Yorkshire Water Asset Replacement Continues

There has been considerable activity in recent months on the ATEX front especially in our Ireland operation. The need for compliance is hitting home and Aston Dane Ireland continue to demonstrate the highly cost effective benefits of our Three Phased Approach. 

For more information on Aston Dane ATEX Compliance services follow this link Aston Dane ATEX Services

RWE-Thames Water, London Water Supply - 24 October  2003

New SCADA system and Management Information System designed and delivered by Aston Dane enters final stages of commissioning.  Thames Water's, London Water Supply replacement Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system, believed to be the largest and most advanced of its kind in the world, has entered the final stages of site commissioning.

The project, which was started five years ago, is providing the London Water Supply business with unprecedented access across the entire Enterprise, which includes Water Treatment and Distribution, servicing some 6 million customers in the central London area.

Aston Dane together with ABB (Switzerland) and Hima (Germany) host latest EU conference in the development of IEC 61508 best practice guidelines in Milan. Next conference will be held in either Hungary, Czech Republic or Spain - watch out for confirmation in due course.   For more information go to the SIPI website.

Safety Critical Systems in the Process Industries - Paris, France - 17 Sept 2003 

Aston Dane together with ABB (Switzerland) and Hima (Germany) host latest EU conference in the development of IEC 61508 best practice guidelines in Paris.  For more information go to the SIPI website.

ISA UK - Annual General Meeting.  Aston Dane Technical Director, Chris Birtles CEng MIEE, presents insights to IEC 61508.

Sign up for the October 2003 SIPI 61508 (EU sponsored Safety in the Process Industries) workshop to be hosted by Inprotec at La Palma Hotel, Lago Maggiove, Milan.   Visit the SIPI website for more details.

The RUG (RTAP User Group) have just announced the venue for the 2004 annual conference.  It will be held at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the first time in its 12 year history to be held outside of Canada.  Calls are now out for papers.

The 12th annual RUG Conference (RTAP User Group) was hosted by Ian Buffey, Products and Solutions Business Manager, of Aston Dane.  This years hot topic was SCADA security, coming in the wake of 9/11 and concerns over terrorist threats.  Other interesting topics included Wireless Ethernet, Effective Alarm Systems and Process Historian Developments. All this years papers are now available at www.rug.org.  

Aston Dane has secured a strategic order from a world leading Pharmaceutical Manufacturer.  The company  has 5 out of the 20 top selling drugs.

The project which is part of a programme to improve access to manufacturing information and supporting regulatory requirements will involve the development of a data management system to collect both time series data and alarms and events from a number of existing manufacturing facilities.  A major part of the project is the writing of a configurable alarm parser and logger application which will monitor the alarm data currently sent to the printers, interpret this data and log it to the data management system. 

Aston Dane takes the Biscuit at Confectionery Giant - 28 April 2003

Chocolate Lovers amongst you may have noticed the relaunch of a number of major confectionery brands with added  ‘Biscuit’ bits. These are now appearing in the shops and are currently being advertised on TV. Aston Dane has been instrumental in providing electrical and software design to existing Plants.  Look out for future new exciting additions.

We are pleased to confirm that Aston Dane has recently been awarded a term contract for the provision of software, design engineering and consultancy services for a world leading Pharmaceutical Company.

The agreement with Aston Dane will help to deliver a number of capital projects this year. The work also entails close working relations with their global alliance Engineering partner using a team based approach to the projects.

The work will include peripheral consultancy work to meet compliance with Safety Guideline IEC61508 and FDA rule for Electronic Records and Signatures (21 CFR Part 11).

Following the recent success of the ATEX seminar series conducted in the latter part of 2002. AD Ireland have commenced its first project for a leading Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in Dublin.  Based on a 3-phased approach and encompassing  area classification as well as 1st stage inspections..  

This is a significant win for the Irish business demonstrating that our Irish clients are beginning to recognize our abilities and have faith in the delivery capability of the Irish operation.  

Over the last 12 – 18 months we have been working closely with the technical manager, senior process engineer and chief systems engineer at the main feedstock factory to define and develop an integrated management reporting system.

The object of the work is to provide both analysis of the process in terms of materials and plant usage and deliver a range of factory performance figures that are fed in to the group.  This work has led us in to the heart of the operational management systems and we have been able to identify many areas for improvement in terms of accuracy of information and availability of the information.

Having successfully demonstrated the power of the new Process Historian database, we have been asked to work alongside the the IT dept. to undertake what will be a test bed project to make the report output available under security privileges to a wider company community by way of an SQL Server database with full web enabled access. An additional feature of the new system will tie in a new Weigh Bridge system supplied by a third party which will further tighten the raw materials management in the factory.

The totality of this work when complete in the autumn of 2003 will amount to a complete “process re-engineering” of the way data is captured, analysed and converted in to useful and timely management information across the group.

