Supplying the pipeline

Commitment to Local Industry

To inject an extra bonus to the Project’s economic benefits, the Industry Capability Network Queensland (formerly ISO) worked with the Project’s engineering and procurement personnel to assist in giving regional manufacturers the opportunity to tender and supply.

Tender packages were structured to ensure an open and competitive tender system, as well as to provide an equal opportunity for local suppliers to participate. The result was over 88 per cent local content with 46.7 per cent going to Queensland regional industries.

Not only have local companies been successful in obtaining work in the Project, but also the strategy has identified an underlying strength in local engineering to design and build the infrastructure for a current technology gas pipeline system.

For example, Corrosion Specialists won the tender for the critical cathodic protection system and Rockhampton Switchboards secured the switchboard package. As a commitment to local content, the Project supported both the Queensland Government’s Local Industry Policy and the Federal Government’s Enhanced Project By-Law Scheme (EPBS).

Fittings and Flanges

Van Leeuwen Pipe and Tube Queensland were awarded the contract to supply carbon steel pipe, fittings, flanges, stud bolts and gaskets for the compressor station, meter stations and other aboveground facilities comprising the NQGP.

This contract provided new challenges for the Van Leeuwen team who were required to utilise the Facility Management System (FMS) bar code for pipe tracking. Debbie Teggins from Van Leeuwen said that “The benefits from the bar code system proved worthwhile in every aspect and are certainly a time saving instrument for tracking of materials used for a project. Van Leeuwen take pride that we were able to contribute to the successful completion of this stage of the NQGP Project.”

Van Leeuwen Pipe and Tube is a distributor of carbon, alloy, stainless steel, galvanised pipe, tubes, buttweld fittings, flanges and specialises in the supply of material from stock.

Their profile includes 1,600 staff and over 50 offices worldwide, geographically spread in Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia and America. Within Australia they have branches in each state. Through approaching customers needs and requirements in an innovative manner, the group has evolved into one of the world’s largest distributors.

Testing Services

Through its subsidiary company Australian Pipeline Inspection (API) Australian NDT provided non destructive testing and metallurgical weld procedure testing for the NQGP Project.

The mainline pipeline radiography crew maintained a testing rate in excess of 300 welds per day with a total of 25,000 radiographs taken during the life of the NQGP Project. This regime ensured that at no time was testing more than one hour behind the welding crews. The testing crews maintained this schedule with no break downs and no down-time on equipment or services.

The total Project facilities provided by API were given full field laboratory accreditation by NATA. JME Mark 2 X-ray crawlers and the latest generation Rigkau 250 Kv X-ray units, supported by mobile darkrooms, were utilised for the Project. Ross McNiel (General Manager, API) said “The Project, which was run on an alliance basis with all parties supporting each other, was the most professionally run project we have been party to in recent years.”

SCADA System

Following the Project procurement policy and after appropriate reviews, the NQGP Alliance selected Honeywell Process Solutions to deliver the NQGP Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems and instrumentation because of Honeywell’s proven track record in delivering systems on time, on spec and under budget in the Queensland energy market.

Honeywell’s technical capability, distributed server architecture (DSA), safety systems and on-going support-services agreement complemented the NQGP Alliance’s service commitment to North Queensland’s electricity consumers in an increasingly demanding market.

The NQGP Project team set new standards for collaboration between the Project partners. Team workshops, partnering agreements and continuous accountability ensured that issues were resolved quickly in an environment of trust.

“This project brought together some of the best people in the industry,” said Gary Kelly, Manager for Honeywell’s Queensland Energy team, “Our leading technology was deployed efficiently by a very capable Honeywell team with project experience in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.”

At the heart of the SCADA system is Honeywell’s ExperionTM Process Knowledge System.1 Distributed servers were deployed at the Moranbah compressor and Brisbane control rooms with complete control-room fail-over capabilities.

The operator interface was developed in compliance with the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium, ensuring that potential unplanned outages are quickly identified and rectified without interrupting gas supply.

“We had our technical challenges,” said Gerry Browne, Honeywell Project Manager. “Delivering distributed server redundancy in a low network bandwidth TCP-IP environment is not all plain sailing. But the team worked together, exceeded the performance requirements and delivered a sound solution that the NQGP can rely on.”

Supplying Compressors

Weatherford’s Gas Services International (S) Pte Ltd, a sister company of Gas Services International (Aust) Pty Limited, was awarded the contract to design, engineer and manufacture the 4 X G3612LE Caterpillar Engines driving Ariel JGC/4 gas compressors for the NQGP compressor station.

GSI(S) commenced manufacturing of the compressor packages out of their Singapore manufacturing facilities in September 2003, with an ex works completion time of 27 weeks. GSI(S) contracted Hellmann’s World Wide Logistics to ship all four packages from Singapore to the Port of Mackay. Hellmann’s arranged a local heavy haulage company in Mackay (Miers Bros) for the road transportation of the compressor packages to the Moranbah site. This was conducted over a period of 4 days, using five semi-trailers per day and a second prime mover to pull the main skid assembly and the cooler assembly to the top of the Eden Ranges.

GSI(A) conducted the pre commissioning of the packages for the no load test on all four units in Singapore and has been heavily involved with the Project from day one.

1 Experion Process Knowledge Systemâ„¢, is a registered trademark of Honeywell International Inc.

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