Mycontrolroom.com Blog

UCDS announced a joint partnership with EnerSys and Doug Rothenberg to provide a complete solution to cover all areas of the PHMSA/CRM.  The partnership provides a one stop shop for a complete Pipeline Solution for control system, alarm management, High Performance HMI and SCADA Controls and Ergonomically Designed Control Meeting ISO 11064 Standards and the new Human Factor requirements including Fatigue Countermeasures, Staffing Analysis for workload and Management of Organizational Change.

We will be kicking-off our first solution in Houston next week and we will build a state of the art SCADA solution set for High Performance HMI that will allow customers to comply with the new standards.  The solution will come with Philosophy, Style Guide, Object Library and the solution set which will speed up projects and improve operator performance.

Last month, I gave the keynote address at the Curvaceous TAP conference user’s forum and was delighted to hear how many customers are using that unique software to not only address alarm management but to better understand process stewardship and identifying how to always make the best product and remove variability in production.  Dave was a speaker at the NPRA Phoenix Symposium on why we need to change the way we create HMI’s and why the DCS must change.

I will be returning to St. Croix soon and look forward to catching up with some old friends on the Island.  Dave has to stay home and work on other projects this time.  I will be keeping the airlines busy this month.  Dave and I also had a pleasant drive between Atlanta and Birmingham last week to spend some time with a client.

With today’s hard economy, customers are turning to UCDS Inc. for solutions to address workload and Management of Organizational Change as the industry embraces the challenges of the world economy.  It is not all bad.  We often find that most companies have the right number of people but not all doing the right things.  Some are overloaded and many under-loaded and doing boring tasks. We can enhance their jobs and provide a safer and more pleasant work environment for employees.

Our whole focus over the last few years has been eliminating Abnormal Situations and improving operator performance.  Our services are all focused on these two main items, but the payback for customers is great.  Our solutions are improving productivity, increasing reliability, and removing variability, hence, improving quality.  With many capital projects being put on long-term hold, many companies are looking at how they can reduce their fixed costs and we have proven techniques that take the risk out of investment.

I am currently offering a 10% NPRA special discount on HMI workshops and Style Guide and advice on how to build today’s schematics that will be compliant with International Standards and the proposed ISA SP 101 HMI Lifecycle.  Both Dave and I have been enjoying the process of developing this standard and working with other knowledgeable leaders in the industry under the leadership of our good friend Maurice Wilkins.

We are starting to see more regulations and guidelines in the design of control rooms and operator console furniture.  We are creating more workshops and providing early guidance at the beginning of projects to help project leaders understand the issues and the implications of an OSHA Ergonomic Standard that could potentially impact budgets and in some cases make customers redo poor designs.

UCDS has an extensive experience in automation and control and we will make our experience available to customers to cover a broader range of services.  We have experience in material handling, robotics, AGV, weighing and labeling systems and batch control.  We have a project manager available for immediate contract, with extensive refining experience as an operations manager.

We look forward to working with you, helping you reduce costs; improve safety and environmental impacts as we make your business successful.  Our charter is to improve plant operations and achieve excellence while addressing the needs of the users, your operators.  We have always shown sensitivity to their requirements and making their jobs better, safer and more enjoyable.

As a result of recommendations from the Texas City Baker report a new API Recommended Practice, RP 754, is in final draft awaiting ANSI approval. This new RP provides guidelines for the reporting of process safety key performance indicators (KPIs). It is expected that the guidelines will identify 4 tiers of indicators based on the severity of the incident. The highest level, Tier 1, will be a loss of primary containment (LOPC) of ‘greater consequence’. In other words an unplanned and uncontrolled release of any material that could harm people, have an impact on the community or damage to equipment. Although this relates to any material, threshold quantities will be set. Tier 2 is a LOPC of ‘lesser consequence’. The determination of Tier 1 and Tier 2 events are defined in the RP. Tiers 3 and 4 are, respectively, a challenge to the safety system(s) and a challenge to the operating management systems. These are expected to be defined by each facility to meet their particular requirements and data availability. Such guidelines are long overdue and we are eager to see the final documents, and how industry reacts to their content.

The much anticipated API recommended practice RP 755 is expecting draft approval from ANSI this week. The RP focuses on helping companies reduce employees’ levels of fatigue on regular shifts, extended days and turnarounds. Some of the recommendations include baseline staffing assessments, recommended shift patterns and fatigue countermeasure considerations in the design of the control room. The guideline recognizes the impact of such issues as correct lighting, acoustics and console ergonomics. Be sure to follow this blog as we discuss the implications of this new RP

What should you do when faced with two proposals one from an architect that says he does ergonomics and one from an architect who has a partnership with Human Factors provider? Obviously price will be a compelling factor; however, project costs and life cycle costs may show a very big difference.

