News

We have continued to strengthen the Technica team by engaging the services of Ian Hawkyard.  Ian has joined the team as technical authority and his extensive experience within the gas industry will help us to move towards our ultimate goal of excellence in our project delivery.

John Davison commented “Technica has been going through steady change for the last two years and I am particularly excited by the thought of how we can accelerate the changes within the business with the help of someone with Ian’s experience and knowledge.  Our objective is to develop a highly experienced and competent team, who all share our vision of where we can take the business and what we can achieve, in the coming months and years.  I feel Ian’s contribution will be invaluable in progressing towards the fulfilment of these objectives.

Ian commented “John has a commitment to develop the technical knowledge and expertise of the team.  Understanding customer requirements and turning them into designs which are compliant and customer orientated is challenging within a fragmented gas industry. I hope to be able to provide expertise and knowledge to develop the team, thereby  enhancing Technica’s commitment to improve quality and customer satisfaction”.

Technica’s charity champion, Jen Atkin has been hard at work again orgainising charity activities at Technica.  Earlier this year Jen organised the Jeans for Genes day (a charity that supports research into genetic disorders) and had a great response raising £80 for this charity.

Jen is pictured with another of her charity events; the Macmillan coffee morning, staff were treated to a range of delicious home made cakes to go with their morning coffee.  This raised an amazing  £90 for the charity.

Not content with her success so far, Jen has the Christmas Jumper day in her sights and furthermore this year’s Technica annual Christmas dinner is going to feature a charity auction in aid of a local Grimsby charity, Harbour Place.  Jen commented “ Harbour Place is a local Grimsby charity that supports a wide range of socially excluded groups including the homeless.  The real meaning of Christmas can get lost amongst all the bustle  and it is important to remember that for some people life can be very tough.  Hopefully we will raise some money that can help in some small way.”

On the 30^th June Bryan Creed, Technical Director and co-owner left Technica Ltd after more than 10 years with the company.  In Bryan’s farewell to the staff he commented on how enjoyable it has been seeing Technica grow from small beginnings to the successful business it has become.  Bryan went on to say that when he and John Davison (Managing Director) started the business neither of them could have foreseen where that decision would have taken them.  Bryan thanked the staff, past and present, for all their efforts and hard work over the years and contributing to putting Technica where it is today.  Bryan made a point of singling out John Davison for thanks for the support John has shown over the years and especially recently as Bryan struggled with his decision on where he wanted to go with his future.

Bryan explained that building a business from scratch had been challenging, sometimes stressful but also very rewarding.  He went on to say that Technica had come such a long way as a business and now had a strong customer base and a very competent team to take the business forward to even greater heights.  Bryan continued; “I have been doing a lot of self-analysis in the last year as I came to terms with what would be required personally to take the business to the next level and during this personal development realised that I had come to a cross roads.  For over 10 years I have put Technica first and I realised that what I wanted now was to put my family and myself first; obviously I have had long discussions with John as this would affect him almost as much as myself; we have been busy preparing a contingency plan over the last few months in case this was my final decision.  We are now happy that everything is in place to allow Technica to move forward and fulfil John’s ambitions for the business. He, with the support of his management team, is confident that Technica will carry on moving forward and continue in the success we both have built. I am an engineer at heart and will remain in engineering going forward but my initial plans are to simply have a break and spend time with Maria, my wife.

John Davison concluded; “Bryan and I started our careers as apprentices many years ago so his departure is going to take some getting used to personally.  We have been putting a strong team together over the last few years and we have an established client base. Together with the recent development of a number of exciting opportunities I am confident Technica will go from strength to strength”.

TECHNICA PROVIDES MULTI-DISCIPLINE DESIGN AND SAFETY ENGINEERING SERVICES FOR IMMINGHAM RENEWABLE FUELS TERMINAL

Local engineering firm works on world’s largest biomass handling facility

Grimsby-based engineering design firm, Technica, has provided functional safety design and instrumentation design and emergency shutdown for the Immingham Renewable Fuels Terminal (IRFT), the world’s largest dedicated biomass handling facility.

The prestigious renewable fuel handling project also saw Technica, on behalf of client Associated British Ports (ABP), deliver the design, manufacture, configuration and site commissioning of the emergency shutdown and terminal control systems.

