We want to wish our friends at Lin & Associates Congratulations on their 20th Anniversary. We are looking forward to spending a few days celebrating with you and some of our key customer’s. Our current schedules do not leave much available time, but three of us are planning on celebrating those 3 days with you. I also congratulate you on the high quality work you have been producing on some of our joint projects. I have known Diana Lin for many years, dating back to our Honeywell days! It has been a pleasure to get to know and become friends with Rob & Eric and collaborate together on projects. I love doing joint presentations with these guys they are so professional. I do not know why our customers would consider anyone else to do their work, especially with some of the charlatans we have encountered in the last few years. No names 
but we have had to pick the pieces up after they have left client sites.
At our last joint get-together, I had opportunity to meet other members of the L&A team and we had a great time together in Austin doing a joint HP HMI Workshop. I have met other members during training sessions at L&A and they are all great people. So, congratulations Diana on building an impressive team. I know great opportunities came your way when Honeywell got up and moved out of town. They lost so much talent, which they desperately need. I am glad to see you took the opportunity to supplement your existing team with these folks.
We look forward to continuing to work together and providing our customers with Quality Services and the best solutions in the industry.
我們希望我們的朋友，希望在林＆Associates公司在其20週年的祝賀，我們期待著與您共度幾天，我們的一些主要客戶的慶祝。我們不常常需要一段時間重要的事情，但正在計劃對那些與你慶祝3天3。我也祝賀你對我們的一些聯合項目，你一直在生產高質量的工作。我已相識多年，戴安娜林，早在我們的霍尼韋爾天！它一直是很高興結識，並成為與羅布和埃里克的朋友和合作，共同對項目。我喜歡做與這些傢伙，他們是如此專業的聯合發言。我不知道為什麼我們的客戶會考慮別人做他們的工作，特別是與我們在過去幾年中遇到的一些騙子。沒有名字：-D，但我們不得不接件後，他們已經離開了客戶網站。
在我們去年聯合得到一起我有機會滿足的大號和一個團隊的其他成員和我們1在奧斯汀的偉大時間一起做1聯合惠普人機研討會，我滿足在培訓期間的其他成員在L與一個和他們所有的偉大的人民，那麼恭喜戴安娜建立一個令人印象深刻的團隊，我知道的大好機會的來到你的方式時霍尼韋爾起身搬出鎮，他們失去了這麼多的人才，他們迫切需要的。我很高興見到你趁機和補充你現有的團隊與這些人。
我們期待著繼續共同努力和廣大客戶提供優質的服務，在同行業中最好的解決方案。
伊恩·尼莫 總統
Happy Easter to all our readers. We love this time of year, as winter is disappearing and having to battle snow to get to places fades for another year. Here in Phoenix we rejoice as this is our best weather period.
The news this month is that the whole group is still busy and going from job to job, which we consider a good problem. Dave has being going back and forth to Canada. I also have made a couple of trips beyond Edmonton, Alberta.
We are doing a range of jobs; The High Performance HMI is still in a lot of demand as well as our new Situation Awareness Workshop. I have several booked over the next several months. Dave has been doing control room design and I will be back in Salt Lake City doing a new control room in the next few weeks.
Dave & I spent a week in Corpus Christi, Texas at an Oil refinery and had to do our OSHA Basic training refresher and site specific training. We find this a really hard task as we do not do typical contractor work requiring permits, fall protection, and other things. Then we had to do two separate site specific courses which were valuable. I think we could actually write these courses and improve the content! Well, the net result was a cold beer and crab dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. I must admit it is not the same without having Harlan with us for such an event.
Dave and I have plans to be working in Victoria, Texas next week, and then I will be in San Francisco closely followed by Missouri. We are making plans for Chile, and Trinidad.
Harry and team are still working hard in SLC. So hard that they have had to slow down as they are getting ahead of the main contractor on the project. Well done Harry!
Steve has been busy chasing customers and running multiple webinars. I hear great success on the latest Alarm Management PPCL event.
I will be speaking at the Lin & Associates Anniversary events. They are celebrating 20 years of business which is a wonderful achievement in this day and age. We really like working with them. They do really good work and do not over charge like many vendors do. They have the best objects and tools available in the industry and they meet all today’s latest HF/E standards.
We are working jointly with multiple customers on providing High Performance HMI solutions. We did the workshops and the philosophy and style guide and guidance on graphic content and L&A have been building all the graphics and providing objects and tools. This is unlike some vendors who do not provide Life-Cycle support of their solutions.
