Owner’s Engineers are a group of experts independent from licensors and EPCs, who fill the gaps in Client’s resources and knowledge for a project, become a part of Client’s project team and act as Client’s advocates in the world of technical expertise. Over the last few years AmmoniaKnowHow.com and UreaKnowHow.com specialists have been successfully supporting investors and plant owners around the world.
Our expertise
Our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are highly experienced engineers with extensive background and daily involvement in engineering / design, commissioning, operation, maintenance and optimizing of multiple ammonia, urea, nitric acid, and ammonium nitrate plants. Our specialists have been involved in both EPC projects covering all technology licensors, and commissioning and operating of greenfield and brownfield facilities.
Every project is unique and requires different type of expertise and services. Therefore, project owners need a reliable independent partner to support them in any issue that may arise. No project is too small – either as a single expert within Client’s team or as an entire team of experts, we always aim to a successful project completion when the project complexity is mastered, and the investments risk is reduced.
Cost
Depending on the team size, cost of Owner’s Engineers might be covered already by the savings resulted from the right design for one single critical equipment.
We do not have:
Massive overheads with admin and corporate personnel,
Rents of shiny office buildings,
Shareholders to satisfy their need for profit.
And no massive overheads mean cost-effective pricing for our clients.
We charge hourly rates, with no minimum number of hours per month. We know the project workload per SME varies as we move along each phase. This gives our clients a great level of flexibility knowing that they pay only for the engineering knowledge that they need at a certain point in time during their project.
How we do it
Every ammonia, urea, nitric acid, UAN or ammonium nitrate project comes with numerous challenges. The team structure, expertise requirements and project strategy are discussed and set up together with our clients to get the best outcome for the money they pay. Having a competent engineering team on board from project early phases has the purpose to provide valuable technical input, to increase safety and reliability of the future plant, to enhance project quality at all levels and to optimize project cost. Everything starts with selecting the technology licensor and EPC company that will execute the project. The Owner Requirements document must be well written and let no space for interpretation. During Concept Select phase there will be weekly technical meetings with all bidders and their local agents to identify the best solution for the client. Our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) take part in all these meetings on the Client’s side, discussing and clarifying all technical queries from bidders to advise the best available technology for the client. Once we receive all technical information from licensors and EPC, the SMEs score rank each proposal based on key criteria to select the winning bid. Once the technology license and EPC are selected, we move on into FEED and Detailed Design phase. We use our own internal review procedures if EPC fails to provide a satisfactory methodology. We have weekly video meetings with our clients to discuss latest deliverables, technical queries, and clarifications. We share our knowledge by providing feedback from our experience concerning operational issues, troubleshooting, equipment failures, corrosion problems, safety incidents, etc.
How do we work during pandemic as Owner’s Engineer with our Clients?
Our SMEs are based in North America, Europe, and Australia. Using cloud platforms and Office 365 tools we build remote teams to bring on the best experts in ammonia, urea, nitric acid, and ammonium nitrate technologies.
In the times of normality, should it be requested by the Client, we travelled for meetings with licensors, EPCs, board meeting, vendors, HAZOPs studies, equipment FATs etc.
Nowadays, to comply with COVID-19 pandemic guidance, we have obtained the capabilities to perform remote studies and reviews with our technology SMEs present during workshops as Independent Process Experts from Owner’s side. Want to know more on Ammonia Urea Nitric Acid Ammonium Nitrate owner’s engineer? Contact us directly:dan.cojocaru@akh.deocamdata.romark.brouwer@ureaknowhow.com