October – 2009

This last month Dave and I both got very wet!  I was in Atlanta during the downpours and Dave was doing safety training and learning to escape from a crashed helicopter upside down in water.  I think mine was a much nicer wet than his.  Well done Dave you braved your worst fear for the Company.

After all this off-shore training, Dave spent time in Angola on a FPSO while I have been doing HMI training and Situation Awareness Workshops in Atlanta.  We started a couple of new projects this month one in India and a new Greenfield refinery, we will be doing the control room, staffing analysis and helping with the HMI and Alarm Management Design.  Our affiliates, Lin & Associates will be doing the HMI design.

I have also started the review of a Power Station Control Room in Georgia, nice people to work with and some challenges as they decide if they should revamp their existing control room or build a new one.  This is a question a lot of companies are asking and we are helping them to get an answer.

I just finished a job in Norway working with our good friends at Borregaard; they have made great progress and have broken ground on the control room, a big celebration as they celebrated their 120th Birthday.  They have made good progress with centralization as the Digester has moved into the existing Central Control Room, in preparation for the move into the new CCR.

This trip has been involved in coaching the management team on organizational issues and the operators on the design of Large Screen Displays.  The good news for me was the winter has not started and the weather was very nice.  It is always nice to visit this site, the people are very friendly and are interested in improving and embracing the changes associated with the new control center.

This last month also included the ISA show.  Yes, I got an award for working with the SP18 Alarm Management group, thank you ISA, very much appreciated.  Lisa Garrison and I led a workshop on alarms, HMI and Control Room Design which was very well received.  Lisa is a great person to work with; she has a quiet confidence and deep rich knowledge of her subject matter and has a great product to show people.

Other news within UCDS, Melinda is expecting twin girls next year.  Congratulations to her and Jason, we rejoice with them and wish Melinda good health and a safe delivery.

We are grateful to all the Power Companies that have been requesting our services this last month and we look forward to serving them in the months ahead.  We are excited about helping out in the design of the new transmission center and the replacement of the mapboard by state of the art LSD with gray scale High Performance Graphics.