This article conducts a survey on the construction of petrochemical smart plants at home and abroad,analyzes the problems in the construction of smart plants in China,and innovatively proposes a new design mode for smart plants that integrates the intelligent operation needs into engineering design.Each discipline can carry out smart plant design from the aspects of comprehensive perception,process optimization,automated control and unmanned operation according to the grading requirements of smart plant construction.The aim is to create excellent genes for smart plants from the design source.The digital delivery of the results of engineering design phase to the plant operation phase will achieve the lowest cost and highest efficiency construction mode for the whole lifecycle of smart plants.