Well, 2 months in one for the news update! I have been really busy and travelling up a storm. November started with a 3-day Human Centered Design conference in Houston, which was very interesting. It seems the world is getting very interested in these terms. We prefer to use User Centered Design, to put the emphasis on the user or operator/controller.
People have tried to define User-Centered Design, but not many can condense it down to a single sentence. Most people define it as: – “User-Centered Design’ (UCD) is a broad term to describe design processes in which end-users influence how a design takes shape. It is both a broad philosophy and variety of methods”. I like that, but it has to be put into context. My favorite author on this topic is Mica Endsley. I use her book as a continuous improvement process for my own education. I have actually worn out her book and could do with it in electronic PDF form.
I like the fact that she first describes where I came from in my career, Technology-Centered Design. I was very good at this! I learned that technology-centered design did not mold the interface around the capabilities and needs of end users and that an engineer’s approach to involving users in the design was to either throw it over the fence and let operators develop designs without any engineering or human factor guidance, or alternatively to bully operators into submission and influence the design with preconceived ideas.
Well, as you may perceive I am a convert, and have been applying these new techniques for over 10 years now. I now hold workshops on Situation Awareness which is the key to achieving user-centered design. This approach has revolutionized the way we design human machine interfaces. In fact, we have gone one stage further and have stated that if the new design does not impact the operator’s performance we have not done it correctly. We know these new techniques reduce human error and provide a better work environment.
During these past months, I have travelled to some beautiful and interesting places. I meet up with my good friend Windsor Coles, who was one of the HSE inspectors involved with the Texaco Pembroke investigation in the early 90’s. I was one of the people interviewed on behalf of Honeywell during that period and we have been good friends for many years. I loved having fellowship with him and catching up on his interesting life as a safety consultant. If ever a man deserved his OBE he has certainly earned his many times.
My wife and I were invited to the Livery Engineers Dinner at the Lord Mayor of London’s Mansion House. A spectacular building with 
historical rooms that typify the greatness of Great Britain. We enjoyed the tradition of the meals and the 683rd Lord Mayor, Alderman Michael Bear, addressed the engineers with wit and talent and provided a motivational speech that was necessary for a time in European and English history. We shared the evening with Windsor Coles, Susie and good friends from Cardiff Dr. Keith and Mrs. Janet Williams.
My trip to UK was fun and I did manage to take a few days’ vacation to catch up with friends and family. We actually did some sightseeing and visited the Beatles Museum in Liverpool. But you probably don’t want to know that!
I met with Dr. Robin Brooks of PPCL in the UK and we defined a new agreement where User Centered Design Services in Austin, Texas will be a formal new agent represented by Steve Maddox. We are beginning our new relationship of us promoting the PPCL CPM software by running several webinars. Steve will be very active in the sales of this exciting alarm management product which supports our initiatives and workshops for alarm management and helping customers by providing the best Alarm Philosophy available today and in full compliance with EEMUA 191 and ISA SP18.01.
I also got to Cardiff to visit an existing customer that is looking at doing an upgrade to their existing control room. They, like many of customers, face challenges with existing buildings looking at how best to use the space available, how to configure consoles and to decide what features a new console should have (such as sit/stand). Lighting is also a major challenge and we have unique solutions and Human Factor/Engineering solutions that are based on our User-Centered Design approach that really addresses the ergonomics as we follow the ISO 11064 Standard.
After England, I had a blast sharing with about 30 customers at a workshop we sponsored in Austin, Texas. We were joined by good friend’s Lyn & Associates who provided several demos of their tools and services. We received some great feedback from customers, thank you all so much. We are sorry that the hotel let us down a little and did not provide a bigger room for the number of people we had, however, the food and service was exceptional. We are talking about hosting another one as so many people have commented they would like others to attend. So, watch the website for details or keep in contact with Steve Maddox.
After the workshop, Dave and I spent time planning for the future in Sedona, Arizona (yea, I know it is a rough life but someone has to do it!).
We did have a productive time and discussed new plans for a re-design of the website…so watch for some new changes coming soon. We also enjoyed time walking and admiring the beautiful landscape in Sedona with our wives and children. We nearly got into trouble with Melinda for taking her oldest swimming without a swimsuit! She had fun while Mel tried to get the twins to have a nap. Even my daughter and grandchildren got in on the fun; it was Thanksgiving and a family time together. We have had a lot to be thankful for this last year for which I am grateful to all of our clients that continue to put your trust in us. We enjoy working with you and we all provide our very best service.
