An Engineers Perspective – Improving Safety, Increasing Production and Reducing Costs

About this presentation

The author will present the potential for transforming Asset Integrity in the chemical and process industries.  Many operators across our industry, employ asset integrity practices that are invasive, lack data insights and are no different to practices that were deployed when the plant was commissioned.  This apparent low-cost strategy can lead to poor asset integrity, poor equipment availability and higher overall costs.  The author will present a case study in which partnering with an operator, his team were able to lead a project to modernise, standardise, improve and digitise the Asset Integrity on chemical sites across Europe.  The key objective of this transformation project was to reduce equipment failures from asset integrity.  However, through the introduction of new asset integrity technologies and the adoption of a risk-based approach, the team were able to reduce the cost and duration of operating unit’s large scale maintenance events, thereby ensuring the transformation was sustainable.

Speaker Bio:

Alan D’Ambrogio is the Regional Chair for the IMechE in the Northeast Region and a board member of the IMechE Process Industries’ division.  Within the Chair role he works to help ensure Mechanical Engineers are able to contribute to a global, inclusive and digitally enabled engineering community, thereby playing their part in improving the world we live in through engineering.    In addition, Alan is the Market Development Manager for TUV Rheinland in the UK, offering unrivalled expertise and digital enablement in several areas including process safety, asset integrity and reliability improvement; supporting operators reduce risk, extend asset life and optimize their operational costs.

Alan has over thirty years’ experience as a consultant, project manager, turnaround manager, operations and maintenance engineer in the oil, gas and petrochemicals industries.  In the last 5 years, his role has focused on collaborating with operators across the Energy Industries globally to deliver world class advisory services, that improve operational performance, support decarbonisation and realise digital transformation. Alan graduated from Manchester University in the UK with an Honours Degree Engineering & Manufacturing degree.  He started his career with Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1989 and moved to ABB in 2001.  He also holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) with Distinction from Durham University in the UK.