Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

It is official, summer has arrived in Scotland. You can tell because the fog is slightly less wet, the rain falls at 45 degrees to the vertical (rather than 80) and it is no longer dark all of them time. It also means that my cycle commute can take some of the more scenic routes…

The last few months have been quite intense, hence the lack of blog posts, but finally Edith has arrived, thesis is submitted and I can actually get back to some kind of a semblance of life.

It turns out that the normal returning to work chills were unwarranted (as usual) and things have progressed well in my absense. Not in the least with thanks to one of my BP colleagues who babysat my portfolio over the four weeks. I no have a confirmed date for the final Minox commissioning, my HP cooler funding has come through and my Caissons DSP have been endorsed by the business.

Minox

Just before I went on leave, this project stalled right at the end of offshore execute due to a missing suction strainer. This stainless steel witches hat strainer sits pointing into the flow to catch debris left in the pipes during construction. The tolerances on the B blower that we have installed are <1mm and commissioning without it would have been high risk.

The piece was found to be missing during the pre-commissioning line walks, it had been missed at every stage of the project, including my review of the project as I took it on. Added to that all we have to go on are the mark ups on the P&ID and Isos, not design data actually exists for the kit. This has resulted in a project change to the tune of £75. £32k for the re-mob of the commissioning team, £43k for the design of the new strainer and about £200 for the strainer fabrication itself…

An example of a typical witches hat strainer

The amount of detail the team had to go on.

The were a few small issues to quell on my return to work, but I now have confirmed dates to complete this project and it will be one of the last things that I do before I leave here.

HP Cooler

My funding bid for this project has now come in and my final budget has been increased from £6.2m to £8.5m. Of that £2.3m I have alread spent around £400k and the rest will be for Nick to spend as he takes this project through to the offshore execute in the 2015 TAR. It is shaping up to be a corker with a 5m sq cantilever lay down area needing constructing off the East side of the platform,

In the picture, the blue element is the new laydown that need constructing, the green is the new cooler and the yellow is the flare boom. Incidentally the silver tubes are the coolers that I helped put in last year. The project itself is nearing the end of the Define phase, but I am finding progress of the structural design team disappointing. Due to a lack of resource in this structural is way behind, process, piping and electrical, which has resulted in some friction. Not in the least that structural identified that the final  cooler position needed moving around 500mm; the new cooler is more than double the dry weight of the old and needs to be positioned closer to the main module spars. This has had repercussions on the design work carried out by piping and process which has needed to be modified. I was looking forward to challenging any PCN for this work, but WGPSN has captured it within project growth. At the moment the Define is costing around £100k over the original estimate and I can account for this as due to the fact that the project did not go through Appraise and Select. However, this should put the project in a much better position for Execute.

Caissons

My work on the indefinite postponement of the Bruce caisson programme has come to fruition and my DSP has been endorsed at all levels. This represents around a £20m saving for the business over the next 5 years and potentially more if the risks that I identified are not realised. I still have some work to do in mothballing the C13 project and in reality this will be concluded by one of my BP colleagues on the Bruce team.

In other news

The kids are getting on well, with Hugo just starting to come to terms with the fact that he is no longer the centre of everyones attention. Sleep is still broken and no sign of that letting up in the near future. It is a very good feeling being on this side of the thesis, and for anyone thinking about it completing a thesis and having a sprog at the same time is not advisable.

My last batch of Aberdeen beer is in the fermenter as we speak. It has been going for almost two weeks and has another two weeks to go before it gets bottled. It should be nicely conditioned by 14 July. This is my first attempt at replicating the brew that I made in December and a good test of whether my theory that close control of the fermentation environment will provide consistency in the final product. Unfortunately I have not gotten the fridge rigged up to be controlled by my Raspberry Pi as the SSR arrived to late, but I have programmed a control programme that allows for a low temperature period of fermentation followed by a ramp up in the last 2 weeks. The next iteration of the programme will require some PID control to de-conflict the fridge with the heater and to increase the overall efficiency.

I feel like I have reached the limit of procedural programming and have started to read up on Object Oriented Programming (OOP). This is a more modular approach that will improve my ability to develop the software. It will also allow me to start developing GUI and move towards web and mobile apps. The goal for this would be realtime indication of fermentation temperatures and control of the heater/chiller via a mobile device. It probably seems like over kill for brewing beer (not to me), but then imagine applying the same technology to your house.