We know L&A have been replacing some systems that some of their competitors put in and refused to update in line with the vendors latest release thus causing the HMI to fall over. Fortunately L&A customers never experience that travesty and they have a great reputation on that topic. Can you imagine paying all that money for graphics only to have to pay again to replace them because the object code and trend plots do not work after an upgrade! This is one of the reason I endorse L&A.
During our workshops we have heard a lot of talk from customers with Emerson Delta V about the optional background colors and using the blue background. Emerson state that this initiative came from research done by one of their University Affiliates. Well, I can not speak to the research and findings because they have not shared that with me, even though I have shared so much with them in the past.
My advice to my customers on this topic is to study the research on the NASA website http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/blue_2.php
The same site has great information on use of color and a really important topic such as Luminance and one of the factors, I am always preaching about when I talk about control rooms and that is the Minimum Luminance Contrast Ratio of 3:1. One of the big variables in control rooms today is the lighting levels, we have International Standards that recommend minimum lighting levels in LUX and recommended levels which most architects will design to but unfortunately operators bypass and reduce the lighting levels for many reasons, sleep being one of the big ones. The finished level has a tremendous impact on the choice of background color and shade.
We were recently in a control room with improved lighting levels of 27 LUX. Yes, this is improved…it was darker than that before a major investment to reduce glare on screens and getting the lighting levels up as part of a fatigue countermeasure strategy.
Have I ever told you…I love this stuff? That is why we design control rooms, HMI and Alarm Management. We are always addressing Situation Awareness and the many things in today’s control rooms that compromise Situation Awareness. Things like Misplaced Salience issues, Data Overload, Errant Mental Model, fatigues, Workload, Attention Tunnelin g and many more.
On a side note – when i am not enjoying “this stuff” I am hoping to be out in my new boat…a Craig Cat with 30HP Motor
Everyone at UCDS is very busy this quarter. I think this weekend is the first that Dave will be home all weekend, and a good weekend for him and his family as they are celebrating becoming US Citizens. We congratulate them and wish them all well as they make a commitment to the US. I remember when I took the oath, what joy and a great sense of reality. We had a wonderful party with over 60 friends. I have in my office a beautiful plaque made by our very own Melinda, of Old Glory the American flag and a spectacular Eagle with embroider in red, white and blue with the words God Bless America, which reminds me of that unique point in our history.
When you are born in a country you become a citizen automatically and you never consider the responsibility or appreciate the heritage you inherit. However, when you choose a Country to live in and become a citizen you have to consider the consequences of your actions and the responsibility you have to become a good member of society. Things are very different to what you are used to, such as the political system, the voting system, the law of the land and the very way you interact with people is very different. We belong to two Countries divided by a common language!
Is a UK Conservative equal to a Republican or an Independent? Is Labor party equal to a Democrat? It is not that simple as we examine our values and beliefs and the differences between what we anticipated and reality.
But it is a joy; we have so many great friends in the UK and now also in America. Since we moved here, we have seen a dramatic swing in the values and beliefs of society. When we first came over 20 years ago, we were struck by what a Godly Country America was with more churches than we had ever seen before. Today we see these values under an evil attack and many businesses moving away from their compassionate and honest values, which drove me away from Corporate America to form my own company that would maintain these values and be proud to follow the traditions of this great country.
Harry has started another new project in Salt Lake City with our good friend Jack Pankoff (who is still working with us one whole year at the same site). Harry has a team of very experienced writers and is currently writing new operator training manuals. I have to say I am very impressed with the job the team is doing and more importantly so is our customer.
Dave and I have been moving around the country and in and out of Canada; we spent some time in Victoria, Texas as we kicked-off a very big project. As most of you are aware, we like to start these projects by creating a common vision, getting in-depth understanding of Situation Awareness and developing new standards and Guidelines for the project team and the operations department.
In quite a contrast weather wise, we then traveled to Salt Lake City and them to Chicago for two new projects. Our big challenge being finding time to do OSHA Basic Plus training and site specific training and juggle our existing projects. We are trying to get Harlan engaged in some of these projects as they will benefit from his impressive experience and the good work he does for us.
We are setting up travel for Chile and Trinidad this next month. I was disappointed we did not get a project in Australia; it has been a while since we visited all our friends in Australia and I want to tell them I miss them and some of the great times we have had together down under. I hope for more work in that part of the world. Let me tell you the Aussy’s are great folks to work with.
