Established in 1987, GPA Engineering has been a well-known engineering service provider to the pipeline industry for over 20 years. Of the 100 permanent staff working from the company’s Adelaide and Brisbane offices, more than 30 employees work full time on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and control system design, integration and ongoing support.

SCADA in control

The GPA SCADA and Controls Group has implemented new and upgraded SCADA and control systems for many of Australia’s major oil and gas, water and minerals processing companies. The majority of the installations have been in remote and rural areas, with monitoring and control facilities established in the operator’s main office locations in the capital cities.

The SCADA and Controls Group specialises in the upgrade and replacement of legacy control systems for processing plants and pipeline systems. Usually this type of upgrade requires the plant to remain operational throughout the installation and commissioning period, which demands a unique set of skills from the planners, designers and operators. GPA has completed several such projects in recent years, ranging from the very simple to complex processing plants with thousands of monitoring and control points.

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GPA has developed an extensive knowledge of SCADA and controls equipment, instrumentation, software and communications systems. Over the years, GPA has implemented projects utilising every major brand of programmable logic controller, SCADA software, distributed control system, remote terminal units, flow computers and communications equipment commonly available in Australia. The company does not represent or sell any particular brand of SCADA or controls equipment, ensuring that its clients receive unbiased, practical, experience-based advice when choosing a new or replacement system.

Risk management for the industry

GPA has provided its risk management services to a wide variety of industries such as oil and gas, sugar, water, road transport, power generation and distribution, minerals processing, and fuel storage.

The company’s Risk Management Group includes five experienced full time risk management practitioners and a team of process engineers available to undertake a wide range of risk assessment techniques, including hazard and operability studies (HAZOP), control hazard and operability (CHAZOP) studies, as well as formal qualitative and quantitative risk analysis and evaluation techniques.

These techniques are tailored to suit the unique requirements of the customer and may be incorporated into project or operational auditing activities. Particular techniques employed in the performance of these services include:

  • HAZOP
  • CHAZOP
  • Risk assessments to AS4360
  • Safety integrity level assessment to AS61508
  • Pipeline analysis as per AS2885 methodologies
  • Checklist assessments
  • Technical and compliance auditing.

Not only limited to pipeline engineering, GPA says that it has many additional strings to its bow.