Helsinki Energy produces and distributes electricity and district heating and is one of the biggest energy companies in Finland. Its customers are industrial and business enterprises, energy companies, municipalities, real estate and private consumers of electricity and district heating. The energy is generated mainly in the company's own co-generation plants and is distributed to over 300,000 clients in Finland. It is the biggest producer, distributor and seller of district heating with annual sales of over 6,000 GWh, to 12,000 customer premises. The company also provides centralised production and distribution of cooling energy. The company is owned by the city of Helsinki.

Helsinki Energy has used Cadmatic as their design tool since the beginning of the 1990's, when the company decided to use Cadmatic for service and maintenance tasks for a major power plant project, designed using Cadmatic software by YIT Power Oy. "Before that all our design work was done with 2D design software," Mr. Harri Orko, project manager at HelenEngineering told Cadmatic News.

HelenEngineering designs and coordinates the construction projects of Helsinki Energy's production units. The unit also offers its energy-related design and construction services to external energy and industrial companies in Finland. The unit employs 74 people. "We use Cadmatic as a design tool for piping-related conversion projects and when making improvements to existing power plants. Since 2004, we have also used Cadmatic for the design of new power plants," Mr. Orko said.

Cadmatic was used in a recent design and construction project of a new modern underground district water heating and cooling pumping station. Cadmatic was used to design the process piping and the entire layout of the processing facility. The Katri Vala park project is a good example of a modern production facility for district heating and district cooling. The circulating water in the district water system is heated with condensers, and the water is chilled with evaporators. Heated and chilled water is delivered via an underground pipeline to offices, industrial and residential buildings for heating purposes or to cool the indoor air of the buildings. "The process is very energy efficient," Mr. Orko points out.

Most of the design work was done in 2004 and 2005 and construction took place in 2006. The principal designer of the process was Mr. Veijo Noponen at HelenEngineering whereas Mr. Orko was in charge of the 3D modelling of the system piping and process areas. "The underground excavated space provided us with new Helsinki Energy uses Cadmatic in power plant design and service A big underground pumping station for district heating and cooling energy was recently taken in operation in the centre of Helsinki. It was designed and built by HelenEngineering using Cadmatic software. The tunnel walls were first laserscanned for accurate 3D modelling work. challenges in the design process," Mr. Orko noted. "After the excavation work, the space allocated for the station was laser-measured. This gave us a realistic 3D model, which provided an exact design space for the process piping and equipment."

Cadmatic has also recently been used in designing the Suvilahti seawater pumping station, which is used in summer time to cool the heat generated at the station under the Katri Vala park.

"We have very good past experiences of using Cadmatic, and have received positive feedback from the people at the construction site regarding the documents produced especially regarding the efficiency of the eBrowser module. The 3D model has made it much easier to become acquainted with installation projects. Through the 3D model, we have been able to overcome collisions from the early design stages, although the allocated space was in some areas very limited," Mr. Orko said.

"The 3D models created with Cadmatic do not only help in design and installation work but are also useful in the operation and maintenance tasks of the plants. A particular valve can for example be located in the model using the valve code. This helps the maintenance staff as they do not have to physically look for the part at the plant - Cadmatic points it out directly in the 3D model," notes Mr. Orko, who currently heads the project management of another big central heating plant newbuilding project in Helsinki, at Hanasaari.

For the Katri Vala project, Cadmatic's staff built up the software design environment and also the component library. HelenEngineering's staff now do all library upgradings and other daily routine tasks related to the software.