Shout Out: IChemE

The Institution of Chemical Engineers will be holding a presentation on the 20th Feb, 2012. Go just to see Mr. Mustafa Mahmood.

The topic

The presentation will discuss the aspects of flow assurance challenges associated with deepwater subsea developments, particularly for long subsea tie-back projects.

Often one of the main operating concerns for deepwater subsea developments is hydrates and how best to operate outside the hydrate region. Flow assurance challenges often occur at the end of field life at low flowrates and how to extend the field life. However in order to optimise the MEG system (storage and process capacity) as well as addressing slugging and well start-up for late field life, flow assurance needs to be done in the design phase. This presentation highlights and addresses these issues.

The speaker

Mustafa Mahmood MIChemE has 23 years’ experience in conceptual and detail design of onshore / offshore projects. He is currently Flow Assurance Manager on deepwater developments at Intecsea and developing the Flow Assurance Team for South East Asia. He has extensive experience in all aspects of subsea process design and flow assurance for deepwater projects and was lead flow assurance engineer for subsea gas-condensate pipelines for an LNG project in Australia.

The venue

The event will take place at the Grand Millennium Kuala Lumpur, 160 Jalan Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Registration form here.

Shout out – IChemE AGM

IChemE Malaysia Branch Annual General Meeting 12 March 2011

NOTICE is hereby given of an ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING as follows: Date: 12 March 2011 Time: 09:00 – Refreshments or breakfast 09:30 – AGM commences   Venue: University of Malaya, Engineering Tower, Faculty of Engineering, Level 4, Bilik Persidangan How to get there – click here   Agenda: Presentation of board’s annual report Presentation and approval of the accounts of preceding financial year Report by external auditors Election of board members for year 2012 (1 Jan – 31 Dec 2012) Election of honorary auditors Constitution amendments Any other matters properly brought forward Notes: In accordance with Article 8.5 of the Constitution of the IChemE Malaysia Branch: ‘Any member who wishes to place an item on the agenda of a general meeting may do so provided he gives written notice to the Honorary Secretary seven (7) days before the meeting is due to be held.’   There is no cost to attend – we hope to see you there.

Jan Althorp Executive Director Australia & Asia Pacific jalthorp@icheme.org on behalf of: Yap Yih Yiu, CEng MIChemE Honorary Secretary IChemE Malaysia Branch yap_yihyiu@petronas.com.my Appended with this notice: Draft copy of previous AGM minutes Board’s annual report List of vacant posts for year 2012 Constitution and proposed constitution amendments Click here for the draft copy of previous AGM minutes Click here for the board’s annual report Click here for the list of vacant posts for year 2012 Click here for the constitution Click here for the proposed constitution amendments The audited annual accounts and report by external auditors will be made available at the AGM. Date of notice: 3 March 2011

IChemE Shout Out – AGM

<NOTICE is hereby given of an ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING as follows

Date: Saturday 20th March 2010

Time:

• 09.00 am – Refreshments/Breakfast
• 09.30 am – AGM commences

Venue: University Of Malaya

DK1 Faculty of Engineering (Fakulti Kejuruteraan)

50603 Kuala Lumpur

MALAYSIA

Click here to link to the UM map:
(DK1 lecture theatre is at Block A Biomedical / Bioperubatan. As soon as you take the left turn slope to the Engineering Faculty, the Biomedical/ Bioperubatan Block A can be seen on the right. Once you park and get into the main foyer, the lecture theatre can be accessed on the far right of this block. You need to take the staircase up).

Agenda:

• Presentation of Board’s Annual Report Presentation and approval of the accounts of preceding financial year
• Report by External Auditors
• Election of Board Members for year 2011 (1st Jan – 31st Dec 2011)
• Election of Honorary Auditors
• Constitution amendments
• Any other matters properly brought forward

Notes: Members are to take note that in accordance with Article 8.5 of the Constitution of the IChemE Malaysia Branch,

Any member who wishes to place an item on the agenda of a General Meeting may do so provided he gives written notice to the Honorary Secretary seven (7) days before the meeting is due to be held.

Shout Out – IChemE EGM

The Institution of Chemical Engineers Malaysia is sending out  a notice of an extraordinary general meeting on the 5th December, 2009. Details are:

• Time: 09.00 am
• Venue: Bilik Mesyuarat,  Ground Floor,  Fakulti Kejuruteraan & Alam Bina,
• UKM Bangi
• Agenda: Constitution amendments

The constitution amendment is to raise the annual subscription of members. For a member like me, the cost of my subscription goes up by 20+%. Guess which way I’ll vote?

Optimal – A Fully PETRONAS Company

I can’t find this news on any Malaysian news site. I first read about it in the TCE:

TO further ease its debts, Dow Chemical has agreed to sell its stake in Optimal to Malaysian partner Petronas for $660m.

 I pulled an extract from Project Finance International (subscribers only):

Dow has recently sold its entire stake in Malaysia-based Optimal Group of Companies to Petroliam Nasional (PETRONAS).

From Optimal’s history page, there are only two investors, UCC (now part of DOW) and PETRONAS.

I remember when Optimal was sucking up the Kerteh workforce with higher pay and better compensation. They opened up an international school in Kerteh, to cater for the (highly paid) expats who came in for the first 2 years. They also closed the school when the expats left, so you know it wasn’t meant as a service to local staff, even those who could afford it.

