Process and control engineer with over 35 years of energy industry experience primarily in the areas of industrial process design, safety and control systems integration, and plant operations. His career in process design includes P&ID development, heat, material and pressure balances, hydraulics, steady state and dynamic process modeling, and equipment evaluation and troubleshooting. Also has significant expertise in advanced regulatory controls, including sequence/batch and advanced and model-predictive control (APC/MPC).
Formal Education
- B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University
Career Highlights
- Independent consultant/advisor to refining, (petro)chemical and engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) companies
- Co-author of a book on real-time distillation process control
- Oversaw mechanical, HVAC, electrical design, and installation for Remote Instrument Enclosure (RIE) buildings
- Redesigned multi-fuel heater firing and load balancing controls in days after it had stumped a project team for over two years
- Completely rewrote batch sequence controls for two thermal reactor systems and reworked an EPC contractor's process design basis on an expansion for two crude units
- Led multinational expatriate team in a challenging overseas Operations and Maintenance (O&M) project with zero on-the-job accidents
- As a control engineer at a major oil company, implemented first management-of-change procedure for DCS point allocation and configuration
- At a major industrial automation company, managed scope of DCS and SIS network and hardware, marshalling, and electrical systems design and configuration
- Identified deficiency in shutdown and safety systems utilization to end-user and EPC contractor on a new poly-olefins unit project
- Holds a private pilot license and knowledge of aviation automation, operations, and safety
Expert Qualifications
- Primary expert for assessment of a loss-of-revenue insurance claim submitted by a U.S.-based fertilizer company due to the destruction of an intermediate plant, which resulted in a sudden price-increase for similar derivative products that then had to be imported from overseas
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Frequently Asked Questions
What types of cases can this expert support?
Cases involving industrial controls, SCADA systems, PLCs, DCS networks, and equipment failures. They've spent 35 years in refining and chemical operations, so they understand both design intent and how things fail in the field.
What is this expert's technical background?
B.S. Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M, 35+ years in process design and controls. Highlights: co-authored a book on distillation control, implemented DCS procedures at ARCO, managed SIS and DCS design at Honeywell, and solved complex batch and firing control problems that had stalled other teams for months.
What technologies does this expert specialize in?
DCS, SCADA, PLCs, and advanced process control (APC/MPC). They code in C, Assembly, Python, Fortran, and Basic—and handle failure analysis, thermal systems, hydraulics, and P&ID development.
- C, Assembly, Basic, Python, Pascal, Fortran
- Distributed Control Systems (DCS)
- Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs)
- SCADA
- Failure analysis
- Thermal