Employee portrait

"Tekla is all about giving your colleagues tools, not solutions"

So says Line Dalegaard Henriksen, our Tekla specialist responsible for Tekla at ISC.

A good 3 years ago, Line was given the task of leading the work on implementing Tekla with us in ISC. She brought 7 years of experience with the program and many untested ideas. With us, she was allowed to unleash her ideas, and today Tekla is an integral part of the work in our offshore department, which primarily designs offshore substations.

We have a significant advantage because we often collaborate with the same partners around our projects at offshore substations. According to Line, this means;

"that already in the design phase, we are focusing on how we are actually going to build this. It is especially important that you can get an overview of the entire complexity of offshore projects because errors simply have greater consequences once you are out at sea. This is where Tekla is such a great tool! We can standardize and create a complete package together with our partners. This means that we can run the projects more efficiently and with fewer errors that would perhaps only have been discovered once production has started.”

Freedom within Tekla has led to quantum leaps in recent years

At ISC, we have taken a quantum leap in using Tekla, with Line leading the work with her 10 years of experience. Tekla works perfectly to provide an overview of the entire construction but can also be connected to our calculation models. And the possibilities are endless.

"You can do anything in Tekla! The challenge is, therefore, not what you can do but rather what you should do. For me, working with Tekla is about development: How can we make things smarter? It's about helping my colleagues to have an easier workflow - that is, creating tools for them that are useful and add value to their daily work. But at the same time, I am also careful about over-developing. It must not become the case that users of the functions in Tekla no longer have to think for themselves and be critical. We don't want to go there. Teach a man to fish kinda situation", says Line with a smile on her face.

How do you get the best out of Tekla?

The art lies in understanding the balance when developing. This is precisely why it is crucial to be able to assess when development is valuable. As Line puts it:

"At some point, it doesn't make sense to develop any further because the desired functionality has been achieved. Then you have to stop. Even if you could spend an extra week sitting and perfecting small adjustments - nerdiness for nerdiness' sake. When you reach your goal, you must stop and move on to the next project. There is always a new project. And it is important to remember to focus on why we develop.”

We believe in free rein in ISC. You have to throw yourself into it to find good solutions. And, of course, you must be supported by skilled colleagues and a strong team that can provide the essential sparring. Line elaborates:

"Working with Tekla, it's perfectly okay not to know exactly where the next project will lead to. As long as you remember that what you develop must provide value for your colleagues. Therefore, you must be ready to start over and change things if they don't work. Development, test, and implement, or start from scratch, depending on the test result. That's how I work, and it's great to be allowed to pursue my ideas and enjoy the freedom that the ISC management gives me to explore the possibilities of Tekla. It is this freedom that is the reason why we have moved so quickly on the Tekla front in recent years.”

Focus on buildability

When we build the model, we focus on real-life buildability right from the start, and this gives value to our partners, who avoid surprises when they have to construct our 3D models in reality. It can, for example, be that we are aware that there must be space to be able to enter with a welding machine.

"We don't just work theoretically, but also take into account that it must be possible to do it in practice," emphasizes Line.

We model in Tekla so that our partners who also work in Tekla can continue with our model. It can, for example, be that they have to make more working drawings in addition to the ones we have already made. It's all thanks to our highly detailed 3D models. Our partners can access the model and go to work with the same perspective. It improves collaboration across organizations.

Big requirements for working drawings offshore

In the offshore industry, great demands are placed on working drawings and design. For instance, on the Coastal Virginia project, we have made more than 50,000 3D welds, due to requirements for traceability.

We use Tekla in a tailor-made way, because we use it offshore, where the requirements are high, especially for safety. When developing tools in Tekla, we are not afraid to try things out and take it step by step. Our focus is on being able to create 3D models efficiently and without errors.

"We continuously develop parametric components that reduce the workload and ensure fewer errors. This makes the model, in short, more reliable, efficient, and change-friendly. Mistakes in offshore have major consequences, because help is far away and the costs are extra high," says Line.

And we are not afraid to have fun and make mistakes during the development process. As Line proudly puts it:

"We program custom plug-ins for Tekla ourselves. We have e.g. an app that assigns material properties. It is made in C# using Tekla's open API. It's pretty geeky, but super exciting! And it gives our engineers valuable tools that increase the quality of our work.”