We should have an article coming out soon in Controlglobal about the major project we did for Borregaard in Norway. The Plant Manager is very proud of what they have achieved and has made a video about the project which is available on their website. http://www.borregaard.com/About-us/Videos
Many of you know our Sales Director Steve Maddox. He is very committed to our customers and works diligently to make sure we, as a company, are meeting your needs and exceeding your expectations. He keeps our customers informed about changes in the industry and updates them on news stories. If you do not know Steve yet you may be missing out on some gems of information that could impact your company. Please feel free to contact him through our website or direct through email smaddox@mycontrolroom.com
I will be in Salt Lake City, Corpus Christie, Texas and Fort Saskachewan, Canada this month, to name some of the places I will be traveling to. I hope to catch-up with you in the next few months, and if not me I know you are in very good hands if one of my team is with you. I am proud of everyone working for us and I am confident in the work they do. Each one is a true professional and is dedicated to what they do. They put in a lot more hours than requested or expected. They do it not for me but for you. They are proud of what they do and are committed to achieving excellence.
Please check out the following link regarding an upcoming Conference in Phoenix, AZ on:
• ASM HMI Best Practices
• High Performance HMI Demo
• Safety Instrumented Systems
• Cyber Security
• Maximizing Control System Projects
Date: April 25th – 27th
Registration: http://www.linandassociates.com/pages/Anniversary.html
Well January has been and gone, does that sound familiar!
It was a very busy month for UCDS, Dave and I went to Trinidad with our good friend Rob Allen, we put on a very detailed Situation Awareness Workshop and a High Performance HMI workshop for our customer.
This would be the first of many for this month; we are seeing a lot of interests as our customers are upgrading their automation systems. Good news for the system vendors and even better news for operators.
Operators don’t like change, and require a reason for having to change. We always start our projects by demonstrating by way of a complaint how the traditional black background graphics with high salient colors have contributed to major accidents and how they impact an operator’s performance. Putting these old graphics on a new automation system is a poor practice and may be a costly one.
We also demonstrate how the high performance HMI delivers performance improvement through improved Situation Awareness and reduction of Human Error. We are currently in the process of doing some joint projects with Lin & Associates who have developed a complete set of ASM compliant objects and tools as we collaborate and strive to improve solutions for our joint customers. The net result being graphics that are not only acceptable to the operators but are performant and deliver the benefits.
This last month has also been a busy month for new control rooms and upgrading existing control rooms. We appreciate the challenges of taking existing control rooms and transforming them to add new consoles, introduce Large Screen Displays, reduce distractions and fix lighting, environmental controls, and resolve existing issues with acoustics such as reverberation issues.
The new control rooms we are doing are being done with a vision of the future as customers are cognizant of the potential technology and people changes that will take place in the next 50 years or the life of the control room. We extract this focus during our participatory design process using the International Standards for Ergonomic Design of Control Rooms.
Most of our customers are being challenged by not only the buildings but some of the new emphasis by regulators on fatigue and the countermeasures adopted in the control room design to address this issue. How to effectively do meetings in this environment without causing distractions to other areas. To develop a better shift change that meets today’s best practices as outlined in API documents.
Harry and his team are making good progress on operator training manuals in Salt Lake City, I’m sure Harry is enjoying the snow! The team has done an outstanding job creating documents from the dust of bygone years, something really needed. This is a plant that has already been through the High Performance HMI Workshops and has the Philosophy and Style Guide now in place and have just developed new graphics which I have to say are very impressive.
Dave has been really stretched traveling to Trinidad, Canada and all over North America. Dave has been working with multiple customers from a wide variety of industries on workload assessments for operators. Our methodology is both powerful and flexible taking the bias out of the equation and allowing facts to drive the assessment.
Dave recently passed his test to become a Citizen of the USA and is now waiting for the naturalization ceremony. So we prepare to welcome him and his family, into our family as American Citizens. Dave is a very dedicated worker and is a great Engineer and I am proud to have him as a member of my team.
I just got back from another week in Norway working with a new customer on an offshore platforms control room, graphics and alarms. We introduced them to our vision of Situation Awareness and it was great to hear their operators comment after the workshops that their views had been transformed and that they now have a different perspective on this topic.
It is really nice going to Norway the people are very hospitable and do great work, they all impressive me with their command of the English language, while the English speaking countries lack of language skills embarrasses me.
So four Countries in one month, must be a record for us, the tax accountant will not be happy.
Well the time has gone fast, Dave and I are kicking off another new project in Texas which will involve a new control room, automation upgrade and redesign of graphics HMI and alarms. I will be in Chicago next, then Lima, OH, and then back to Canada. Building air miles and wearing out shoes.