Our annual meeting is a time for us to review what we have done over the last year, sharpen our pencils (so to speak) and look for ways to improve what we do and how we do it.
How do you follow a week like that? Well, Dave and I got on an airplane of course and headed for Trinidad to look at a customer’s control room and help them re-design it. We will be going back in January to do workshops ready for new Philosophy documents for HMI and Alarm Management.
I went from there to do another PHMSA Fatigue Workshop, Situation Awareness Workshop and HMI Workshop with EnerSys in Longview, Texas working with my good friend Paul Jones. This included a 3 hour drive from Dallas DFW airport to Longview followed by the same journey the following week to help a refining customer in Shreveport, LA understand their console operator workload and number of operators to staff their new central control room.
Dave and Steve were on their own last week at a client in Texas while Harry is back at the mine in Salt Lake starting a big project with two new members of our team. We have recently launched our new services of providing technical training manuals for console operators and field operators. Recent feedback from the customer stated: “Thanks for all your help; I even received positive comments from the operators about the work that you were doing. I believe you have even turned their skeptical eyes on the benefits of this project”.
UCDS wants to welcome Ray Fortenberry and Robert Kosar to the team. They both have extensive experience in operations and developing training manuals.
This brings us pretty well up to date apart from all the things I have forgotten. I just want to again say thank you for a great year, we look forward to working with you in the New Year. I am already getting very booked up with a trip to Trinidad, Norway and Texas planned for January.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from UCDS Inc.
P.S. – Tell Santa what you would like for your plant next year – sales@mycontrolroom.com
Control Room Design – UCDS continues to help customers with their control rooms. We have been working on a wide range of control rooms from different industries, different sizes, and minor changes in style. We have been working with one customer who allowed their architect and Engineering contractor to build the control room. We are now helping to make it twice as big and still trying to squeeze in more consoles than the room is designed for. It really pays to do up-front human factors conceptual design. Having to remove walls, move cables and adjust ceilings and floors is no fun after construction.
We celebrated with Northeast Utilities at the EPRI conference in Nashville last month as we presented their new control room to the audience. Tim Nurse, the new Control Room Supervisor, shared their vision for the building and how they captured the vision to design for “Situation Awareness” which involved the room, support room adjacencies and details such as the console design, number of screens and a new HMI design to High Performance and ASM standards.
I was delighted to share with the audience our methodologies which are based on ISO 11064 standards and industrial best practices. If you email me, I will send you a copy of the PowerPoint slides.
I also had the privilege of talking to the AGA pipeline team on Management of Change and the impact of the new PHMSA Regulation. This was very well received and I have been invited back to do a big session at the next conference. Steve Maddox joined me as he navigated the road works around downtown Dallas. We do admire these customers as they tackle many new initiatives and often are also coping with major changes to their automation systems. We are pleased to complement their learning with our industrial experience and background in HF/E required by the new standards.
I have to confess that it was not all work last month, our good friends Mark & Marie Green from Human Centered Design in Norway joined us for some technical exchanges and also sightseeing in Arizona. We jointly visited an Australian customer in Las Vegas and learned of their challenges in HMI design and shared our joint knowledge and experience. We went from there to beautiful Sedona and sampled some very nice wine, thanks to Marie, and some fine dining as only Sedona can provide. During our stay we spent a day walking and talking around the Grand Canyon and invested some well spent time photographing the changing landscape as the day progressed.
After a refreshing time with Mark & Marie, they headed to San Francisco to a Stephen Few workshop on Information Dashboard Design and how to design tables and graphs. I know it was good because Mark sent me three incredible books, thanks Mark.
As for me, I went to Seattle to do some consulting on HMI design and an introduction into the High Performance HMI with some new friends and their customers. It has been a very demanding year for our “Situation Awareness” Workshop and the “High Performance HMI” Workshop. It is exciting to see customers and in particular their operators embracing the new paradigm shift and understanding the why’s and the benefits which will help operators health and performance.
Dave has been doing lots of Staffing Studies and is now full-time with the team again. Welcome back Dave, we missed you! Harry has been doing a variety of work, including a lot of HMI Philosophy and Style Guides. I must congratulate the guys as we have what I consider to be the best and most professional documents that meet all the standards and best practices. Many years’ knowledge and experience has been put into them, and with Harry’s Microsoft Word skills and good technical writing skills we are benefiting customers from a whole range of businesses with our combined solution. Thanks Mark Green for your continued support and willingness to share your knowledge with us.
