News

October 2007

UCDS is moving - our new mailing address is:

Well, here we are in October! As usual, I am late getting the News to Melinda. UCDS has been busy - you can understand that! Time goes by so fast and months melt together, do you know what I mean?

UCDS had a great September and October started with a bang at the ISA show. I gave a paper on Situation Awareness and a focus on alarm management with a look into the future. I am very thankful to all the folks who attended my session. It was great to see people having to stand around the side walls. You folks are very kind by the way you asked questions and I thank you for the tremendous reception I received at the end. All of you that gave me business cards, I have tried to send you a copy of my presentation. If you did not get it, ISA will be releasing a copy or click here to view.

I am on my third trip to Canada this month - lots of work going on in Canada. We had a great time with TransAlta, they were great hosts. Since then we have been back to New Orleans to do an Alarm Workshop with our friends at Murphy Oil and we are still working on a big new control room at Motiva Convent.

Dave and I will be spending 2 weeks in Australia where we will be working with Worsley in Bunbury on a new project and looking at their wonderful new control room. We are also doing two other jobs in Brisbane. It will be a busy 2 weeks with us arriving back in the States on November 2nd. I will have one quick trip back to Convent then I am giving a lecture in Sweden at the Human Factors Conference (http://www.humanfactorsnetwork.se). I will then be going to Norway to give a keynote address to the IFEA Alarmhåndtering og kontrollromsløsninger, November, 21-22, 2007 at the Radisson SAS Atlantic Hotel, Stavanger. I will also be making customer visits while in Norway. November is going to be really busy as we will also be in San Francisco doing an Alarm Management Workshop and starting a couple of new jobs in Canada.

UCDS is really pleased to see customers addressing alarm management, taking on new HMI and a lot of new control rooms. Someone recently asked me why so many new projects? I believe the updated API RP752 recommended practice is having a big impact after Texas City. Companies are also moving to new control systems such as the Honeywell Experion and Emerson Delta V providing an opportunity to throw away the old bad practices and embrace the new. The new systems are different and require a new build, which has allowed customers to set new standards and take advantage of the new technology. The results are very positive. We heard just recently from a customer, who purchased our style guide, the new graphics allowed the operators to catch an incident before it escalated. The operators stated that with the old graphics they would have missed the initiating signs and would have had an incident. Good to hear that the new graphics are preventing incidents!