Explains John Davison, Managing Director at Technica: “The IRFT facility uses ABP’s bespoke continuous ship unloaders to offload wood pellets from vessels on to a conveyor system which moves the pellets through the facility into one of four storage silos, each capable of holding 25,000 tonnes of biomass, and onward to a train loading facility. The biomass is then loaded onto trains for transport to Drax power station.”

Continues John: “ABP, via principal contractor Graham Construction commissioned us to provide a range of design and engineering services for the facility including detailed design and equipment specification, third party interfaces such as HV and LV drives, as well as control and instrumentation and support with commissioning the facility and detailed training for operatives.

“In addition, we were asked to contribute to the various multidiscipline and vendor design reviews such as HAZOP, a hazard and operability study and LoPA, a risk assessment method used to determine and demonstrate the ability of existing and proposed safeguards.

“We were also responsible for functional safety at the facility, a task that saw us carry out extensive safety requirement specification and safety integrity level calculations. As part of this, we designed, built and implemented software configuration for the site’s integral emergency shutdown and terminal control systems.”

Mark Hennessy, Deputy Engineering Manager at ABP, added: “At every stage of the project, Technica displayed the commitment, knowledge and detailed planning we required to get the work done on time and to a high standard. I was highly impressed with the professionalism the team demonstrated throughout.”

Concludes John: “As a result of the successful completion of the IRFT project, we were selected to provide the same services and emergency shutdown and terminal control systems for an expansion of ABP’s facility to incorporate a further four storage silos and a second rail load out facility.”

BRYAN LEADS THE WAY ON UK BIOMETHANE DAY

Our Technical Director, Bryan Creed, has once again attended the annual REA UK Biomethane Day that took place on 20th April at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.

Bryan led Technica’s project for National Grid Gas to develop a generic design for a fully integrated Network Entry Facility complete with OFGEM approved gas chromatography analysis, pressure reduction, odorisation, fiscal metering, GS(M)R gas analysis and gas rejection.

At the time of the first REA UK Biomethane Day in 2012 the UK had not completed any biomethane projects. Rainbarrow Farm was the first in 2013, closely followed by two further projects in 2014. By the end of 2015 there were 51 completed biomethane projects and as of 1st April this year there were 61 operational biomethane to grid projects, with the UK having the fastest growing, most innovative and diverse biomethane market in Europe.

This year’s Biomethane Day attracted over 300 delegates, with exhibition stands from all of the major suppliers of Biomethane related plant reflecting the fact that biomethane has become the leading renewable heat technology in the UK.

GO GREEN!

Over the last financial year, we’ve confirmed our commitment to enhancing our environmental performance with a number of initiatives aimed at reducing our overall carbon footprint. Having held the ISO14001 accreditation for a number of years we have gradually built up our understanding on environmental issues in general and our own impact on the environment.

Directors John Davison and Bryan Creed decided that they wanted to reduce the company’s environmental impact further and a number of schemes were reviewed. Although a sizeable investment was required it was decided that the installation of solar panels would have the most beneficial impact on reducing our carbon footprint.

Our head office here in Grimsby is completely powered by electricity; when we moved here in 2013 the mains gas feed was removed. 2014 allowed us to get a benchmark for our energy usage and to set quantifiable improvement targets for 2015.

By raising awareness and getting staff on board with a variety of initiatives, we were able to register an amazing 17% reduction in energy usage. Having now gone further and installed solar panels, we have seen a further saving of 27% for the first two months of 2016 compared to the same period last year.

One of the other investments we made during 2015 was to replace all our 14 workshop lights from old style 400kW lights to Luxna 100kW, LED high-bay lighting. These adopt super bright LED as the light source, which is stable and offers a long life with no UV or IR emissions.

TECHNICA CALLING

We are frequently engaged in high profile international projects that usually require extensive travel to attend meetings with clients to ensure their specific requirements are met.

It was during one such meeting that it occurred to our Managing Director, John Davison, that the creation of a video conferencing room at our head office in Grimsby could have a beneficial impact on reducing staff travel times and consequently the environment as well.

