Process safety, compliance and custom builds: Inside aeSolutions' system integration

Ken O’Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: We deliver innovative machine integrations that enhance safety, compliance and operational efficiency. Our third-party-approved fire and gas system and burner management system products are built on industrial PLC platforms, ensuring built-in compliance with industrial codes and standards. We have extensive experience planning and executing complex hot cutovers and migrations of process manufacturing control systems, minimizing downtime and operational risks. From concept to startup, our full project development engineering team supports clients in defining detailed scopes, bridging the gap from initial concept to a cost-optimized execution and delivery plan.

What percentage of your projects are standard machines vs. custom?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: 100% of our projects are custom applications, built using standard products and templates to reduce cost and risk and increase quality.

What is your core business? What industries do you work in? What type of manufacturers do you work with?

Ken O’Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: At aeSolutions, we provide end-to-end critical system solutions that empower resilient operations and safer communities. Our unique approach is to pair risk-focused industry experts with a proven project delivery team and methods. We have found our clients succeed when they work with us through the entire project lifecycle where we have strong collaboration with their team in discovery of their regulatory gaps and operational risks, in defining cost-effective plans to address those gaps and risks and delivering integrated critical system solutions aligned with their operational and financial goals. There’s nothing more important to us than our clients’ success built with our trusted expertise.

We offer comprehensive solutions for a diverse range of facilities in the process and manufacturing industries.

Geographically, where do you integrate machines?

Ken O’Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: We serve clients mostly in the United States, including Alaska, but also in Canada.

What are the important trends affecting the industries you work with and the types of machines you integrate?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: Process manufacturers’ engineering teams face rapid depletion of expertise due to an aging workforce and fewer young entrants. This is especially critical for advanced and niche areas like critical systems and compliance. Manufacturers are struggling to support operations, let alone the additional burden of managing change and responding to disturbances and upsets. Automation systems need to be stable, well-documented and user-friendly for both operations and maintenance staff; and automation suppliers need to be able to close the gap with skilled technical talent. Additionally, lower customer demand on chemical suppliers from reduced new housing construction and new automotive purchases post-COVID and regulatory uncertainty are both challenging clients in prioritizing their capital spending.

How much time does it typically take to go from design stage to installation on a typical machine? Do you have other projects that vary?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: Our most successful engagements begin with our discovery team working with the client to identify gaps in resilient operability and compliance. From those findings, our project development engineers assist in developing a coherent, executable scope of work that maximizes risk mitigation potential. Our FEL team then defines the requirements for the final solution and our delivery team designs, implements, validates and delivers a right-sized, compliant solution.

Get your subscription to Control Design’s daily newsletter.

How do you use digital twin software or other technology for the design process?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: We use various modeling techniques to gauge the risk present in an existing facility and then to model various FEL solutions to verify that all functional and integrity requirements are met. The solution with the optimum cost-to-benefit ratio, including cost of spurious or nuisance trips, can then be selected and executed.

What are your supplier preferences and why?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: We are a certified Rockwell system integrator and a Siemens Solution Partner.  We are also experienced in other platforms, including Delta V and Triconex.

What is required for typical maintenance on the machines you work with? How do end users limit downtime?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: Many of the solutions we deliver necessarily include critical protection systems. These systems require routine testing to uncover hidden failures that could prevent the system from providing the intended protection. We offer services to define the testing protocols to be sure to discover as many hidden failures as possible. Downtime can be limited with the judicious use of redundancy. The cost of the additional hardware and the additional testing of the redundant systems must be balanced with the cost of unscheduled downtime due to single points of failure. The systems we provide offer extreme online diagnostics as well so that discoverable failures are identified and corrected quickly.

Please detail any other products or services you manufacture or offer in addition to system integration.

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: We offer a comprehensive suite of services focused on enhancing industrial process safety and automation. Our capabilities include, but aren't limited to:

• process safety management, providing services to help clients achieve risk management and operational excellence goals and compliance
• alarm management, providing services and systems to bring clients’ alarm management practices into compliance with ISA 18.2 standards
• machinery safety, helping manufacturing facilities achieve safe machine operation through risk assessments and safeguard design
• fire and gas systems, developing and implementing fire and gas detection systems to enhance plant safety and maintain regulatory compliance
• safety instrumented systems (SIS), designing and implementing systems that ensure safe operation of industrial processes by mitigating risks associated with equipment failures or process deviations
• fired equipment services, providing engineering services for safe and efficient operation of fired equipment and associated processes.

Please highlight a recent customer integration project with innovative design. How did it help this customer achieve better production or quality?

Ken O'Malley, CEO, aeSolutions: In a recent project, aeSolutions, a Siemens Solution Partner, executed a critical central utility plant (CUP) control system upgrade for TGES America. Facing an accelerated timeline, aeSolutions implemented a seamless hot cutover strategy, allowing the new system to go live without disrupting ongoing operations. The outcome was not only an enhancement in reliability of the CUP, but also an improvement in operational efficiency, enabling TGES America to maintain consistent production and uphold high-quality standards.