So, does this mean that the current Optimal salary, wages and benefits (SWB) will be in line with the rest of PETRONAS? Is there going to be an exodus of talent from Optimal to … don’t think there are other high-paying jobs around the KIPP (Kawasan Industry Petroliam PETRONAS), so we’ll see another exodus overseas.

IChemE Interview – Pöyry Energy KL Graduate Engineer

(Did I tell you that I’m leaving Poyry and starting my own oil and gas consultancy in the New Year?)

One of our lady engineers was interviewed by the IChemE.

IChemE extract - Afida Interview

It helps that the IChemE is renting space in our office

Note: I know they refer to Afida as Sikandar, and that this is in the October issue of TCE. Check out her graduation date, we grab them while they are hot!

Mentoring – How do you do it?

How do you mentor another engineer? As an example, the IEM has a mentoring scheme thats based around a logbook. The mentor meets up with the mentee at least once every 3 months, and reviews what the mentee has done. The mentor is meant to provide guidance as to whether the work done allows the engineer to develop.

When I go through a report, what I look for is:

• Breadth of experience (I use the IChemE‘s report structure for this). The mentee should be exposed such as to develop her all her skills. This would mean the opportunity to explore as much as possible all engineering topics. Project management, safety, design, operations are just some of these.
• Appreciation of engineering as a whole. A young engineer might think that running Hysys is cool, but you want them to understand why they are doing what they are doing. You don’t want to have only an technical software pilot, you do want an analysis as well. The tool is a means, not a ways.
• Presentation of report. Engineers need to present their products. So clear writing skills and an proper flow is important. Highlighting important items and findings, and focusing on the deliverable would be something I would want to see.
• General well-being. Is the mentee happy, is she getting enough support, is the mentor someone she wants to throw a brick at… you get the drift. The mentor should decide whether it is something she can help with, or the mentee should be able to deal with it herself with some tips of the trade.
• Opportunity to influence exposure. You as a mentor should have enough clout to get  your mentee into projects or activities that help broaden their horizons.
• Inspiration. It does help if you can get your mentee excited about work. Explain why they are doing the work that they do (need to build up experience, enhancing skills, exposure to client/site/software tools)

And you can do this more than once every three months, depending on the requirements. Engineers do get up and down days, you know.

IChemE 2nd regional safety seminar – Part II

Continuing on the same topic above, a presentation was delivered by Damain Peake, Sr Technical Safety Engineer, Shell E&P Asia Pacific entitled ‘Shell – Asia Pacific (EPA) operationalises HSE cases: major hazards communication and technical integrity’

• Shell E&P AP portfolio.
• Asset Integrity – Definitions
• Technical Integrity – Definitions
• Introduction to Safety Cases
  • Show all that hazards with the potential to cause a major accident have been identified, their risks have been evaluated and measures have been taken to control them.
• Issues
  • Focus: SC used to capture all hazards, not just causes of major accidents.
  • Usability: SC unwieldy due to too much info.
  • Upkeep of SC, Management of Change (MOC)
  • Consistency of SC structure.
• Framework to address Issues
• Operationalise Shell E&P AP SCs.
  • Operating envelope and SC agreement
  • Institute maintenance schedule
  • MAH identified
  • Compliance to ALARP principles
  • Accountability
  • Remedial action plan and progress tracking
• SC HSE section structure
  • Overview
  • Major Accident Hazards (MAH)
  • Equipment
  • Systems
  • Additional information
• Best Practices
  • MAH and assessments
    • Best Practice Bow Tie – templates, electronically distributed and linked.
  • Hazard / Safety Critical Element (SCE) communication
    • Hazard control sheets.
    • Major accident pictures.
    • KPIs.
  • SCE and technical integrity
    • Change from facility description to SCE description
    • Describe how to keep the SCE operating.
    • Clear guidelines on how to manage SCEs when not fully functional.
• Take home messages
  • Process safety – asset integrity (AI) intrinsically linked.
  • In operations, MAH management can only be ensured if technical integrity is ensured.
  • Operations HSE case have 3 main functions: communication, linkages, …
  • HSE lose focus.

IChemE 2nd regional safety seminar – Part I

I attended the above seminar on Monday, 14th July 2007. Interesting crowd, for once I felt that I was among my brethren of ChemEng.

I took some notes on the first presentation ‘PETRONAS – Enhancing chemical process safety in PETRONAS towards superior performance’ delivered by Kumar Karunakaran of Group Technical Services.

• Introduction to PETRONAS
• Introduction to Process Safety
• Process Safety Enhancements in PETRONAS
• Implementation approach
• Implementation of new Roles and Responsibilities
  • Champions
  • Focal Person
  • Process Safety Aspect Custodian
• The role of Situational Assessments (SA).
• Problem areas discovered during SAs.
  • Control of Safety Interlocks & Protective System Bypasses.
  • Inconsistent Lock Out Tag Out (LOTO) application when used on non-electrical equipment.
  • Insufficient Pressure Relief Devices (PRD) performance evaluation.
• Ensuring sustainability through monitoring and measurement
  • Establish Process Safety Community of Practice (CoP)
• Key success factors.
• Way forward.

Blue Spotted Stingray