“The greatest challenge in this project was making an inventory of the existing installations. We used a multi-criteria analysis to determine which existing functionalities needed to be adjusted and to what extent necessary," says Ruud. Other challenges were the lead time and the scale of the conversion of the control cabinets, but also in the fact that business operations must continue during the conversion. The control cabinets are central to the plant. They manage all the equipment which means replacing these, therefore, has an impact on the entire business operations. Ruud: “The new control cabinets are housed in a new control room so, for example, the installation of the new cabinets and the laying and connecting of new cable paths can take place independently of other activities. The routing of cable paths is set up in such a way that the continuation of processes will experience minimal inconvenience and the contractor will also be unhindered by operational continuation. By making thorough preparations, the cabling need only be connected on the site-side, to begin with testing. This way, the conversion work can be planned to take place consecutively.”

The existing control cabinets are mainly controlled via relay technology and are equipped with modern automation equipment. Iv-Water is to provide the functional designs for automation.

The project has many stakeholders and all with various interests. All these stakeholders must ultimately support the chosen solution, which means gaining support is very important. Stakeholders are, therefore, closely involved in the project and in the technical choices, whereby the voice of the directors and process managers are of great importance. Among others, introductory meetings and interactive sessions have been organised to jointly draw up the Customer Requirements Specification (CRS) and to identify risks.

The extensive article can be found in our magazine.