For a complete change of pace, the next speaker was Gerald Liu, speaking as an ISA member. He really works for Syncrude but hadn’t had time to clear his presentation with the corporate hoodoos in charge of such things.
Gerald provided a provocative theory on why control valves fail often. His presentation will be an article in an upcoming CONTROL magazine issue, and just let me say that some control valve vendors are significantly upset with his conclusions. Basically, he has provided Syncrude, and now all the other oil sands companies with a new set of design performance specifications for maximum velocity through a control valve to prevent damage in severe let down service. According to Gerald, the adoption of these specifications has reduced sharply the number of damaged control valves that must be replaced during each shutdown.
It is sometimes a relief, after all the rarified talking about IT/Automation convergence, MES, ERP, and whatever else, to find that there is new research being done on something as prosaic and simple as a control valve.
After Gerald, Kevin Mitchell, Principal of Kenexis Engineers, talked on S84.00.01 and its implementation. I only asked Kevin one question, and he was short to the point of blowing me off. I asked him how he felt about the integrated safety system/basic process control system implementations that all the major automation vendors are supplying. He said that they had their place in a very few applications, but that in essence, a safety system should be standalone.
I frankly thought significantly less of his presentation because of that…it is clear from the nearly 40 years that Dow Chemical Company has been doing combined and integrated BPCS/SIS systems that there is no reason at all they cannot, and perhaps (according to Dow) should be integrated. The engineers and safety pundits who continue to claim that a standalone SIS system is ipso facto better simply must begin to defend their positions. Stating something firmly, and admitting of no argument, frankly doesn’t make it so.
Next up was Al Chan, who was one of the best speakers of the day. His discussion of the state of the Horizon Project was preceded by a vigorous plea for resumes. This again highlighted one of the themes in my keynote address: the fact that the automation business has many more jobs, worldwide, than automation professionals to fill them. If you are an automation professional, get thee to Ft McMurray if you want to make money.
Al Chan is the I&C Lead on the project. He has 12 teams, each spending a half billion Canadian (which is damn near parity now with the yankee dollar, instead of being half of it).
Phase one will produce 110,000 bbl/day of SCO (synthetic crude oil) by 2008
Phases 2-5 will add up to a total of 600,000 bbl/day by 2011.
The “camp” at Horizon is the same size as downtown Calgary, with over 2000 workers on site about 80 km north of Ft McMurray.
Al said that the best decision the I&C team has made is to make procurement standards-based. “Since we’re building from the ground floor, we can write our own standards for everything, and we did.”
They elected NOT to go with a MAC, even though they selected Emerson as the DCS supplier. “We’ve found we’ve gotten a better shot at best-of-breed products that way,” Al said. “We’re working with EPCs in three continents, and are experiencing the interesting impacts of working globally.”
Successes
The selection of InTools 3D has made the design of the project go much swifter, with less effort.
“Our I&C Standards have held,” Chan reported, “despite some attempts to foist serious junk on us for way cheaper prices. We’ve occasionally had to go to the vice president for a decision. We also have learned where to pick our battles.”
The decision not to go MAC has provided significant dividends.
They also have built the largest Delta V system in downtown Calgary…their DeltaV test bed allows them to test multiple vendors field devices. This, they found, was incredibly important. “There is no such thing as ‘plug-n-play,'” Chan reported, “and in fact, some of Emerson’s own instruments cannot plug and play with a Delta V system.”
“he fact that we aren’t depending on Emerson’s own test bed gives us the ability to look at both Emerson and non-Emerson products on an even playing field,” he concluded.
Challenges
Differing goals are apparent between the different “silos” of information within the Horizon organization, and “even within the Emerson organization,” Chan stated. “Think about it, we all have differences within our own organizations, why should we think Emerson is any different?”
Scope creep.
The sheer scope of the project itself.
Integration of systems, FO, databases
The standardized approach to configuration
While the non-MAC process has provided benefits, Chan reports that “the lump-sum approach has limited our input on product selection.” He stands by his statement that he is more likely to get best-of-breed that way than junk.
People: demographics, expertise. He repeated his call for resumes.
Next year, he said, he will be reporting on the start of field construction for I&C, the completion of configuration of the SIS and DCS, and the compilation of field devices for commissioning and maintenance. He’ll also be reporting on the follow-on integration projects.
The last two presentations were much more “sales-y” than the preceding. Darren Clark from Honeywell talked about their new corrosion monitoring transmitter that they bought Corr-Tech last year to get. He really can’t help the sales pitch, because, with the exception of the fact that Pepperl and Fuchs get to sell an earlier version of the device, this is a real proprietary device, and if you want to integrate corrosion monitoring into your asset management system, this is the only way to do it at the present time.
“We have no corrosion problems,” deadpanned CONTROL contributing editor and conference chair, Ian Verhappen, “Don’t you know that the sand scours all the rust out?”
Finally, Tony Ruffo, business development manager for Cybertech Automation gave a talk about web-based portals for data to present to project members and leaders.
I continue to be fascinated by the technology, and yet quite skeptical that there are real large numbers of applications for it.
All in all, a fact-packed day with great presentations.
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