Experience

Process plant automation

Turning a physical process into a controlled, repeatable, documented operation.

Complete control engineering: defining the control philosophy, the instrument list, the system architecture, P&ID diagrams, the electrical installation budget and the controller programming.

At a propane-air plant, the whole system on an Allen Bradley MicroLogix PLC with an operator panel, including backup and documentation of the programs in service. At a boiler house, the control architecture on a Siemens platform. At an oxygen plant, the control of compressors and humidifiers, developed in phases and migrated to another platform midway: every component was delivered with its own unit test protocol.

Supervision and telemetry

Seeing and operating from one place what is happening hundreds of kilometres away.

Design of supervisory systems for LPG and natural gas facilities: plant views, SCADA architecture and point mapping for the integration of field equipment.

Telemetry for distribution networks, with remote access to the controllers through industrial routers and an encrypted connection to the sites — so that changing a parameter does not require a trip to the field.

Industrial integration and protocols

Equipment from different manufacturers that was never designed to understand each other.

Integration of 4–20 mA instrumentation and actuators over Modbus RTU, ASCII and TCP; CIP in its DeviceNet, ControlNet and EtherNet/IP variants; Profibus and CAN.

Specialist advisory on OPC as an interoperability layer, delivered as a technical document and training material across three successive versions, together with the implementation of protocol converters. Control and synchronisation of generator sets on paralleling controllers.

Hardware and embedded systems

When the equipment you need does not exist on the market.

Design and development of custom electronics: circuits, PCB layout, prototyping, firmware for microcontrollers and DSP, and FPGA modules in Verilog and VHDL. Migration of designs between capture tools, and development of embedded hardware with cellular communication.

A sensor device with its controller, delivered with separate design documents for the device and for its software. The hardware and touchscreen operating mode of a heat recovery ventilation unit, with manuals differentiated by interface type. Reverse engineering to repair and redesign equipment that no longer has support.

Operator interfaces

The layer where a person touches the system — and where it is decided whether they use it well.

Design of HMI interfaces for plant operators on industrial panels, meant to be read fast and without ambiguity during a shift.

Development of an internal communication system on industrial touchscreens, taken from a one-off project to a product: software proposal, application design, user manual, administration manual, test plan, licensing scheme and a later cycle of improvements. Deployed at two different production plants.

Industrial information systems

What lives on paper and in someone's memory, moved into a system that remembers it.

Software engineering with formal method: system modelling across successive versions, use case diagrams, requirements document, Gantt chart, roadmap and test sheet.

Corporate intranets and web management systems with profile-based authentication and data encryption. Digitisation of work permits and work orders at a liquefied natural gas terminal, built on the job safety analysis forms of the procedure already in force, without asking the operation to change how it works.

Advisory and knowledge transfer

Deciding well before buying, and leaving the judgement behind.

Support in selecting the PLC and modules that fit the real need, and design of the associated control engineering. Technical and commercial proposals evaluated by alternative, including industrial wireless links and network operations centre automation.

Training in computing and electronics: business intelligence, CRM, BPM, hardware design, reengineering, microcontroller programming, PLC control systems and embedded systems.

Making things talk to each other.

Seven fronts, one craft.