Process Controls Engineer

Company

INEOS Phenol

This role requires formal knowledge and certification in several process controls and safety systems. Each certification requires bi-annual refresher training to remain current on the systems. It requires an understanding of network design and the associated hardware/infrastructure. It must be capable of setup, configuration, and maintenance of supporting systems such as alarm management, data historian, asset management, etc. This role requires a broad understanding of industrial communications protocols and programming languages.

It requires a strong understanding of control theory, process dynamics, and instrumentation and how they can be applied in the control of chemical processes. This role requires an in-depth knowledge of the process, facility installation, and operating conditions to evaluate, and optimize control schemes and sequences.

This role routinely provides guidance to operations personnel on process control and optimization and to maintenance personnel on troubleshooting. In addition, it directs contractors and consultants when required to support large projects and TARs. It is required to schedule and oversee the preventive maintenance required for the system hardware and the testing required for the safety interlocks, which requires support for the operations and maintenance departments.

Coordination of these activities across multiple departments requires high levels of planning, organization, & control. After completing these activities, this position is responsible for evaluating the data and documenting the findings. Any items that need further attention must be tracked to completion. All information must be maintained with a high level of detail for tracking the long-term integrity of the system hardware & instrumented safety systems and also to support audits (INEOS, insurance, OSHA, etc.)

when required.

This position continuously communicates with the operations, maintenance, and engineering departments in the development of process control improvements, troubleshooting process controls issues, and training on process control systems and philosophies. It must be capable of communicating across all levels of the organization, with the ability to convey technical information to both non-technical and technical stakeholders. This position must be able to listen to input from others to fully understand process issues or to incorporate operational experience into the configuration of control concepts and sequences.

When implementing new control schemes, it must work closely with the operators to ensure understanding of the control concept and at times persuade them that it will be an improvement over the long term. This position is responsible for scheduling and implementing the interlock testing and preventive maintenance on the automation hardware systems. It must coordinate these activities with both the maintenance and operations departments to ensure resources are available to support the work and that these tasks do not interfere with the operation of the facility.

This coordination requires significant communication, understanding, persuasion, and compromise to complete the scope of work on time without impacting the operation of the facility.

The primary responsibility of this position is to ensure the integrity and reliability of the DCS/PLC control systems, Emergency Shutdown system, Data Historian, and Alarm Management system. This requires an expert level of knowledge to ensure that the infrastructure of the systems is properly designed and precisely implemented to protect against cybersecurity threats and ensure reliable performance. It requires all configuration and parameter changes to be properly developed, simulated, inputted, and tested without error, to ensure proper operation of the safety and control systems.

It requires the development of a long-term preventive maintenance and testing plan to ensure the ongoing reliability of the system hardware and the safety interlocks. The design and implementation of these responsibilities are performed independently by this position except for critical designs and system changes, which are also reviewed by additional knowledgeable resources to validate the design or change. There are few industry standards governing industrial control and safety systems.

These standards allow for a wide range of options in the design and configuration. This position has a great deal of autonomy in performing its role in the organization. For this reason, this position should be held by a highly experienced person with an awareness of their limitations and extreme attention to detail.

This position continuously makes decisions on system optimization and changes to control and safety philosophies. Some of the decisions are low level such as simple changes in controller tuning, data collection, and report characteristics.…