Control Room Operator ASU & Utilities

Ambitek is recruiting control room operators on behalf of a major green hydrogen and ammonia project in NEOM, north-west Saudi Arabia. It is being built now and it is being staffed now.

You would hold the air separation unit and the utilities from the board:

• Air separation unit: main air compressor, molecular sieve adsorbers, cold box, turboexpander, liquid nitrogen storage, vaporisers and the loading station
• The nitrogen pipeline that feeds ammonia synthesis. When that line is not right, the ammonia loop is not right, and you are the one who hears about it first
• Demineralised water plant: reverse osmosis, ion exchange and mixed bed polishing, feeding the electrolysers
• Cooling water, instrument air and water treatment
• The DCS itself, data acquisition and alarm management, and the daily coordination with the hydrogen and ammonia control rooms

What is different about this one, specifically:

• The plant is new. The procedures are not written yet, and the alarm philosophy is being written now rather than inherited. Somebody who has actually held a console has to write both, and that is part of the job
• You hold safe work permit issuing authority and act as confined space supervisor, and you hold explicit authority to shut the plant down in an emergency without asking anyone first
• Training is to Air Products operating standards, with scheduled competency validation reviews, not an induction pack and a signature
• Lead or senior console operator typically inside two to four years. Shift supervisor inside three to six. Operations supervisor inside five to eight. Those seats are being filled from the team going in now, because there is nobody already sitting in them
• Training the operators who come in behind you is written into the role, and you are measured on whether they pass their validation reviews

What is required:

• Five years minimum operating continuous process plant from a DCS console, in industrial gas, chemicals, refining, petrochemicals, fertilisers, power or water
• Working from process flow diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams, single line diagrams and a shutdown matrix
• Lock out tag out and permit to work applied in practice, rather than held on a certificate
• Able to hold the console on your own, and to set priorities when the board is busy
• Rotating 8 hour shift including nights, weekends and holidays, plus on-call periods
• Working English good enough to write a procedure, and a safety record you would be comfortable with me asking about

Air separation experience puts you at the front of this. Cryogenic and utilities depth counts for as much on this particular console, and the training programme exists to cover the rest. Saudi nationals are being prioritised for this intake.