Washington Group International, Inc. was formed in July 2000 following the acquisition by Morrison Knudsen Corporation of Raytheon Engineers & Constructors. With approximately 30,000 employees at work in more than 40 countries around the world, the company is one of the largest engineering and construction firms in the United States. Washington Group is headquartered in Boise, Idaho, and is organized into six operating units: Power, Infrastructure, Mining, Defense, Industrial/Process, and Energy. These units provide engineering, construction and program-management services to the environmental, government, heavy-civil, industrial, mining, nuclear services, energy, petroleum and chemicals, operations and maintenance, power, process, pulp and paper, telecommunications, transportation, and water-resources markets.

Past Data Challenges

Previously, Washington Group supported engineering libraries at three different U.S. sites: New York City, N.Y.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Princeton, N.J. These facilities were charged with acquiring relevant reference works and keeping them up to date. The four facilities maintained product catalogs from thousands of vendors as well as hundreds of volumes of specifications from standards organizations such as ASME, American Petroleum Institute (API), etc. Although the librarians worked hard to have the information engineers needed and to keep the resources current, it wasn't unusual for someone to request a standard they didn't have, or information about a new part that wasn't covered in a catalog. "When this happened, we tried to get the information as quickly as possible. Sometimes we could order the document and have it shipped overnight. Other times the document hadn't been printed yet, so we had to wait for the new revision," explained Darla Wagner, head librarian for Washington Group's Power unit. "Sometimes this would delay the preparation of a bid, potentially jeopardizing our competitiveness. Sometimes, it could even lead to a costly situation, such as risk damage to the system when a part needed to be replaced immediately."

In an effort to contain library costs and provide faster access to information, Washington Group began to investigate services that provide engineering data via the Internet or corporate Intranets. Many were ruled out because they only provided information on a "pay per view" basis. "We ruled those out as being too costly," said Wagner. "Often an engineer might want to look at five standards before choosing two that he needs to read in depth. With the pay-per-view arrangement, we would have to pay for all five." Some services were also ruled out because they did not provide sufficient depth of information. "Because of all the different disciplines involved in the work we do, we need access to many standards mechanical, civil, electrical, welding, among others," Wagner added. "Few services had all of the standards we needed."

The current solution came from Englewood, Colorado-based IHS Engineering, in the form of two of its services: the Specs and Standards Service and CatalogXpress®. The Specs and Standards Service integrates 575,000 bibliographic records for standards documents as well as more than 347,000 actual standards documents from more than 370 Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) worldwide, integrated with more than 350,000 military standardization documents. CatalogXpress® is a leading Internet service providing complete, full-text catalogs from more than 9,000 vendors.

One Library, More nformation

Washington Group signed up for access to standards from 21 societies including IEEE, API and ASME. They also contracted for a different specification service from IHS called the ASME Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code Service, which they use extensively. This service contains the entire Boiler & Pressure Vessel Code in full-text format. In seconds, an engineer can access all the data he or she needs including text, figures, tables, equations, graphs, charts, Code Sections, Code Cases, Addenda, Interpretations and referenced ASME standards.

About one third of the company's 4,300 engineers access IHS services each month using their own computers over the corporate Intranet. According to the arrangement with IHS, they have the right to download and print the information but not to redistribute it outside the company. When using the Specs and Standards Service, they can locate the exact standard they need, even if they start with very little information. It is possible to search by document number, keyword, document type, or preparing organization. Comprehensive word lists are available if they are unsure of the precise search terms. With CatalogXpress® they simply type in the manufacturer, the part number, and/or keywords, and the system comes back with several catalog or data sheet choices. CatalogXpress®' full-text search engine locates keywords within the complete text of the catalog pages including those like terms from its 84,000-term engineering thesaurus.

Since converting to online data access, Washington Group has consolidated the holdings from its four libraries into one library in Princeton, New Jersey. At this location, they have copies of documents obtained prior to signing on with IHS. But since that time, they have not needed to purchase any new catalog and specification materials. "IHS has become our primary standards and vendor catalogs library," said Wagner. "They have the information we need. And they do the work of keeping it current so it's no longer necessary for our company to dedicate resources to this task."

With information available in minutes, bid preparation now goes much faster. As Wagner explains, "Often a client will ask us to define how a certain standard will affect a proposed project, and our engineers have to learn about it quickly to meet the proposal deadline. Having information available over the Web is critical since we are bidding against other companies and need to put that information across in as timely a fashion as possible. Having the IHS services affects our bottom line by making our proposals more competitive."

The data services are used for more than bidding. They are important in many phases of a project. During construction, for example, there might be a design change from the client that requires finding a new vendor. "Perhaps the client found out from experiences in its other facilities that another vendor's seals work better than the ones they previously specified," explained Wagner. "Our engineer will go to CatalogXpress® to determine whether the vendor has seals to fit this situation."

On one occasion, the ability to access information quickly helped Washington Group save millions of dollars during the startup of a new boiler by preventing it from exceeding its pressure limit. It happened in the U.K., where the problem occurred during the first test run for the boiler. Due to the time difference between the site in England and the US, the problem took place during the nighttime in the US. As the pressure began building to costly high levels, it was clear that certain valves needed to be opened. "They needed to find the standard that told them how the valve was connected and how to use it to relieve the pressure," Wagner said. "They also wanted to contact the vendor of the valve. They couldn't wait a few hours for the librarian to come in to work. They went to the Specs & Standards Service, then to CatalogXpress® and found what they needed in time to prevent the boiler from being damaged."

Washington Group is currently using IHS services in four units; Power, Government, Infrastructure, and Mining. They are so pleased with the services that they are considering expanding them to the other units as well. "In these times when you need to be aware of costs and save money wherever possible, Web access to engineering data makes a great deal of sense," says Wagner. "We actually have more information available now than we did in the past. We're certain it's up-to-date and we're spending less money to obtain it."

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