Latest Case Studies & White Papers

Corus Process Engineering (CPE), part of Corus Northern Engineering Services (CNES) has successfully completed the manufacture and assembly of two, six-metre diameter steel lifting girdles that will be used to remove (lift and tail) the 400-tonne heat exchangers from the reactors at Calder Hall nuclear power plant in Cumbria.

Each reactor has four vertically mounted heat exchangers. These are located externally to the reactor building and were clad for insulation and weather protection. The heat exchangers weigh around 400 tonnes and measure 27m in length with a diameter of 5.5m. This will represent the largest ever lift in the UK nuclear industry. CPE delivered the lifting girdles to its customer Nuvia Limited (formerly NUKEM Limited) at the end of February 2008. Nuvia is one of several contractors chosen by Sellafield Limited to decommission the Calder Hall site.

Talking to Joel Leonard, the

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization. He replied that he thought it would be a good idea. The same thought comes to mind when considering management skills in maintenance departments.

Maintenance personnel often become leaders by the touch of

When we purchase a machine we accept that it will not last forever. The problem isn

Over the past 17 years, Management of Change (MOC) has received increased attention at chemical plants and refineries due to the promulgation of new OSHA regulations. Officially designated 29CFR 1910.119 Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals, the OSHA PSM regulations state that any time a critical component in an oil or chemical plant changes, a formal MOC program is required to ensure that the proposed change is made safely.

However, recent analysis conducted by Gateway Consulting Group, a specialist in the design and implementation of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions for chemical and petrochemical plant environments, notes that while plant owners are in compliance with OSHA regulations, their MOC processes are not necessarily efficient. [Ref. 1]

Evidence of poor efficiency includes:Long cycle times for MOC closure; The need for, and hiring of, temporary staff to

"What is actually the added value of maintenance?" is a frequently heard question in boardrooms the world over. Even though maintenance is often critically important, few maintenance managers are able to answer the question convincingly. Especially when they are asked to express the benefits in terms of economic value added or shareholder value - the language increasingly being spoken in European boardrooms .

For this reason Mainnovation developed the Value Driven Maintenance

I have received many calls asking, "How can you tell if an organization is a world class reliability and maintenance organization or not?"

How well the systems and practices discussed in this column are being used indicate to me how far a plant has to go to become "world-class

A practical example involves a recent project at a wastewater treatment plant in Cleveland that needed realistic cold alignment targets for a 3600 rpm compressor.

This machine had a long history of coupling and bearing failures. Over a two-year period several attempts were made to calculate the thermal growth on the motor and compressor supports. The original equipment manufacturer's (OEM) technical manual gave a vertical thermal offset value of +0.04 in. (+40 mils). There were no recommendations for a target vertical angularity. Horizontal alignment changes were not mentioned.

There was some confusion with the OEM targets as provided. Maintenance personnel did not know if this value represented what the rim dial indicator should read when the cold alignment was completed (with a dial indicator mounted on the stationary shaft and indicating the motor coupling). Dial indicators indicate the total indicated runout (TIR) each time the shaft is rotated 180 deg. Half of the TIR represents the actual centerline offset; therefore the target should actually be +20 mils vertical offset.

TOTAL E&P UK, one of the largest exploration and production subsidiaries of the TOTAL Group has installed a 10,000 point + CitectSCADA system to provide monitoring - with full dual redundancy - of the control and safety systems for the giant St Fergus gas terminal in Scotland. The Terminal plays a key role in supplying Britain

Through extensive R&D and the advent of improved equipment and processes, nature