Transferring engineering designs to manufacturing realities is where Apex Technical Resources really shines. A time tested collaborative approach is employed to get input from all project stake holders in order to provide the most value to the client during every step of the construction, commissioning, validation, startup and training phases. When existing systems are being modified or retrofitted, ATR spends time on the front end understanding the needs of the customer and working through the logistics of how to get from where you are now to where you want to be in the future.
IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN, THEN PLAN TO FAIL!
A great process design is only one part of a successful project. Excellent planning and teamwork in the field are needed to implement a design and achieve the desired results. ATR's founder Larry Ziniel is a veteran of dozens of plant shutdowns for his former employer, where the facilities are taken out of production mode annually for two to three weeks for significant maintenance work (equipment rebuilds and preventative maintenance) and major capital project installations. Planning and coordination sessions occur for months before these shutdowns to make sure that each individual job is staffed and supplied with parts properly and the efforts don't interfere with each other. ATR's guiding philosophy is to put in the time before the first contractor shows up on site to properly and completely plan the work, communicate clearly with all stakeholders (owners, designers, contractors, suppliers and operations staffs) every step of the way and monitor the work vigilantly to make sure that the work is done safely and in a quality fashion. ATR's deliverables typically include:
- Pre-construction: job planning, site material handling and storage surveying, understanding GMP, validation and safety requirements at the site and working with all stakeholders
- Design reviews if desired, contractor bid walkthroughs, bid evaluations if desired and on-boarding of construction firms.
- Value engineering and planning sessions with all trades in attendance
- Safety communications to contractors and vendors, and constant safety auditing of the jobsite
- Pre-construction schedule reviews and formal weekly schedule updates
- Creation and tracking of field work orders and documentation of design changes when they occur
- Subsystem commissioning and documentation of test results
- Punchlist creation and tracking to completion
- Training of maintenance staffs and creation of PM's if desired by the client
"GOOD SEASONS START WITH GOOD BEGINNINGS" - SPARKY ANDERSON
In addition to managing construction efforts, ATR has a lot of experience in starting up equipment and process systems and assuring that the facility is ready to put the new additions to good use. Company founder Larry Ziniel spent 10 years early in his career working in a plant engineering department. As a plant engineer Larry conceptualized projects, gained the needed funding, performed the design and procurement work, oversaw construction and validation efforts and then worked with the plant personnel to start the equipment up. Larry quickly learned that the best machine commissioning efforts were those that challenged the machine capabilities in the context of the full range of situations that the operator(s) would find themselves in. How the machinery reacts to upstream starved and downstream blockage conditions, what the meantime between failures and meantime to repair times are and what other things divert the operator's attention from the machine (QA sampling, documenting the production run, replenishing consumable supplies, etc.). Most importantly, Larry learned the importance of maintenance training, as-building drawings, authoring good PM's and documenting everything.
New systems and machines come with an "implied warranty" from the engineer that oversees the installation and startup, so the sooner the operations folks have the training and the resources they need to fend for themselves, the sooner the engineer's phone will stop ringing at all hours of the day, night and weekends. This fact has not been lost on Larry over the years.
