Gas Compressor Control Panel Replacement

Oil And Gas · Obsolescence Upgrade

The Problem

A gas compressor was running on an obsolete control panel — an unsupported controller executing a control program that could no longer be maintained. The customer needed the replacement to behave identically to the original.

The Approach

We extracted the ladder logic from the old controller and rebuilt it on the new platform using our in-house conversion tooling rather than transcribing it by hand. That matters for four reasons: engineering time is not spent retyping code; programming errors are minimised because a validated tool does the work instead of a person; functional equivalence is guaranteed by the process rather than left to chance; and factory acceptance testing runs faster and cleaner because there are fewer human errors to find.

Conversion alone is not the job, though. Our team have spent years on gas compressor control and operation, and have done many obsolescence upgrades from systems that are unsupported, antique or simply rare. We used that understanding to design the panel hardware and control system around how the machine is actually operated, and to the customer’s own hardware standards — which improves standardisation, maintenance and operation long after we leave.

Testing Before Site, Not On Site

We simulated the new panel in full and verified every piece of control functionality, including the on-skid HMI and the site SCADA pages. Commissioning was planned and de-risked in advance so the machine could be returned to reliable operation as quickly and safely as possible. We do not leave that to chance, and we do not skip full simulation testing of a control program.

The Result

Factory acceptance testing finished ahead of schedule with only customer-requested changes outstanding. That pulled installation and commissioning forward, leaving only the field I/O and the interfaces that cannot be simulated to be proven on site.

The comparable overseas offer was a panel build with a generic operating philosophy and generic drawings, ready for collection from an overseas dock at twenty-six weeks, before freight and customs. We delivered in roughly half that, at a comparable price, with the panel built, tested and supported here — and with documentation written for this plant rather than adapted from a template.

What Was Handed Over

• Updated operating philosophy
• Panel general arrangement drawings
• Electrical connection diagrams, schematics and loop drawings, written for this plant rather than generic
• Updated cause and effect, and alarm and trip schedules
• Factory and site acceptance testing
• Commissioning procedure and handover documentation