stick-Built Design: Developed for Progressive Site Construction
A conventional stick-built layout allows equipment and systems to be installed in a more flexible sequence at the final site. Engineering deliverables and procurement can be phased against construction needs, with greater latitude to adjust installation timing and resolve interfaces during execution.
The layout accommodates access for individual equipment installation and field assembly, with substantial testing and completion work remaining at site. This flexibility carries associated site labour hours and greater bulk volumes.
Modularizing a Stick-Built Design: Moving an Existing Design Off-Site
Modularizing a stick-built design (box modularization) adapts a predominantly stick-built layout into transportable blocks. Selected equipment, piping, structural steel, and electrical and instrumentation components are assembled in a module yard.
This approach can shift substantial work away from site. However, if the underlying arrangement remains largely unchanged, the project may retain excessive spacing, long pipe runs, and many of the original bulk quantities.
Modules may contain underutilized structural volume or relatively few pre-installed systems. The project incurs the structural, transport, and installation requirements of modular delivery while leaving opportunities for greater off-site completion unrealized.
Box modularization can improve where work is performed while leaving opportunities to improve the design itself. Wondering whether your current modular layout has further optimization opportunities? Explore DyCat Solutions’ Cold Eyes Review services.
OPTIMOD: Integrating Process Systems Within Real Constraints
DyCat’s OPTIMOD tool optimizes the physical modular solution: module boundaries, size and weight, layout, transport, and installation interfaces.
It brings together two considerations: the project’s physical execution constraints and the opportunities to strategically group process systems.
Transport routes, handling capabilities, and installation methods establish the feasible module size and weight limits. A landlocked site relying on truck transport and crane installation faces different constraints from a facility with water access and a suitable route for self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs).
Within those limits, OPTIMOD evaluates how compatible process systems can be combined and arranged to improve the overall layout and use module space more effectively.
Related systems positioned in separate areas may require substantial interconnecting piping, cable, and supports. Strategically grouping them can shorten those routes, reduce bulk quantities, and minimize connections completed in the field. Depending on the configuration, this can also reduce concrete and associated civil requirements.
The layout must also support a practical installation sequence, with access to move, position, and connect modules. Effective use of space must preserve process safety, operability, and maintenance access. Planning a modular project? Learn how DyCat Solutions uses OPTIMOD to support modular layout optimization.
Group Systems to Support Off-Site Commissioning
Strategic process-system grouping also influences how much work can be completed before shipment.
A module containing parts of several systems may be mechanically assembled but still depend on extensive site connections before those systems can be tested. Grouping a functional process system within a module can create greater opportunities for off-site testing and pre-commissioning.
Where utilities, supporting systems, and operating conditions permit, commissioning activities may also be performed off-site.
This can reduce site hours and costs while improving safety and quality through better access, less congestion, and more controlled working conditions.
Organizing modules around functional systems can also support earlier system handover and a more coordinated completion sequence.
Commissioning requirements should therefore help shape the modular layout early, alongside transport and installation constraints.
Establish Modularization Early
Capturing these opportunities requires early preparation.
Modularization should be integrated into the design basis during FEL1/2. This establishes the execution assumptions and constraints that inform subsequent design development.
OPTIMOD is typically applied during Design Basis Memorandum (DBM) FEL-2 or at the beginning of Front-End Engineering Design (FEED), when the physical solution can be evaluated and optimized before detailed engineering advances. Engaging DyCat early can help project teams evaluate modularization opportunities before detailed engineering advances. Contact DyCat Solutions to discuss your project.
Is Your Modular Layout Delivering Its Full Potential?
When reviewing a modular design, ask:
Are compatible process systems grouped to reduce bulk quantities and field interconnections?
Is module space effectively utilized while preserving safety and maintenance access?
Does the configuration support off-site testing, commissioning, and system handover?
Are transport, handling, and installation requirements integrated into the layout?
DyCat Solutions helps project teams address these questions through OPTIMOD during FEED and independent cold eyes reviews of existing modular strategies and designs. These broader reviews assess configuration, constructability, fabrication readiness, logistics, installation, and cost and schedule assumptions.
