Simmons ... confident

The majority of the company’s services include calibration and certification of valves for new-build projects, mechanical and instrumentation, shop and site services for control valves, safety relief valves and manual shut-off valves

Psn Gulf Valve Services Co Ltd (Pan Gulf Valvserve), one of the leading providers of workshop and site maintenance services for all types of valves and related products, is positive about the market situation with new projects being given the greenlight and the company seeing many more requests for quotations for the validation testing of new valves.

"The slump caused by falling oil prices has had an effect on the levels of business. It is clear that companies are being prudent when it comes to shutting plant and product lines down, the pressure to minimise production downtime is a key objective to plant managers and their teams. Pan Gulf Valvserve strives to support them during this by aiming to complete support services on-time and within budget," says Alex Simmons, general manager Pan Gulf Valvserve, a subsidiary of Pan Gulf Industrial Investment.

It is becoming apparent that customers are now considering service and/or repair options as a way of reducing costs, and long lead times (by as much as 60 per cent) compared to replacing new valves and associated items, notes Simmons.

Referring to business levels this year, he says Pan Gulf Valvserve is working on maintaining, or aiming for a slight increase on, business levels comparable to last year.

Reviewing geographical location, historical data, planned shutdowns and turnarounds along with orders received indicate that this is on target, says Simmons.

"Achievement of our sales targets this year is key to our overall business success. Some 81 per cent of our orders were completed last year with the remaining 19 per cent composed of blanket service and maintenance contracts and on-going projects. We currently have in excess of 100 orders on hand which, including blanket contracts, ranges from low in value to seven figure shutdown and turnaround orders," he says.

Shutdown and turnaround works started in earnest at the beginning of September and since then the company has completed a number of large and small orders. Works completed include the confirmation testing of over 600 new valves, maintenance and servicing work on over 500 valves ranging in size from 1-inch to 60-inches.

The majority of Pan Gulf Valvserve’s services include calibration and certification of valves for new-build projects, mechanical and instrumentation, shop and site services for control valves, safety relief valves and manual shut-off valves during shutdowns, turnarounds, emergency and/or routine maintenance. The company also offers servicing, including in-situ hot setting of safety and pressure relief valves on critical plants and units, along with pipeline intervention services such as hot tapping, line stopping (stoppling), leak sealing, in-situ machining and cold cutting.

Pan Gulf Valvserve has also completed a number of in-situ testing of safety relief valves and has completed over a dozen pipeline intervention jobs involving mainly hot tapping, he says.

Simmons says Pan Gulf Valvserve is always striving to improve its services and support to customers, to that end it entered into a countrywide service agreement last year with Mokveld, from Holland, for the service and support of their ranges of engineered valve systems for critical control and safety applications.

Pan Gulf Valvserve further expanded its services this year, into valve actuation and control systems, by being appointed as the in-kingdom service partner for Bernard Controls from France.

The firm has long-term agreements with many of the industry leading companies in Saudi Arabia including Sabic and Saudi Aramco and their affiliated companies.

Pan Gulf Valvserve has a long standing global service agreement with all Sabic affiliates and has served them for their service and maintenance requirements for over 15 years, says Simmons.

The service agreement covers all ranges of service and support requirements 24/7 and covers shop and site works during shutdowns, turnarounds, emergency and/or routine maintenance, he says.

Pan Gulf Valvserve has recently opened a new workshop in Yanbu, in the western region of Saudi Arabia. Equipment is under installation and commissioning. Some small jobs have been done there on behalf of Yanbu and Rabigh based customers, with a major shutdown order planned for completion in February 2018. The firm aims to support all projects in Saudi Arabia from its two main facilities in Jubail and Yanbu.

Pan Gulf Valvserve has also delivered solutions to major companies in Bahrain, such as Tatweer Petroleum, GPIC and Bapco, and in Kuwait to KOC and KNPC.

The company has worked with its partners in delivering product training in all of the key contractual areas it has including in depth training and certification in Holland and Dubai with Mokveld and Bernard Controls respectively. On-going training and development is provided in-house through the company’s Technical Manager.

Other service partner agreements are in place with HP Valves in Holland and Solent and Pratt in the UK. Discussions are currently taking place with a German company who manufacturing fast acting shut off valves for boilers and furnaces.

Pan Gulf Valvserve’s Services Management Application for maintaining records of work done to all valves is under constant development to ensure that a clear history is available to both internal and external customers.