Again, thank you to our customers for the faith they have put in us and allowing us to participate with and as your team.
We are looking at developing an API RP755 compliant Fatigue Risk Assessment Index Software to complement our Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) and PHMSA compliance services. This software will also replace overtime tracking and scheduling staff and will interface into existing SAP software. Anyone who may have interest in being a pilot site or provide input please contact me. inimmo@mycontrolroom.com
I am also contemplating a new book and was looking for feedback on publishing and if just an eBook would be suitable or should I also do hardcopy?
Ian Nimmo
Well, January has been and gone, does that sound familiar!
It was a very busy month for UCDS. Dave and I went to Trinidad with our good friend Rob Allen and we put on a very detailed Situation Awareness Workshop and a High Performance HMI workshop for our customer.
This would be the first of many for this month; we are seeing a lot of interests as our customers are upgrading their automation systems. Good news for the system vendors and even better news for operators.
Operators do not like change, and require a reason for having to change. We always start our projects by demonstrating, by way of a complaint, how the traditional black background graphics with high salient colors have contributed to major accidents and how they impact an operator’s performance. Putting these old graphics on a new automation system is a poor practice and may be a costly one.
We also demonstrate how the high performance HMI delivers performance improvement through improved Situation Awareness and reduction of Human Error. We are currently in the process of doing some joint projects with Lin & Associates who have developed a complete set of ASM compliant objects and tools. Together we are striving to improve solutions for our joint customers. The net result being graphics that are not only acceptable to the operators but are per formant and deliver the benefits.
This last month has also been a busy month for new control rooms and upgrading existing control rooms. We appreciate the challenges of taking existing control rooms and transforming them to add new consoles, introduce Large Screen Displays, reduce distractions and fix lighting, environmental controls, and resolve existing issues with acoustics such as reverberation issues.
The new control rooms we are doing are being done with a vision of the future as customers are cognizant of the potential technology and people changes that will take place in the next 50 years or the life of the control room. We extract this focus during our participatory design process using the International Standards for Ergonomic Design of Control Rooms.
Most of our customers are being challenged by not only the buildings but some of the new emphasis by regulators on fatigue and the countermeasures adopted in the control room design to address this issue. How to effectively do meetings in this environment without causing distractions to other areas. To develop a better shift change that meets today’s best practices as outlined in API documents.
Harry and his team are making good progress on operator training manuals in Salt Lake City. I am sure Harry is enjoying the snow! The team has done an outstanding job creating documents from the dust of bygone years, something really needed. This is a plant that has already been through the High Performance HMI Workshops and has the Philosophy and Style Guide now in place and have just developed new graphics which I have to say are very impressive.
Dave has been really stretched traveling to Trinidad, Canada and all over North America. Dave has been working with multiple customers from a wide variety of industries on workload assessments for operators. Our methodology is both powerful and flexible taking the bias out of the equation and allowing facts to drive the assessment.
Dave recently passed his test to become a Citizen of the USA and is now waiting for the naturalization ceremony. So we prepare to welcome him, and his family, into our family as American Citizens. Dave is a very dedicated worker and is a great Engineer and I am proud to have him as a member of my team.
I just got back from another week in Norway working with a new customer on an offshore platforms control room, graphics and alarms. We introduced them to our vision of Situation Awareness and it was great to hear their operators comment after the workshops that their views had been transformed and that they now have a different perspective on this topic.
It is really nice going to Norway. The people are very hospitable and do great work. They all impressive me with their command of the English language, while the English speaking countries lack of language skills embarrasses me.
So, four Countries in one month must be a record for us! The tax accountant will not be happy.
Well, the time has gone fast as Dave and I are kicking off another new project in Texas which will involve a new control room, automation upgrade and redesign of graphics, HMI and alarms. I will be in Chicago next, then Lima, OH, and then back to Canada. Building air miles and wearing out shoes.
Again, thank you to our customers for the faith they have put in us and allowing us to participate with and as your team.
We are looking at developing an API RP755 compliant Fatigue Risk Assessment Index Software to complement our Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) and PHMSA compliance services. This software will also replace overtime tracking and scheduling staff and will interface into existing SAP software. Anyone who may have interest in being a pilot site or provide input please contact me. inimmo@mycontrolroom.com
I am also contemplating a new book and was looking for feedback on publishing and if just an eBook would be suitable or should I also do hardcopy?
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
