Posts by mycontrolroom
Professional Achievement
This last week I received the following email: “You are cordially invited to be our guest of honor at the annual ISA Fellows Luncheon. The luncheon will take place on Monday, 4 October at the Westin Galleria Hotel in Houston, Texas. As a guest of honor you are entitled to a complimentary luncheon ticket for…
Read MoreAPIRP
I just got back from a very busy trip to Texas and Louisiana, both were very hot! It is good to get back to Arizona for some nice dry heat. 🙂 I meet up with a young, old friend in Shreveport, LA and had a good time as we checked out a new job. We…
Read MoreKnow your History
Can it possibly be July already? Oh how the time goes by. I guess when you travel time flies. Well, we always have time to stop and wish the USA Happy Birthday as we celebrate Independence. I like to ask in my very British accent “What are we celebrating?” and I am amazed at how…
Read MoreNew Chapter at UCDS
This past month has been very challenging for me with my shoulder recovering from rotator cuff surgery. I managed to fly to Switzerland, Zurich and get a train to Neu Chattel or in English Newcastle. I was doing a study for a new control room. The visit went very well apart from needing help getting…
Read MoreOperator Workload
After an exciting 6 weeks on the road, I have returned tired and ready for some rest. This last month Dave and I have been extremely busy. It appears that Operator Workload is very popular at the moment and we have been doing a lot of new jobs and updating some existing customer studies as…
Read MoreControl Room Design & Building Design
User Centered Control Building Detailed Design The Situation: You want to build a new control building. You have an idea of how many people and what rooms are required, but you don’t have any idea of adjacencies, actual room sizes and details of what functions the rooms need to support. If you call in an…
Read MoreControl Room Design & Building Design
User Centered Control Building Detailed Design The Situation: You want to build a new control building. You have an idea of how many people and what rooms are required, but you don’t have any idea of adjacencies, actual room sizes and details of what functions the rooms need to support. If you call in an…
Read MoreWhy do we need to do Management of Organizational Change (MOOC)?
One of the biggest questions we get asked by our clients is ‘Why do we need to do Management of Organizational Change (MOOC)?’ This still seems a strange question to us. Companies rarely question the need for normal Management of Change and the link between equipment changes and potential safety and operational compromises is well…
Read MorePHMSA/CRM
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…
Read MoreAPI RP 754 News
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…
Read MoreAPI RP 755 News
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…
Read MorePoor situation awareness
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…
Read MoreFebruary 2010
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…
Read MoreJanuary 2010
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…
Read MoreDecember 2009
Dave and I want to wish all our customers, colleagues, and friends and associates a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. I think we are all ready to put 2009 behind us. Many of our friends and colleagues have had a hard year. I have just gotten back from a tour of England…
Read MoreNovember 2009
This month, I have deliberately waited to post the news as this is my favorite month for preparing for the holidays. We start the month with a good old English tradition celebrating Bonfire night, which means a big party at my place. Poor old Guy Fawkes gets his lot as we celebrate the saving of…
Read MoreOctober – 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…
Read MoreOctober 2009
At the October 2009 ISA Show in Houston, Texas, I was presented with the following ISA SP18 Alarm Management Award:
Read MoreSeptember 2009
I just heard that we had over 358 visitors this month to our website from 39 different countries and 42 States. We have not seen any hits from Hawaii? Wouldn’t it be cool to have to work there? Can you imagine, sorry love, I have to go to work; we are visiting another refinery, oh!…
Read MoreAugust 2009
Someone just reminded me it’s August and the news is late! 🙂 This next week I get a week at home, and time to catch up on paper work. I always look forward to that, and after a day I wish I was back on the road again. Travel has been high this month. We…
Read MoreJuly 2009
This has been an exciting time for User Centered Design Services. I have had two trips to Norway working on a project for a Pulp & Paper customer who is doing some remarkable changes that will turn this company around. It was just over a year ago that we started talking about a centralized control…
Read MoreJune 2009
We are excited about our new partnership with Lin & Associates (see Upcoming Events/Press & Media). During May, we held a two-day workshop to review our common understanding of Best Practices for High Performance HMI, and we will be exploiting out strengths on future projects. This allows both companies to provide one common solution and…
Read MoreMay 2009
Welcome to our updated website, we have re-designed the site for mobile web users and different types of media. We plan on attaching webcast sessions and other multimedia devices like YouTube presentations. Our world is changing fast and we must keep up to date. We will have a control room discussion group on my Facebook…
Read MoreApril 2009
This has been a strange month for us with a drop in refining work and a large increase in Power & Utilities workload. Not that I am saying no refinery workload, sorry Jeff, we just normally have several refinery projects running through our hands. Three of our 1st Quarter projects have been pushed back to…
Read MoreMarch – 2009
The High Performance HMI Book is so successful we have launched a 2 day workshop on High Performance HMI. The workshop is practical and will review your graphics on the second day and make helpful suggestions to improve your HMI. We ran a webcast a few weeks ago detailing part of the workshop and this…
Read MoreMarch 2009
Please see the following link for news on Jack Pankoff and his new adventure, Production Excellence Inc. pankoff-press-release-0309
Read MoreFebruary 2009
The economic turndown is widespread; we have seen a few postponed projects this month. Fortunately for UCDS, we have picked up some urgent projects that need immediate attention in the Power Sector. This month, I did a webinar on our new High Performance HMI book for over 50 customers. The webinar, sponsored by TiPs, was…
Read MoreJanuary 2009
We are now well into the New Year and I have been on the road since we started January. What a start to what I think is going to be a challenging New Year. I have done three workshops so far this year. I have introduced our two new workshops to some customers – one…
Read MoreDecember 2008
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday, we sure did. Our UCDS team and families celebrated Thanksgiving in Sedona, Arizona. This is probably one of the most beautiful places on this earth. Dave and Rusty took their families to see the splendor of the Grand Canyon, enjoying the steam train ride into the Canyon…
Read MoreNovember 2008
Good news on the new HMI book – the first batch sold out and UCDS has just received two boxes to sell through our website. I have received many comments from customers who have purchased it and are finding it very useful. See mycontrolroom.com Despite the economy taking a nosedive, we have been extremely busy…
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