We have been able to take an even bigger step with our HMI solutions. We have developed a formal gap analysis methodology and charts that allows customers to use the Guidelines to benchmark their own HMI graphics and designs. The result is a very practical and useful step towards achieving good situation awareness and high performance from operators. Who knows, maybe one of the control & automation publications will seek out our knowledge and experience for an article, they need some fresh stuff. I am getting bored with the same old stuff that we are telling customers does not work anymore, there is a better way.
When we look at the demons for situation awareness, the stuff that is still in the magazines is right on track for failure. Things like misplaced salience, over use and poor choice of color. Automation not being used effectively causing complexity creep and over use of the operators Short-Term Memory (STM). Attention tunneling and the lack of good overview displays.
I like what Mica Endsley said when she described the basic problem with our design concept being technology focused rather than user-centered design, this has led to complexity creep, an over emphasis on automation which has caused operators to become “out-of-the-loop” and no longer proactive, the result being an over dependence on alarms which has led to operator overload as they have become overwhelmed, reactive, and ineffective.
These poor practices have contributed to a control room that at best can be described as adding no value just a place where the technology and people come together.
User-Centered Design should revolutionize this paradigm and impact all of these issues and not just the HMI, I tend to funnel them all into a broader topic of “Situation Awareness” which is the driver that enables operator decision making. We have observed a very profound model that uses the three dominant phase of situation awareness which comprise of:
• perceiving the current situation (detection),
• comprehension (diagnosis), and
• corrective action.
Each of the components mentioned above contribute as a whole and must never be allowed to be out of balance, as they are today. We must strive for harmonization between all these systems and be aware of human limitations and to anticipate these limitations (human reliability models) support and strengthen them, and then the human contribution to be exploited. That is the heart of User-Centered Design!
Our customers are fast-tracking their solution by utilizing our partners to provide compliant objects for graphics, display designs and building services with some unique tools straight out of HP HMI principles. This has been so well received. Steve Maddox is hosting a 3 day workshop in Austin, Texas at the Marriott Courtyard hotel:
Workshop Dates: Nov 16th, 17th, and 18th, 2011
Agenda: 3-Days
Situation Awareness and best practices in Control Room Operations
Introduction to UCDS Inc.
Situation Awareness
Human Factors Research
The Control Room & the HMI
Industrial Trends in Alarm Management
History & Current Status of the HMI
High Performance HMI Fundamentals & Best Practices
The Principles of High Performance HMI
The Development of HMI Philosophy & Style Guide
This next month will be a very busy travel month for me. I will be in Edmonton – Canada, then London-UK meeting with Robin Brooks with PPCL, and then I will be travelling to beautiful Wales and Cardiff. I am looking forward to seeing that old Castle again and one of our longtime customers. I will be in the Northeast for a long weekend and then back to London for several meetings and visiting IET at the Savoy Place and the Kelvin Room and finally to Mansion House for a special dinner in the Egyptian Room. I can’t wait!
This last month has been an extremely busy month and quite a change from last year. The month started with an Alarm Management Workshop in Salt Lake City and the development of an alarm philosophy for our customer there.
Then Harry, Dave and I spent two weeks in Lima, Ohio doing a staffing study and Work Team Design study for one of our existing refining customers. Having designed a central control room and introduced the site to management of organizational change, this refining customer is breaking the mold and moving forward with some of today’s best practices.
I went from there to Mobil, Alabama to one of our Petrochemical customers and had an enjoyable time working through the High Performance HMI Workshop and development of a Philosophy and Style Guide. Steve Maddox spent the week with me on site as he learns our business and interfaces with our customers understanding their needs and helping them understand our service capabilities.
Dave and Harry went to a Pipeline customer and are helping them work through compliance with the new PHMSA Regulation. We offer a full service but obviously specialize in the Human Factors requirements for the control room, the HMI and Alarm Management. We have recently developed a Fatigue and Alertness Procedure and are developing a software solution for measuring the Fatigue Index.
