Happy ever aftermarket!
Refurbished subsea valve, ready to return to Norway
Nick Parker (KKI)
Martin Broadbent, Spares Manager
This move has seen a rapid expansion in the team’s ability to manage maintenance and upgrade projects for its global customer base. Investment into equipment in the facility continues: this autumn sees the installation of an additional hydraulic test bay onsite, to complement the team’s existing hydro testing capability. At the same time, a new crane and 6-tonne floor scales are being installed. Furthermore, internal and external CCTV is being fitted to boost security measures and to allow customer-witnessed testing to take place without the customer needing to visit the site. New staff have been recruited to enable full support for the company’s topside and subsea choke and control valve range.
All this investment means that the aftermarket team is increasingly self-sufficient, able to schedule its own workload priorities. This is vitally important since the team needs to accommodate not only scheduled shutdowns but also unplanned outages, as well as ongoing maintenance requests.
As a result, the scope and range of projects coming through the factory has increased, with the team looking after larger and more complex projects as a result.
Subsea choke valves re-fit
One such long-term project began earlier in the year, and is now fully underway. The team has been commissioned to refurbish up to 30 subsea choke valves per year for a global customer. The valves, with four body types and ranging in size from 2 to 4" have up to 100 components each, including the actuator. The team takes 8 weeks to fully refurbish each valve; first stripping it down and auditing the actual requirement before going ahead and carrying out the work. Each valve is worked upon independently, and its components stored separately in the secure, onsite storage bays, with a full audit trail being maintained throughout. The original body and bonnet will be brought back to perfect condition, and tungsten carbide trims fitted before testing is carried out to ensure the valve is ready to be returned to the customer.
The team has already processed and shipped six valves for this customer up to the end of August and is now fully geared up to meet the ongoing requirement for future valves.
Bahrain Natural Gas Project – actuator re-fit
KKI’s aftermarket engineers have been just as busy away from the factory as they have been in it. Recently, four engineers have been supporting a month-long project in Bahrain; alternating between working in the field and at the customer’s workshop. The team has been upgrading actuators, having to accommodate the fact that the units are subject to continuous external attack from sand and high environmental temperatures.
Azerbaijan – trim supply
Sand is also presenting major challenges for KKI’s global customer with their operations in Azerbaijan. Unsurprisingly, downtime cannot be countenanced because of the scale of operations and the cost implications of stopping production.
KKI has been commissioned to produce a number of its advanced Vector labyrinth trim stacks to provide long-term solutions to the problems being encountered. These disk stacks allow up to 28 turns to accommodate high pressure drops, whilst significantly reducing velocity, noise and cavitation.
Whilst the Vector trims are in production, Kent Introl are first manufacturing temporary, sacrificial trims in both fully stellited stainless steel and tungsten carbide to keep production flowing in the short-term.
Martin Broadbent (right), Spares Manager, and Nick Parker, Service Manager are unsurprisingly, very positive about the future of the aftermarket service within KKI. Nick told us: “Our goal of being self-sufficient, yet having full access to the expertise from the rest of the business, is now becoming a reality. We’re able to take on a wider range of projects for customers, and can provide an even more responsive and high quality service that means their downtime is minimised – this is, of course, the primary concern of pretty much all of our customers.”
KOSO Kent Introl
Tel: 01484 710311
www.kentintrol.com
Published: 2nd December 2012
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