AMPP 2022 Takeaways

AMPP 2022 Takeaways
Matt Alberts, director of partnerships

As a new member of AMPP, HUVR was on-site at the inaugural conference last week. We were excited to meet such a tremendous variety of service, technology and coating providers. We were able to learn a lot, and I wanted to share some of my key takeaways from the show.

Technology

When you look at the inspection process in industries such as O&G or petrochem, the advancements in technology over the last few years can aid and automate complex and dangerous inspections. However, the first line of defense against corrosion—the coating—was largely left out of the technology curve.

Well, it seems that has changed. A big part of coating longevity and protection is in the application. As you can imagine, recoating a tank or ship would normally have required massive amounts of scaffolding or dry-docking—stealing time and production. Today, robotic technology around water and sand blasting increases safety and decreases costs. The repeatability and standardization a robotic platform can bring to surface preparation and cleaning also allows coatings to protect our equipment better and longer.

What we will begin to see very soon are these cleaning robotics being turned into cleaning and inspection packages. For instance, HUVR partner Apellix recently rolled out a painting drone to augment their UT and dry-film thickness drones, so more tasks can be completed without scaffolding. For large applications—such as a tank or ship hull—it only makes sense to include dry and wet film thickness and surface profile measurements into the workflow. Ultimately, the data must be turned into actionable insights that drive planning, operations and repair: that analysis is something the HUVR IDMP (inspection data management platform) excels at.

Data Management

Coatings go through a rigorous QA/QC process, especially for more specialized coatings that require certain conditions, number of coats, and thicknesses to be applied precisely to ensure their protective properties. But what happens to the data that is collected during this process by data loggers or other device? It winds up on a paper notepad, a checklist or filed away in an MOC document, which means it effectively does not exist.

With the advent of connected tools—like those DeFelsko provides—it is much easier to capture and store this data. But simply storing it digitally is not enough to turn it into actionable data—a digital silo is still a silo. The opportunity to apply comparative analytics on coating measurements across one asset will unlock the possibility to drastically improve monitoring over the life of your coating. With this being the first, and often main, defense against corrosion and erosion, it is vital to ensure via documentation that proper application steps were followed.

The last thing an asset owner wants is a major failure because the thickness of the 2nd coat was 3 microns too thin and thus didn’t provide the necessary corrosion inhibitor (it’s a story as old as time!). Effective data management, documentation and reporting is a win-win for service companies, coating suppliers and asset owners alike.

The Future

From inspection to cleaning to the application of new coatings, drones and robotics will definitely benefit the coatings world. These devices will be a key to longevity of assets, but will also enable the creation of more enhanced coatings, since the application will be more precise. We are at the precipice of smart coating devices and can expect they will lead to an increasing number of data sets that—without the right platform to record and dissect them—will end up in unusable data silos.

Conclusion

HUVR’s IDMP is purpose-built to handle diverse data sets for regular, irregular and robotic inspections. With this, companies, service providers and asset owners can leverage the type of technology showcased at AMPP 2022 and receive the true value from operationalizing it at scale. We’ll have more AMPP content in the coming weeks, including videos, insights from our CEO and experts. If you’d like to know more about our plans for the future, or how we can help you today, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d love to talk it through with you.