Ten years of AJ Stack Solutions

This is a tale of success, a journey from one person to an international organisation: AJ Stack Solutions is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

AJ Stack Solutions (AJSS) is a company that provides technical and business solutions for industries focussing on performance improvement, the reduction in technical and commercial risk and of course cost reductions.

This year marks a milestone: it is the 10th anniversary of the company.

AJSS has just closed on 100 customers across the pipeline, oil and gas, power generation and mining industries across Australia and Southeast Asia.

AJSS started with the vision of one person, Arthur Stack, who arrived in Australia in 2008 to lead the regional aftermarket business of a major gas turbine manufacturer.

In 2013, after five years leading this regional business and with more than 25 years of service with the company, he decided to take early retirement and begin his new venture.

With little time for rest, Stack started AJ Stack Solutions to perform maintenance and field service activities.

Stack was soon joined at AJSS by experienced former colleagues, Tom Chapman, Ray Taylor, Bob Graf, Neil Walters and Murray Wigg helping guide AJSS to specialise in turbine maintenance and operations offering advice, field services, repairs, and training.

After AJSS’s establishment, the company undertook its first power station audits in 2013 and first gas transmission audits in 2014.

The first AJSS office was opened in South Melbourne in 2015 and later relocated to Cheltenham in 2017, its current premises. Now in the 10th year of operations, AJSS purchased offices in Perth and Singapore staffed with dedicated teams of engineers and field maintenance professionals taking on projects across Australia and Southeast Asia.

Growth has been accompanied with opportunities to partner with the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEM) and equipment manufacturers, the first of which came in 2016.

As the company’s reputation has grown, these opportunities have increased and now AJSS is partnered with more than a dozen companies including MJB, Eenergylink Int’l, Perron logistics and Union Hydraulics.

In 2015, AJSS formed a partnership with a national company in PNG and later that year were awarded their first long term service contract outside of Australia.

Two years later, the company won a contract for the operations and maintenance of an FPSO, a contract that has continued despite a change of ownership.

That very same year, AJSS launched its first product, a transportation and storage container. Initially designed to solve a customer problem of transporting their equipment, AJSS has developed the concept into a product line available for hire or purchase.

In 2021, AJSS undertook the decommissioning of a power station in Western Australia and subsequent environmental remediation of the site, which finished in August of 2023.

As part of the contract, AJSS also preserved and subsequently brokered the resale of seven turbines and two gas engines.

That same year, the AJSS team started working on hydro plants winning three Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) operations and maintenance projects.

Through Stack’s leadership and vision in 2020, AJSS took another step in its growth and commitment to customers by attaining ISO 9001:2015 status, quality management, and further cemented its commitment to customers in February 2023 with the ISO 45001:2018 certification, health and safety management.

Both certifications demonstrate AJSS’ continuous improvement over its 10-year journey.

A skilled provider

One recurring theme throughout the history of AJSS has been customer requests to supplement or replace their training on rotating equipment and balance of plant.

AJSS engineers have over 500 years of collective experience on the design, operation, and maintenance of rotating equipment, which provide customers with expert training techniques and strategies to improve their skills.

Since the company’s inception, operations and maintenance training has always been conducted on client sites as well as in AJSS offices, usually as a supplement to field services.

AJSS’ first international training appointments took place in Papua New Guinea in 2015, then in association with Yangon University and again in Malaysia to 40 young engineers in 2016.

Therefore, when AJSS opened its office in Cheltenham, it was an essential development for the company to have both a workshop for maintenance and a large training centre included in the design.

The training centres in Melbourne and now Perth, have been equipped with turbines, valves, electrical panels, control systems and models of significant rotating equipment components to assist with training for customers.

2016 was a significant year for AJSS training through the development of online training. The idea emerged over a coffee with the training manager of a pipeline company in Western Australia, following a face-to-face training course that was delivered on the company’s site.

The conversation identified the issue of training people unable to be present at the scheduled event.

While online training discussions were taking place, digital twinning technology was an emerging area of interest and desktop computing power was sufficient to run complex animations and interactions such as those required to show the movement of engine components.

Thinking outside the box, AJSS decided to incorporate the emerging area of digital twinning with the decision to design an AJSS gas turbine. Also, AJSS invested in computer engineers with gaming development experience to build a virtual world with its modelled rotating equipment, using control interactions accurate to the real world.

The approach of creating accurate representations of real equipment has proven to be successful as AJSS has modelled equipment on many oil and gas sites around the world.

In 2020, the company expanded beyond the resources industry with commissions from Pfizer pharmaceuticals to create critical technical training for operators in Europe that exactly simulates the tasks they perform in the real world.

If looking for a solution to a problem or requiring training for technical teams, AJSS’s unique ability to challenge the norms and never give up in finding a solution for a client, combined with its expertise and new and improving interactive training solutions, can assist any company in taking their next steps to the future.

AJSS has developed a portfolio of highly interactive online driven training modules that accurately simulate the operation of equipment on many sites around the world.

This year has seen marked by a significant growth of AJSS’s online training business and the company has now more than 400 students enrolled in their online training courses which has led to their training business, Stacked Learning, becoming a separate company incorporated in Singapore.

The future of Stacked Learning is global and in 2023, AJSS appointed its first agents and partners in the US and Europe, to carry the AJSS brand around the world.

The company will continue building in the future by developing new strategies to add value, developing lasting solutions to problems and above all, seeking out new opportunities to grow the companies.