I finished off the month working with one of our Affiliates, EnerSys. We are working together to solve a customer’s compliance with the PHMSA Regulations. It seems that this regulation is quite a shock to many customers. Achieving good practice in alarm management is quite a challenge for an organization and many refineries and petrochemical plants have spent 10 years and have not achieved the recommended EEMUA 191 guidelines. We need to understand why, and is it achievable? The simple answer is yes it is possible, but there are no shortcuts to this process. Many companies in the past have opted to ignore their responsibility and have put their hope in alarm management tool providers, who have limited operations knowledge. They make a first cut and deal with alarm duplication and some basic configuration management which will only take you so far. What is required is a detail rationalization of individual alarms based on detailed knowledge and understanding of the alarm categorization (safety, environment, equipment protection, and finally process alarms).
Most companies do not have a good alarm philosophy and have not done any documentation of their alarms with critical information such as cause, response and consequences statement.
The alarms are a challenge but good engineering practice and discipline have taken many of our customers to success. But the alarms are just one of the many improvements required by the PHMSA regulation. I am pleased to see that it is addressing an issue I see in every market especially the refining industry. The API brought out RP755 which has been adopted by the Pipeline sector and ignored by everyone else.
We do see badly abused 12 hour shift systems, normally exploited by trade unions, which leads to out of control overtime, shift swaps to exploit maximum time off and the most overtime. The result of this abuse is severe fatigue. Most major companies do not want to even talk about this until they are forced to due to the Union Contract implications. We have run fatigue index calculations and we see fatigue risk and risk indexes elevated to 3 times more than the norm.
Twelve hour shifts are bad enough and have been proven to introduce more risk than traditional 8 hour shifts. Most of Europe has rejected the 12 hours shifts so where are we going with our bad practices? If we want to continue to exploit the benefits of 12 hour shifts we MUST get them under control and start following industrial guidelines such as API RP 755. I think this guideline does not go far enough; the PHMSA Regulation is very good and fully addresses the important issues. But again this subject alone is a lot of work for the Pipeline companies. Just getting compliance to the new Roles & Responsibilities is significant for many companies.
I was particularly disappointed with the PHMSA HMI recommendations. They make a simple reference to an old API RP which has a new front end that covers the Human Factors practices for HMI. It is well written but is not supported by the rest of the RP. The rest of the document is not compliant with the front end HF/E practices. If anyone was trying to understand the HF/E part and read the rest of the document and examples they will be confused. Unfortunately, there is no ISA Standard or good EEMUA guideline to point to, unlike alarms the PHMSA section points to ISA SP18 and EEMUA 191.
Those of us who have grown up with OSHA PSM the PHMSA regulation makes a lot of sense and we have some solid solutions that can help customers comply.
We have been working closely with our Affiliates, Jack Pankoff with Production Excellence Inc., Doug Rothenberg with DRoth, EnerSys, and Lin Associates. I am grateful to our affiliates for their friendship and their capabilities to help us provide unique and competent solutions for our customers.
EnerSys has developed a great SCADA solution based on the High Performance HMI and it includes some unique tools such as built in operator logbook based on PHMSA requirements for shift change. A good example of understanding the market is on-line alarm response sheets for each alarm. It is worth seeing their demo in their Houston office which incorporates ergonomic sit/stand furniture, overview displays and advanced Yoking navigation schemes.
It was exciting this last month to see operators responding to the High Performance HMI. They captured the vision and when our affiliate Lin & Associates finished the week off with a demonstration of their latest software applications I was proud to be a part of this process.
“We hold,” says the Declaration, “these truths to be self-evident: – that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
Happy Birthday America! We look forward, this week, to Celebrating the birth of a great nation. We will look to the fireworks and the parties with little thought of the cost and commitment of the founders of this nation. We have come so far from their values and beliefs that they would not recognize us anymore. If they could speak today, I wonder what they would say. Well, we don’t have to look too far as they said it all in the Declaration of Independence and we are blessed that many today still hold to its truth and value to be our guide in all we do.
And that our glory as a nation might in nothing be wanting, the men to whom the people first confided their interests – they whose names stand highest in the annals of our glory – the statesmen by whose voice the pure spirit of the country expressed its desires – the leaders by whose bravery and skill our citizens were conducted to success in the contest for their rights – were of undoubted integrity and spotless patriotism, men in whom the elements of human greatness were so happily mixed that as their principles were generous and elevated, so their lives were distinguished by a course of honorable action and the sacrifice of private advantage to the public good! . . . And the political privileges of the people correspond with the moral greatness of our illustrious men. . . . George Bancroft – 07/04/1826
UCDS strives to be a good witness to the dreams of the Nations Founder’s and be a representative of the values and truths of their beliefs. We aim to be the company who trades internationally as they intended and to make friends with many nations as they did.
