Showcase · Oil and gas
Recommissioning a gas plant from twenty-year-old drawings.
The client bought a plant that had been shut down for years and wanted it running again. The original drawings, 646 tags on the register, and thirteen questions for every tag before a single part could be bought. We built the system that answers them, tag by tag. The plant is coming back to life.
646 tags. Thirteen questions each. Nobody answers that with three browser tabs and a phone.
On one flow switch alone, 24 of the 38 listings on the market carry a mark Canada will not accept.
The client
A plant that had been dark for years, and a register of 646 tags.
The client bought the plant to bring it back online. They had the drawings from when it was built, about twenty years ago, and a tag for every instrument, valve and pump in it. A crew walked every line and wrote down what was still there, what was broken and what was gone.
Bringing a plant back is not one job. It is 646 small jobs, and every one of them has to be answered right before anything is bought, because a wrong part in a classified area is a safety problem, not a returns problem.
The problem, in the client’s words
“We have 646 tags and drawings older than some of our crew. For every tag we need the same answers.”
- Does this part still exist?
- Who sells it?
- What does it cost?
- What condition is it in?
- How soon can we have it?
- Does it meet today’s Canadian ratings?
- Does it meet today’s standards for that area?
- If not, is there a crossover that will?
- What is different about the crossover?
- Does it go in bolt for bolt?
- Or does it need a small adapter?
- Or cutting and welding and a new spool piece?
- Or does it have to go to engineering first?
Thirteen questions, 646 times. That is the job the client brought us.
How we got there
Eight working days from the first call to a system in use.
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01
A phone call.
The plant, the register, the thirteen questions. We asked what a wrong answer costs. In a classified area, it is a safety problem.
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02
Six tags as the proof.
Through the drawings together on a video call. Different makers, different kinds of part, some easy and some hard.
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03
The first build.
A working search on those six. The client pressed every button and said what was right, wrong and missing.
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04
One round of changes.
The biggest: the system must never say a part fits. It shows every field and leaves the decision with the engineer who signs.
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05
The whole register.
From six tags to 646. In use today, still growing as the plant comes back to life.
What we built
A recommissioning system that starts from the client’s own drawing.
The register is the front door: 646 tags, each one a job. Type a tag and the system finds every place selling that part today: the maker, the distributors, the surplus houses, the marketplaces. Then it does the hard part. It reads each seller’s order code off the maker’s own table and puts it beside the drawing, twenty fields, side by side.
For every listing it answers the thirteen questions in one of four ways: same part; a crossover, and the work that brings; will not go in, and why; or nothing checked, because the maker publishes no table. The price counts only what could go in. The letter to the supplier is already written, and it carries nothing from inside the plant.
It never says “fits”. The engineer signs, and now they can see every field they are signing for.
The centrepiece
The drawing on one side. The seller on the other. One row per field.
Area certification
The drawingCSA, explosion proof, Class I Division 1
This sellerA United States mark only
StopCanada will not accept it in a classified area without a field evaluation. This is where the search would have sold you the wrong part.
Process connection
The drawing21 mm MNPT
This seller½ inch NPT
SameSame thread. The drawing is metric and every maker writes imperial, so it reads as a difference until somebody knows better.
Pressure rating
The drawing1,723 kPag
This seller3,000 kPag
SameA rating is a floor, not an equality. Higher is acceptable, not different.
Method of protection
The drawingExplosion proof
This sellerIntrinsically safe
CrossoverBoth are legal in that area. It needs its own wiring and a barrier. That is a line on the purchase order, not a reason to walk away.
Internals material
The drawing316 stainless, sour service
This sellerNot published
Not statedThe card says what to ask the seller for: the full order code off the nameplate.
Five of the twenty fields. Every one of these is a real comparison off the job.
The result
Six tags as the proof. 640 more behind them, and a plant coming back to life.
On the six proof tags: 291 listings from 65 sellers, in minutes instead of weeks. 71 of them caught before anyone bought one: the wrong mark, the wrong thread, the wrong material. The other 640 tags run through the same machine, the same way, as the crew works down the register. In use today and still being worked on.
- 291listings found
- 65sellers
- 71caught before anyone bought one
- 8working days to a system in use
This is one job. Yours will not look like it.
Nothing here came off a template. It existed because somebody described a problem out loud. Tell us the worst job in your week.
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