Most companies today are aware of many of the issues!  These include bad lighting, poor people traffic flow within and around the control room, bad room adjacencies, poor console adjacencies, poor ergonomic design of consoles, missed rooms, rooms wrongly sized?

In fact, these are just some of the common issues; the real problems that may not be obvious but cause many of today’s operations problems and have led to far too many accidents are not identified in the common list above.

Some of the problems have been identified in catastrophic accidents, like the Shell Stanlow disaster, and are recorded as technical failures.  Vital process information, in this case reactor pressure, was not displayed on the VDU the operators were using at the time.  Had this been available they would have been able to detect an abnormal rise in pressure sooner and possibly in time to take corrective action.  Control Room Design: human factors.

Or the Texaco Pembroke Disaster, or the Esso Longford disaster, these alone should have taught us some lessons in control room design.  But as my old friend Trevor Kletz has written and talked about for so long, “Why Accidents Keep Happening” and “Computer Control and Human Error”.  So we keep having problems and along come BP Texas City with similar issues and another major catastrophic accident.

If we are to design out these issues we as an industry can’t keep going to unqualified people to do our designs, to people who have never heard of these incidents and don’t understand what caused and how to prevent these issues.

All of these accidents had one common problem, poor situation awareness.  So, how do we design for good situation awareness?  The answer is quite simple; utilize experienced engineers who have the background in control room operations, alarm management, HMI design, ergonomic design and layout of consoles.  If the designer cannot provide you with a detailed explanation and plan for implementing the International Standards ISO 11064 Ergonomic Design of Control Rooms they have no right doing the design.

We currently have a regulator that is uneducated, understaffed and ignorant of best practices, and even GEP in this field.  Even if the regulator did have a clue they have no power to turn the tide.  OSHA has had an Ergonomic Standard in Draft form for over a decade and can’t get it passed the legislature.  In fairness to them they have issued situations against the draft standard, but that is not very often.  To look to Government as to how and what to do is not going to solve these problems.

Our trade associations are too politically correct to call a spade a spade and insist on calling it a safe shovel.  The result is an industry that is continuing to spend over $20 Billion Dollars on Abnormal Situations and losing Billions on lost opportunity and performance improvement.

The sad fact is it does not cost anymore to do the job right in the first place!  We so often get called in to correct badly designed control rooms which have a life of over 40 years in our industry and the poor folks that are having to cope with these sad designs are suffering from all sorts of stress, health problems, fatigue and are designed to set up  operators to fail.

I was pleased to see the Pipeline Industry actually start addressing these issues through the PHMSA initiative.  Well done DOT!  We will be announcing a new partnership to address this opportunity.  Check back soon in our announcements section.

As far as work is concerned, Dave has been busy on High Performance HMI designs and looking at refinery staffing to help an existing customer update their model for operator workload based on some new equipment and organizational changes.

I have been working on a lot of new business opportunities and I travelled with Dave to one of our customer sites in St. Croix, a place we love to go to, a great customer with some great opportunities, nice weather and a nice place to visit.

We have two speaking engagements this month, we will be at NPRA presenting a paper on “Why Operators Keep Failing and the DCS must Change”.  I will also be the Keynote Speaker at the Curvaceous Software TAP customer forum on the 25th March.

What a great January!  I must first thank Texas A&M University and the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering Department, who honored me by allowing me to give the keynote address at the 65th Instrument Symposium.  They then gave me a special luncheon with guests, this was very humbling and I was very grateful.  They also gave me a very nice plaque for my office.

I presented a paper on the Safety, Automation and Other Systems that need to be integrated at the Operator desktop.  Today, we have a tendency to treat these separately and in fact provide multiple styles and many inconsistencies in the Operator HMI.

I see no reason and only disadvantage if the history system is providing HMI overview information and the color scheme is not coordinated with the automation system HMI.  The SIS has no HMI and is dependent on the automation system for status overview and diagnostic information but again the displays are not coordinated in the same style as the automation system HMI.  A copy of my paper is available on our website.

Alarm Management

Robin Brooks & Timothy Triplett talked on “Logical Rationale of Alarm Rationalization” at the Texas A&M Instrumentation Symposium, a similar paper that I commented on in December, it was very well received.  The software is very interesting and worth checking out (http://www.curvaceous.com/).  It is a natural complement to your historian and alarm management rationalization tools like the LogMate® Alarm Management Software.  See their website http://www.tipsweb.com/humanmachineinterface/ .

The TiPS Inc. tool is the best tool in the marketplace and they are one of the easiest companies to work with.  I highly recommend it.  People often ask me about their recent alarm rationalization project because they are unsatisfied with the results and the economic payback.  I always guide them back to first principles – good situation awareness, a sound alarm philosophy and the right tools that focus on the task in hand and do not compromise the control system and integrity of the alarm system.

