August Riemer from Valero Texas City presents mechanical integrity strategies using PCMS.

San Antonio, TX—CONAM Inspection & Engineering Services, Inc., a division of the MISTRAS Holdings Group, is pleased to report that the 15th annual PCMS (Plant Condition Management Systems) Users Conference took place June 13-16th at the Crown Plaza Resort and Hotel. Attendees included representatives from various refinery and chemical facilities in North America who use PCMS as their primary asset integrity management software program. Some of the largest refineries in the US were represented including BP, Citgo, Conoco-Phillips, Sunoco, Total and Valero.

The annual PCMS Users Conference provides a dynamic forum to give members the opportunity to interact with each other and gain insight to a variety of work practices. August Riemer, PCMS Specialist of Valero Texas City, stated, “The PCMS User Conference brings together a group of reliability and inspection professionals from across the world. The conference gives us an opportunity to share success stories and challenges we face in our own Mechanical Integrity program. We are gaining the opportunity to learn and apply a proper implementation strategy at our facility through lessons learned not only at our plant, but other refineries as well.”

This year’s conference focused on product demonstrations, including new and existing features in PCMS, implementation workshops, Q&A, future direction strategies and program enhancement voting. One of the major enhancements introduced was the integration of Risk Based Inspection (RBI) into PCMS. An embedded Tischuk API 581 RBI Calculator was demonstrated. This module gives customers the opportunity to store and manage traditional and RBI based inspection plans in one software program. Along with the embedded RBI module, the PCMS Development Team also unveiled a new module to link to Equity Engineering API RBI software for users that perform RBI calculations with the API RBI software. Both modules enable customers to integrate risk based and traditional inspection in an “evergreen” environment. Inspection results constantly feed rule-based and RBI based calculators for maximum analysis of future inspection dates and techniques. These modules will be available in PCMS 7.0, which will be released later this year.

The conference also featured a variety of guest speakers. John Tischuk of Tischuk International and Lynne Kaley of Equity Engineering’s software detailed Risk Based Inspection strategies and the role PCMS provides in RBI planning and execution. John Harville, PCMS Coordinator of BP Whiting, and August Reimer addressed implementation strategies and success stories on how PCMS has become a valuable tool to streamline inspection activities, which allows their facility to get the most out of every inspection dollar spent, while operating a safe and productive refinery.

PCMS is the most comprehensive software program developed specifically for the industrial process industry. Textual and numerical data are easily entered and analyzed by the program, resulting in increased confidence of inspection results with complete compliance and regulatory mandates. To learn more about PCMS, please visit our website at www.pcmssoftware.com.