Structural Steel, Pipe Racks & Truss Systems
A pipe rack is the steel structure that carries pipes and cables through an industrial plant. Masas engineers and fabricates racks and plant steel for facilities that set their own technical rules.
Drawings or a written scope is enough to price it.
Pipe Racks & Plant Structures
At a plant, the plant’s own specification decides how the steel is detailed and protected.
Masas carried out the engineering, fabrication and erection supervision of plant structures and pipe racks at a caustic soda plant in Mesaieed for QIMC / KLJ, detailed to that plant’s corrosion protection specification. Industrial facilities are named in Masas’s ISO certificates.
Pipe Racks & Plant Structures
A pipe rack is a long steel frame, raised above ground, that carries pipework, cable trays and sometimes walkways from one part of a plant to another. Lifting the pipes up keeps roads, access routes and equipment clear underneath, and puts every line where it can be inspected.
Plant structures are the other steel a facility needs: frames that support equipment, and the platforms that give workers access to it. Unlike a building, none of this exists to enclose space. It exists to hold the process up, so the process sets the design.
That is why pipe racks are built in conventional structural steel rather than as a pre-engineered system. The loads sit at particular points, they change as pipes are filled, tested and put into service, and they are often revised while the plant is still being designed.
Racks carrying process pipework between plant units
Routes for cable trays alongside the pipes
Frames that support plant equipment
Access platforms around equipment
The stages match every Masas steel package. At a plant, each one also answers to the plant’s documents.
01
Masas reviews the rack drawings, the loads and the coating specification, and confirms in writing what is included, including where its steel meets foundations, pipe supports and other contractors.
02
Shop drawings, a method statement, an inspection and test plan and a risk assessment go to the consultant for approval against QCS 2014 before fabrication starts.
03
Steel is welded to AWS standards and blast-cleaned, painted or galvanised as the plant’s specification requires, then inspected against the approved plan at the Al Wukair workshop.
04
Masas erects the rack, or supervises its erection, in the sequence the plant and main contractor set. As-built records and certificates close the package.
Before you decide
A pipe rack is priced from the plant’s information. The more of it is fixed before quoting, the fewer changes reach the workshop.
Pipes are empty during erection, full of water during testing and hot in service. Each condition pushes on the rack differently. That is why the joints between members and the order the rack is built in matter as much as the size of the steel.
The coating specification can call for a particular paint system or galvanising, and each changes workshop time and handling. Masas reads it before pricing, so the protection quoted is the protection the plant requires.
At a plant that is already running, site work normally needs permits, and welding or cutting on site may be restricted. Designs for these sites often favour bolted connections made on site, which affects how the workshop prepares every piece.
Many owners want space and strength on the rack for lines that will be added later. It is the owner’s decision, but it must be stated at the start, because adding capacity after fabrication means reworking the steel.
Plain terms
Plant projects use their own vocabulary. These four words come up early and affect the price.
One cross-frame of a pipe rack, usually two columns and the beams between them. A rack is a line of bents joined by beams running along its length, with the pipes resting across the bents.
Pipe supports that hold a pipe still or let it slide in one direction only. Hot pipes grow in length, and anchors pass that pushing force into the steel, so their positions affect the frame design.
Before a plant starts, pipes are usually filled with water and pressure-tested, then brought into service. The rack has to carry the pipes empty, full of test water and in operation.
The plant owner’s document that says how steel must be protected: surface preparation, paint layers, or galvanising. At a chemical plant it reflects what is in the air, so it overrides the fabricator’s usual practice.
For a quotation
The rack layout and the loads from the pipework, including test and operating conditions and the positions of anchors, as issued by the plant’s designers.
The document setting surface preparation, paint system or galvanising. Without it, the protection cannot be priced accurately.
Whether the plant is new or operating, how permits work there, and any limits on site welding, crane use or working areas.
Engineering, fabrication, erection or erection supervision, or any combination, and whether plant structures and platforms are part of the same package.
Record
Contract values are not published. Scale is stated in area and clear span.
Engineering, fabrication and erection supervision for plant structures and pipe racks. A chemical plant sets its own corrosion protection specification, and the steel is detailed to it rather than to a general building standard.
View projectThe other parts of this service, each on its own page with its own evidence.
Send drawings or a scope and we will come back with a quotation.