High Performance HMI

We have had an exciting and ground breaking month.  We have been working on HMI Philosophy and Style Guides for one of our Power Industry customers and a new Transmission and Control Center which will have the biggest Large Screen Display (LSD) System and it will be designed to the new High Performance HMI standards, grey scale.  This is quite a change and the operator’s are very enthusiastic and working hard to make this a successful implementation.

Control Room Design – www.Mycontrolroom.com

We are still doing control room projects, the recent are left over from last year, so we are looking for new projects.  We offer two types of services:  a gap analysis looking at exiting control rooms against today’s best practices and International Standards for ergonomic design of control rooms or a full blown Conceptual and Detail Design based on ISO 11064 standard design.

Staffing Assessments and Workload Design

We are hoping to see some new contracts for staffing assessment and workload design.  We have a very robust methodology which was developed by UCDS Inc. and has been well received by the industry and around the world.  We have the capability to review Greenfield, brown field or existing sites.  We have a proven and well tested methodology for inside/outside operators, dedicated inside and outside operators, Supervisor staffing and the management team and operations organization.

Management of Organization Change

We have developed a well recognized methodology which we have implemented here in the USA, in Australia and Europe.  The methodology is based on the UK HSE Staffing methodology and uses a scenario based system that focuses on three main points Detection, Comprehension and Resolution.
It provides a very comprehensive way to evaluate how an effective team that is staffed for normal operations may cope during both Abnormal and Emergency operations.  It also takes an in-depth investigation into the management systems that support operators during these times.  It identifies strengths and weaknesses and provides a benchmark against known industrial standards.

UK Visit

I will be in the UK during March and I am offering a reduced price workshop for any of our World-class Workshops in Alarm Management, High Performance HMI, Situation Awareness and Control Room Design or Management of Organizational Change.  Take advantage of this offer and save on airfares.

CCE Interiors – http://cceinteriors.com/
We are Experts in Critical Space.

We understand the unique requirements of the 24/7 control room, focusing on the need
to support people and technology. With this is mind, we design spaces that efficiently, effectively and ergonomically meet your needs today and tomorrow. Our singular focus on mission-critical environments is your strategic advantage. Let’s discuss how you can benefit from our expertise.

Military & Government Case Study 1

Military Command and Control Center
Anchorage, AK

Military Command and Control Center

CCE and the base Command Staff worked closely together to coordinate proper design into the renovation of this command center. After conducting an onsite visit to view current operations as well as interviewing the staff to determine needs and requirements, CCE was able to design custom Evans Strategy and Dispatch consoles along with matching millwork to specifically meet the client’s needs.

We start the New Year with great anticipation for 2010.  We hope the poor economy is behind us and we look forward to working with our customers and friends this year.

After the holidays, we started the year with a company meeting in Miami at one of the resorts.   Our logo for the meeting was 2010: Beyond Global Recession and in true form we had a Hook-N-Cook.  We had one group go fishing for supper while others enjoyed a free day at the resort.

It is not often the whole company gets together and shares our success and challenges, but what a great start to the year.  We are very encouraged and feel very confident we have a great solution set for our customers.

We are innovative and keep coming up with new ideas, improving our services and products and are excited about some new ideas we will be sharing with our customers this year.

We talked about:
Business sectors and new markets
Control Room Design
High Performance HMI
Alarm Management
Staffing and workload assessments, the impact of control loops and alarm overload.

Group dinner at the resort was really good.  After a hard day of presentations, everyone enjoyed the relaxing time together and ability to share a few jokes and have a few laughs.  We have a really good sales team that is committed to the company and each other.

Well, not sure how the resort thing went down but we landed a great supper.  Dave was the hero who caught the biggest fish and the smallest fish in one catch.  I think he had some Chemical Engineer tricks associated with the bate that landed him that monster.

We both have a busy month ahead of us.  We will be in Hartford, Connecticut visiting a customer who we are helping with a new Transmission and Control Center.  The building is now well on its way and we will be completing the High Performance HMI Style Guide and re-designing the Distribution wall into grey-scale graphic format.  We have already completed the Philosophy documents, so we are making good progress.

On the 26th of January, I will be in Texas A&M and will be presenting the keynote address.  You can download a copy from our website or click here.  I am grateful for the opportunity to kick the meeting off and share some new thoughts around the integration of the Safety & Automation System within a common operator interface.

In 2009, world travels took me to some great places, good customers and 150,000 miles with my favorite airline.  I am looking forward to what this year will bring?

We will be participating with Jack Pankoff (Production Excellence, Inc) in his new workshop “A System Approach for your Plant to Thrive in any Economic Climate” on April 7 -9th in Denver, Colorado.  Click here for more information.