Yorkshire Water Asset Replacement Continues  - 10 December 2002

Following the recent problems at Rawcliffe Waste Water Treatment Works with the existing Siemens PLC, the planned asset replacement project has been kicked off in anger. Rawcliffe is a conventional medium sized WWTW serving the whole of the North York area for Yorkshire Water.

The original project plan was to replace existing Siemens PLCs at Rawcliffe running the existing PLC kit in parallel with a new Allen Bradley PLC. Following a trial period the Siemens PLC would be replaced by the Allen Bradley PLC. After many recent problems where the existing PLC processor has crashed several times beyond economic repair the plant is now in manual control urgently requiring a control system.

Our Clayton West rapid response team, Fraser Remington and Lee Knowles, are currently working on a temporary solution to allow key elements of the plant to be operational by Xmas. This will enable those plant areas to be run automatically until the full replacement system is ready to be installed around April 2003.

Yorkshire Water Services (YWS) need to ensure that they are getting maximum benefit from their existing investment in instrumentation, control, automation and monitoring systems. Aston Dane has been awarded the contract, against very tough competition, to provide an independent report on the extent, condition and use of this equipment and these systems in YWS.

The report is to provide summary conclusions giving a picture of the completeness, calibration, use-ability, and actual use of the existing Automation, Instrumentation, SCADA, Telemetry and other ICA equipment across the YWS asset base. The report shall also provide ideas (with outline costs), on suggested improvements to the current situation.

Aston Dane in a Spin - Mechanical design and installation of two decanting centrifuges  for a Speciality Chemicals Company - 13 Nov 2002

Aston Dane has been awarded a contract for the Engineering/Design and Management of a leading Speciality Chemicals’ Company Expansion Project.

The project includes installation of two decanting centrifuges to replace existing disk filters; Reduced cake moisture = greater dryer capacity and reduced steam consumption; Installation of a polishing filter to treat the centrate coming from the centrifuges. The project was awarded under a competitive tendering process and has a number of key objectives defined for success.

For more information please apply in writing.

CDM Success at Major Tissue Paper Manufacturer - Aston Dane acts as Construction Planning Supervisor - 30 October 2002

The installation of a major new Tissue Conversion line has been achieved without injury (not even a cut finger was recorded) or dangerous occurrence, despite over 2500 man-hours being worked by 12 different installation companies.

Aston Dane had been appointed as Planning Supervisors. As Planning Supervisor AD had the overall responsibility for Health and Safety on the project, ensuring that adequate time and resource were allocated to the Health and Safety side of the Project and to ensure that this was implemented by the Principal Contractor.

The Project involved the installation of a ‘new’ Hi-speed Tissue Converting Line which receives 2 Tonne reels of hard tissue, 1.5 M. dia. x 3 M, long from the on site Paper Mill and converts this tissue into typically 200 mm. dia x 300 mm. long rolls and packages them ready for sale.

For more information please apply in writing.

Water for the North East - More projects for Northumbrian Water - 09 October 2002

Water for Newcastle and Gateshead

Aston Dane has secured further work with Northumbrian Water Limited for the supply and installation of a new SCADA and PLC system for the Horsley Water Treatment Works. The Contract was won against fierce competition.  The plant treats a mixture of river and reservoir water and supplies water to Newcastle and Gateshead; is the second largest site within the Northumbrian Water Treatment centres. The project invloves Rockwell PLC's with SCX SCADA.

Reducing the Risk of Cryptosporidium in Sunderland

Aston Dane has secured further work with Northumbrian Water Limited for the extension of the SCADA and PLC system for the Lumley Water Treatment Works. The plant treats river water from the Wear and supplies water to the Sunderland area. The scheme will reduce the risk of Cryptosporidium.

Aston Dane to Perform Heart Transplant in Bronte Country - Yorkshire Water put  their trust in Aston Dane -  02 October 2002

Aston Dane has secured further PLC asset replacement work for Yorkshire Water at the Sladen Valley and Oldfield sites in West Yorkshire close to Haworth. Yorkshire Water has awarded a further two PLC asset replacement projects to Aston Dane involving the transplanting of 8 PLCs at the Sladen Valley and Oldfield Water Treatment Works. The scope includes for the introduction of local operator interfaces at the PLC locations, appropriate changes to the SCADA systems at the two sites and preparation of Process models for testing purposes.

Following, Aston Dane’s recent achievements at Harlow Hill near Harrogate where a Toshiba DCS system was successfully transplanted, Yorkshire Water are continuing their asset replacement programme with these two sites that are currently controlled by SAT and Square D PLCs.

Although the sites have a fairly conventional treatment process, they both have to remain fully operational during the swap-out period. For this reason, the transplants have to be carefully planned to eliminate the risk of downtime. The commissioning of the new PLCs will take place with temporary hardware connected in parallel with the