UCDS is having a great year thus far. Steve Maddox is our new representative for sales and marketing. He brings with him a great personality. He will be a champion for our customers and will provide that personal touch many customers have come to respect him for.
We have also hired Harry Williams to our team adding style and quality to our documentation. Harry comes with many years training systems experience. I have not known him very long but I have been impressed with his hard work and eye for detail.
Jack Pankoff (Production Excellence, Inc) and I have recently been working on a number of projects together. We have spent several weeks in Salt Lake City working in the mine and associated businesses.
Operator Effective Practices
I had the pleasure of being at the Saudi Aramco Global reliability forum and had the opportunity to present the new Operations effective (Best) Practices; I was impressed with all the speakers I heard at the conference. Colonel Mike Mullane, a NASA Astronaut, spoke from the heart and not a political agenda. He is one of those men who you soon come to a realization that you can learn so much from every word hey say.
The High Performance HMI
After this I joined my good friend Rob Allen with Lin & Associates and we did some customer presentations together. They have done some remarkable work on their HMI Design. We spent a work day this last month reviewing and making improvements to their Honeywell Demo System which was presented at the HUG this year. As many customers who were there can testify, they are on the right track and have a great solution for Experion. They have really implemented the High Performance HMI and I am proud to endorse them. We continue to work together on joint projects.
I have completed an updated High Performance HMI philosophy and Style Guide Document for Delta V for several customers that fully meet today’s regulations and ISA SP 101.
Pipeline PHMSA Regulation
We have been doing CRM plans with multiple customers all around the country. I believe Dave has done more workload assessments this year than in all the previous years he has been working with us. I launched our new fatigue & Alertness workshop this month and received great feedback from the customers as we are now providing CRM plans in this area.
I also did some redesign of some SCADA graphics for a Gas Pipeline Company in Philadelphia to the high performance HMI compliance. We are doing some joint work with Jack Pankoff, Doug Rothenberg (D-Roth) and EnerSys out of Houston. All this is work is helping customers fully comply with the new PHMSA regulations; we are one of the few companies that can provide guidance for the whole of the regulation.
Alarm Management Philosophy
As with most projects, when you are doing HMI you often are addressing Alarm management. We have updated the powerful and complete Alarm Philosophy which is now available through a workshop process to be configured for your plant and specific DCS or SCADA system. It is also fully compliant with today’s standards and meets ISA SP 18 and EMMUA 191.
We have been promoting Doug Rothenberg’s book Alarm Management for Process Control. It has been great to see multiple customers carrying that big book to our workshops and referencing the wealth of material inside.
It is good to see an alarm management book focused on helping the customer understand the problem and solve it through tried and tested solutions rather than being a tool just to sell more services.
Control Room Design
We continue to have multiple control room projects and Harlan Graf (retired ConocoPhillips Rodeo refinery manager) continues to work on these projects with me. Harlan has a wealth of refining knowledge and experience and when we take him on these and some of our staffing assessment studies he gets the opportunity to share some of this experience as a bonus to our customers.
These next months are going to be busy for UCDS. I travel to New Mexico next week with EnerSys on a PHMSA Pipeline job, and the following two weeks Dave & Harry will be back in Lima, Ohio doing a Staffing Assessment for the oil refinery. Steve and I will be in Mobil Alabama doing The High Performance HMI Workshops for a Petrochemical customer. The following week I will back to a PHMSA customer in Sweeny with EnerSys. We are planning on being in Chile, Mexico and Canada after this.
Well, where do I start? It has been a few months since I have had time to sit down and do an update. I have even had a few emails and phone calls from some concerned customers who log-on regularly. I have to be honest, we have been overloaded. I have had 4 different teams working flat out on projects and I have been continuously out of town and trying hard to keep up with all that has been going on.
January started with us picking up one of the biggest projects we have done along with a lot of smaller projects. We then picked up another extremely large project, which has been great but a lot of work.
I have spent 3 months in Salt Lake City doing a Best Practices Study with my business colleague Jack Pankoff and a new employee for UCDS Inc., Harry Williams.
