EXTON, Pa. – Bentley Systems, Incorporated,  announcement

Olak Lempit is located within the district of Banting, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Most of the population of Olak Lempit is of Javanese origin who migrated from Indonesia. Olak Lempit is located near the Lempit River, from which the town’s name derives. With its strategic location 30 minutes from Malaysia’s largest international airport, KLIA, and 45 minutes from the country’s busiest shipping port of Klang, the village rapidly developed into an industrial zone with various plants and manufacturing factories, commercial offices, shops, residential houses, and international schools. This growth has resulted in the need to expand the power supply in the region. The Olak Lempit substation will be expanded from a 275/132-kilovolt substation to a 500-kilovolt substation. The owner, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), expects the work to be done using the latest substation technology.

TNB awarded Pestech International Berhad an RM 79.5 million contract to build this next-generation substation in Olak Lempit. Facing a tight 15-month schedule and knowing the significant benefit that this project will have on the region for generating additional power, Pestech undertook a digital approach to deliver a very challenging project. Complicating this project are a number of topological, environmental, and economic considerations. The existing and planned sites are surrounded by palm oil plantations and villages. Multiple contractors will be working on the site to deliver both the new transmission lines as well as other expansions to the substation facility. Utilizing existing infrastructure where possible, while minimizing raw material and equipment costs, places an additional economic and logistical challenge on the project. Lastly, the existing design must be future-proof for future expansion, including the addition of a new power generation plant that is expected to enter the grid in 2023.

To meet the challenges of this complicated project and its environment, Pestech needed a very robust, collaborative, efficient, and digital approach. Using iModels and a host of Bentley applications, including OpenBuildings Designer, ContextCapture, MicroStation, ProjectWise, and Bentley Substation, Pestech created a digital twin of the existing site and leveraged the power of the solutions’ integration to create a new substation design. From creating 3D models of the existing region to checking for obstructions, obstacles, and clashes, to using intelligent modeling to optimize the substation design, this digital approach enabled Pestech to realize a more complete and cost-effective design. Enabling seamless collaboration between previously disconnected disciplines, while also implementing a connected data environment that maintained engineering information accurately, allowed virtual models of the design to be realized.

Because of Pestech’s digital workflows, numerous benefits to the project have been realized. These include a 50 percent reduction in drawing creation time, a 60 percent reduction in revisions due to clashes and interferences, a reduction of cable schedule reviews from days to hours, and a 10 to 20 percent reduction in cable and electrical component waste. These savings have helped Pestech realize an RM 200,000 savings compared to similar projects. Pestech’s digital advancement has realized savings not only for this project, but also contributed to realizing the continued future growth of Olak Lempit.

Sean Lee, an assistant manager with Pestech, said, “[We] implemented Bentley Substation throughout the project [on the] primary and secondary design: Bentley Raceway and Cable Management for cable routing design; Navigator for walk-throughs and clash detections; ProjectWise for document management; and MicroStation for 3D modeling. Using symbol libraries and report templates developed in 2D and 3D are easily produced with reports automatically generated. This had reduced the design time by an average of 50 percent out of the different functions implemented.”