A WINDOW ON THE WORLD
CONDUCTING AN INTEGRATION TEST FOR THE DUQM REFINERY PROJECT WHEN STAKEHOLDERS WERE LOCATED ACROSS SEVERAL COUNTRIES SEEMED LIKE A TALL ORDER, BUT THE INSTRUMENTATION TEAM’S PERSEVERANCE PAID OFF
PROJECTS
South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Oman, Spain, UAE, Bahrain, Germany and India.
Multiple locations. Different timezones. Several stakeholders. Conducting an integration test when vendors, engineers, equipment and contractors are scattered across the globe is no easy feat.
Throw in a pandemic to the mix and the challenge becomes even greater when the traditional means of conducting tests are no longer feasible and global travel is suspended.
It seems almost insurmountable. Almost. The Instrumentation team for Oman’s Duqm Refinery project, alongside our vendors, exercised all their patience, perseverance and a little creative thinking to come up with a solution.
The result was the first-of-its-kind remote integration test.
Facing the challenges together
The package in question was CEMS (Continuous Emission Monitoring System) analysers measuring flow, dust and concentration of gas pollutants on the boiler and incinerator stacks. This is a crucial part of Oman’s environmental requirements for the project and also a way of monitoring Petrofac’s ‘Net Zero Emission’ policy in the future.
They are pivotal components for the project and had to be in place to meet local statutory legislation governed by the Ministry of Environment and Climatic Affairs in Oman.
Petrofac led EPC package 2 (utilities and offsites) in a joint venture with Samsung Engineering for the project and as part of this, was providing five CEMS. These had to be tested with the main CEMS Data Acquisition System, which was the scope of EPC1 (a joint venture between Técnidas Reunidas S.A. and Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd, located in Spain).
Even before the upheaval of the pandemic, Petrofac was keen to conduct the integration test (IFAT) early in the design phase, as our CEMS were connected to the boiler stack and the boilers needed to be commissioned. But different contractors meant different timelines of completion.
Many stakeholders suggested leaving the IFAT until the end of the project and conducting it at site before the start-up of the refinery. But this was deemed too risky by Petrofac and Samsung – all equipment would have been commissioned and getting all key stakeholders to site in the same window is challenging and costly.
Another option was shipping the equipment to a single location and then connecting it physically to check the interface. But there were multiple vendors involved: Emerson in South Korea was supplying Petrofac and Samsung’s CEMS, while Yokogawa in Singapore was supplying EPC1’s equipment along with the CEMS Data Acquisition System (this was from sub-vendor DURAG, Germany).
Yokogawa in Bahrain was supplying the plant’s Distributed Control System, which was part of Petrofac and Samsung’s scope. This also needed to be tested with the CEMS packages – this was the second part of the integration test (see graphic).
“Several pieces of equipment would have had to be sent to Singapore from Bahrain for physical testing. As there were so many stakeholders it was very difficult to do the IFAT in the traditional way. Then came the challenge of the pandemic,” says Yokogawa’s Mehul Parekh.
WORDS CHRISTINA McPHERSON
PUBLISHED JANUARY 2021
The remote integration test: How it worked
A new way of thinking
The pandemic changed everything and a new way of thinking was required. It became apparent that remote testing was the best – and only – alternative.
Collaboration and teamwork were critical in rising to the challenge. Petrofac, Samsung and Técnidas Reunidas worked with Yokogawa and Emerson to come up with a solution and figure out the logistics of carrying out such a test. The team then coordinated the window for testing with the remaining stakeholders.
The solution was a secure highspeed link to conduct the IFAT between the systems in South Korea, Singapore and Bahrain in real time, replicating ‘as site’ conditions – essentially a virtualised dummy data acquisition server to check the systems could communicate with one another.
Stakeholders were able to join via Microsoft Teams and TeamViewer and witness the test live.
Remote testing has been conducted before on projects, but not to this extent. It was a logistical feat and the first-of-its-kind remote test conducted between multiple stakeholders in various locations. All in all, stakeholders were located across nine geographical locations and six timezones.
Divya Mathur, Senior Engineer, Instrumentation and Control, says: “A lot of us put our heart and soul into this and made the IFAT happen; otherwise, it would have been tested onsite. Everybody now understands how critical it was to do the testing before shipping the equipment.”
The payoff beyond Covid-19
As they say necessity is the mother of invention. But remote testing has many benefits – namely time and cost savings. It can also lead to better collaboration, as all stakeholders can be involved in testing and resolve any issues there and then.
“Sometimes there can be problems if testing is done onsite which you need experts to solve and you don’t have your engineering office as backup,” says Rustam Azizov, Senior Engineer, Instrumentation. “You can end up spending a lot of time at site for very small issues which could have been resolved if the IFAT had been done remotely. The second advantage is that we don’t have to travel.”
An added bonus is training. Young engineers and graduates can easily participate and watch the testing without having to travel to site. They can simply take part at their desks.
While remote testing has been used on other projects, the instrumentation team has shown a way forward for conducting IFATs on similar packages.
“On the Duqm project we have come up with many ‘out of the box’ solutions,” says Debasis Guha, Instrumentation and Control Lead. “This was only possible because we had a very open atmosphere on the project and continuous support from stakeholders including the client.”
THE VENDOR’S VIEW…
“There are many advantages of doing it this way, including time and cost savings. We are using it for many other packages now – Duqm has set the trend.”
Yokogawa’s Mehul Parekh
“It’s vital to make sure the equipment is communicating with each other before shipping to site, as it’s easier to rectify any problems. The key lesson I’ve taken away is to be flexible; the more open minded you are to compromise the more likely it is you will succeed.”
Emerson’s Maryam Al Hashash