At the same time we have been doing Operator Workload Studies and High Performance HMI Workshops and development of HMI Philosophy and Style Guide documents. Jack and I have completely updated the best practice guides originally developed by the ASM Consortium to incorporate much of the latest practices that have been identified through some extensive Human factors studies by organizations like the UK Health & Safety Executive, DOT & PHMSA and the latest facts a
bout the impact of human factors.
The new study has already proved to be a powerful tool for this customer and is changing day to day business.
We had the privilege of riding in these big trucks.
We also have been doing a lot of refinery work in Salt Lake City and I had to pull my friend Harlan Graf from ConocoPhillips – San Francisco Refinery out of retirement. Harlan is a great resource. He has so much experience of staffing and control rooms he is a great fit for our team. He also worked with me on the re-design of a Chemical Plants Control Room in Beaumont Texas during this same period so we have been hoping on and off planes a lot. Harlan also started working on a major new project in Canada and we spent a few days in Saskatoon recently. The immigration folks certainly don’t get any easier! I got called into the office for a long wait before getting clearance to enter the Country. A British and an American passport do not make life any easier with Canada. They are one of the hardest Countries in the world to work with between immigration and their confusing tax system.
We want to wish our friend’s and customers a very Merry Christmas and thank you all for putting your trust in us. It 
was a very different year with a lot of firsts for us. We also transitioned leadership from CCE back to me, which was a huge step for me.
We wish CCE best wishes and thank them for their continued friendship this year and into the future. We continue to build our relationship with Jack Pankoff and Doug Rothenberg and look forward to a series of new workshops together in the New Year focused around the Pipeline Industry and the new PHMSA rule. We will be offering public and private workshops.
I recently did a front end assessment for a Houston Pipeline Company investigating their readiness for meeting the legislation. This is a Human Factors ruling and we are the best company to help customers meet these new requirements. We have invested a lot of time and resources and research into Fatigue Mitigation and have 20 years’ experience in practical solutions for industry.
I will be launching a booklet on educating your shift workers on fatigue and coping with shifts and how to help their family support them. We have a full complement of services that addresses every part of the PHMSA regulation and, working together with my colleagues, we have a great solution.
I am getting mentally prepared for a very cold start to 2011. I have a lot of proposal out in some very cold places and I think I am going to be tested. So, if anyone who lives in a warm place needs some work please call real soon.
This last year, we have worked on a lot of control rooms and have seen some magnificent examples for the industry being commissioned and are now functioning as planned. We did a lot of staffing assessments and MOOC’s and have improved a lot of our customers HMI’s. Again, congratulations to Southern Company who did a great implementation, you make us proud.
It was a real high for us seeing the success at Borregaard in Norway who made many changes including a fabulous control room, and major staffing changes. You will be a light to the Pulp & Paper industry and Bio Refining.
It has been a good year for standard’s. My good friend, Maurice Wilkins, has done a good job leading ISA SP 101 HMI standard and together with the section leaders is making progress towards a very much needed standard.
Donald Dunn and Nick Sands also continued their determined effort to resolve the industries alarm management practices and through their dedication the industry is benefitting. I look forward to working with all of you in 2011.
This last year I have worked in several European countries which I find stimulating, the Europeans are really trying to get it right. I was disappointed not to get any Australian work, I miss Australia and all my good friends in that Country.
I look forward to being in Beaumont, Texas in early January for another control room improvement and some work in the Houston area, before hitting the cold climates.
Here’s wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and a very prosperous New Year, we all need a good one this next year.
Best wishes from everyone at UCDS, Inc. 
historical rooms that typify the greatness of Great Britain. We enjoyed the tradition of the meals and the 683rd Lord Mayor, Alderman Michael Bear, addressed the engineers with wit and talent and provided a motivational speech that was necessary for a time in European and English history. We shared the evening with Windsor Coles, Susie and good friends from Cardiff Dr. Keith and Mrs. Janet Williams.
We did have a productive time and discussed new plans for a re-design of the website…so watch for some new changes coming soon. We also enjoyed time walking and admiring the beautiful landscape in Sedona with our wives and children. We nearly got into trouble with Melinda for taking her oldest swimming without a swimsuit! She had fun while Mel tried to get the twins to have a nap. Even my daughter and grandchildren got in on the fun; it was Thanksgiving and a family time together. We have had a lot to be thankful for this last year for which I am grateful to all of our clients that continue to put your trust in us. We enjoy working with you and we all provide our very best service.