As such, a suitable area of the building was identified and the conversion to deliver a state-of-the-art video conferencing facility was completed in December last year. Although the room in no way replaces the need for face-to-face meetings, it does provide an environmentally friendly alternative whenever appropriate.

Two of Technica’s engineering team, Craig Watts and Jack Browning recently attained the CompEx Ex12 design competency certificate.

The CompEx Ex12 training and assessment is competency based and focuses on the application of installation, design, selection and erection of electrical equipment in areas of explosive atmospheres. CompEx Ex12 meets the competency requirements of IEC60079-14 for Designers (design & selection).

Craig and Jack are now part of an elite group of just over 500 engineers across the whole of Europe who have been assessed and passed the Ex12 Competency training and assessment.

Bryan Creed, Technical Director at Technica said: “The majority of Technica’s engineering and design projects are associated with explosive atmosphere applications. This additional competency training builds on the team’s knowledge and gives us an industry recognised measure of competence. I am very proud of Craig and Jack for passing what is a detailed and challenging Hazardous Area design competency assessment. Having staff employed with the Ex12 competency certification helps us reduce our clients project associated risks.”

Training was carried out at the Stallingborough CATCH facility a CompEx Licensed Centre and competency was assessed by JTL.

Team Technica has scooped The Humber Challenge Cup for the second year running and the cup remains pride of place in our reception.

The annual football match between Technica and Hull-based civil & marine engineers, GGP Consult, has this year raised £250 for The Artie White Foundation and took place at the Bradley Football Development Centre in Grimsby.

Explains Bryan: “This is the second match we’ve played against GGP Consult and underlines our mutual love of sport – if we’re not talking engineering when we’re working together on projects, the topic of discussion will be either golf or football or both!”

Another very competitive game ensued on the field with some very dubious refereeing decisions! It was a well-fought battle with GGP taking the lead early on 1-0 and then 2-1, but when Technica went 3-2 up the game really heated up.

The score steadily rose in Technica’s favour to 6-4, but Technica were under pressure for the final twenty minutes with man of the match, Dave Wilkie, holding off the GGP onslaught almost single-handed.

Eventually Technica came out triumphant winners with the final score standing at 8-5.

Adds Bryan: “We’re also currently staging an ongoing Ryder Cup Golf style tournament which will conclude at the end of summer, so the cup may well change hands then.”

Concludes Bryan: “There are a few aches and pains in the office this morning but we all had a great time and helped to raise £250 for the Artie White Foundation, a charity that supports sports teams and worthy causes in the Grimsby and Cleethorpes area.

“We were delighted to hand the cheque over to Dave Boylen, ex-Grimsby Town Captain, club legend and club ambassador who accepted it on behalf of the charity.”

Left to right in the photograph are Bryan Creed – Technica, Jim Gabbitas – GGP and Dave Boylen.

Details of the Bradley Football Development Centre can be found athttps://www.lincsinspire.com/enterprise/Bradley

TECHNICA REPLACES GAS SEAL SYSTEM AT HATTON COMPRESSOR STATION

Grimsby-based engineering firm, Technica, has delivered a multi-discipline management, design and construction project to resolve compressor seal gas system issues at the Hatton Compressor Station near Horncastle.

Following the recent installation of a fourth gas compressor at the station, National Grid, who own and manage the facility, reported operating difficulties with the new compressor which were leading to regular shut downs.

Outlines Bryan Creed, Technical Director at Technica: “National Grid identified a problem with the quality of the dry seal gas. The only way to solve this was to fully replace the existing seal gas system.

“National Grid also found that the existing seal gas conditioning skid unit was incorrectly sized for supplying the correct gas pressure to the compressor’s drive end and non-drive end seals.”

Continues Bryan: “We provided a multi-discipline design to facilitate the installation of a new seal gas system supplying mechanical, civils, electrical and instrumentation discipline designs to enable a new seal gas booster skid to be installed.

“Our construction team decommissioned and removed the existing seal gas conditioning skid, pipework and associated equipment.”

Concludes Bryan: “Following the removal of the old equipment, we provided a variety of construction services including modifying high pressure pipework, vent pipework, instrumentation, electrical distribution and motor control centre.

“On completion of the installation we pre-commissioned the new equipment and also provided assistance during National Grid’s commissioning exercise at the station.”