Process Analyzer Systems Project Engineering and Management

Process Analyzer Systems Project Engineering and Management

Many process analyzer system projects encounter preventable difficulties during the project development, engineering and design, procurement, construction, closeout, and sustain phases. Most control systems and process analyzer systems engineers have encountered communications breakdowns, task difficulties, and other obstacles on at least one project. A principle objective of the analyzer-system project engineering and management ideas in this book is to minimize or eliminate such occurrences.

This book provides analyzer and control systems engineers, and other project team members, with ways to recognize project risks, and with project engineering and management methods for smoothly executing analyzer systems projects by avoiding risks and addressing them as quickly and cost effectively as possible.

Included are specific recommendations and ideas for defining hardware and documentation deliverables with emphasis on adhering to procurement policy, working with team members in other disciplines and in the supply chain, and communicating among teams.

Many methods presented here can be modified to meet specific project needs and applied to any discipline or type of equipment scoped in large or small, capital or maintenance, projects.

Gary Nichols is a retired registered professional engineer (PE) in control systems engineering (CSE) in Texas. He has 40 years of experience in analyzer systems engineering, including applications development, specifying, engineering, constructing and starting up analyzer systems. He has a BS in chemistry from California Polytechnic State College, San Luis Obispo, and an MS in analytical chemistry from the University of Georgia. He is a member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society; a Senior Member of the International Society of Automation (ISA) and an ISA Certified Automation Professional (CAP ); and an American Society for Quality (ASQ ) Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE ) and Certified Quality Engineer (CQE ). Nichols published On-Line Process Analyzers (1988) and authored chapters in the ISA book Analytical Instrumentation: Practical Guides for Instrumentation and Control (1996) and the Encyclopedia of Analytical Science (1995). He also authored process analyzer systems articles in Control magazine. From 1989 until 1999, Nichols was the news editor for the Process Control and Quality journal and for 8 years, he volunteered to help the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) prepare the national CSE PE exam.