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Taranaki company Digital Insight is used to going ‘where no man has gone before’ and, frankly, wouldn’t want to because of extreme limits regarding size or working conditions.
Inglewood couple Ash and Fiona Peters set the company up in 1999 and now employ seven people fulltime and has an annual turnover of about $2 million. Services cover Australasia, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China, and with a wide variety of energy and non-energy related work on land, and out on offshore oil and gas production platforms and drilling rigs. New Zealand clients include energy firms Maui and Kapuni field operator Shell Todd Oil Services, Contact Energy, Mighty River Power, Ballance Agri-Nutrients, Swift Energy, and non-energy global dairy giant Fonterra. Ash Peters says that with industrial processes, early detection and prevention is best – as it is in many other fields, particularly medicine – and the benefits can be many and varied. These include reduced plant downtime and operational costs, increased reliability, process efficiency gains, better risk management, and better maintenance and budget planning. Inspections are also safer, with no operators having to work in confined spaces for prolonged periods. Peters adds that Digital Insight has developed some special camera technologies, methods and systems that are now saving industries considerable amounts of time and money. The cost of a plant shutdown and remote digital video inspection is often only 20-30 percent of the traditional confined space inspection. “We have just completed a shut where the client saved well in excess of $150 million in both physical cost and lost production,” he says. The company's 16 camera units range from a tiny 6mm-diameter up to 250mm-diameter, with lengths up to 150 metres. They primarily utilise digital video scopes, pipeline cameras and large pan and tilt units. This allows them to inspect a large range of plant and equipment from small vessels, pipelines, and aircraft engines to extremely large pressure vessels and storage tanks. “Our largest shutdown, completed recently, was for an Australian oil and gas client that lasted for four weeks. It primarily involved inspection of extremely large pressure vessels ... we worked with the client two years prior, to develop inspection test plans, target areas and access requirements.” The project was a total success, he adds. However, Peters says his company’s most complex job was an earlier inspection of an Australian LNG (liquefied natural gas) tank. “It was full of methane gas and live, not to mention that it was bloody huge (100 metres diameter and 55 metres high). “We designed, fabricated, tested all the equipment required and then completed the work ... and we have completed the inspection many times since.” Other LNG plants now use their services, procedures and equipment to perform similar inspections, Peters adds, and the future is looking rosy for the company. “We are continuing our growth in New Zealand and overseas in the oil and gas sectors; and we will have an office in Australia in the near future that will also work to service South East Asia.”
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No, Digital InSight is not involved in projects exploring remote galaxies, Star Trek style. The company’s endeavors are more terrestrial and Digital Insight is a specialists in remote digital video inspections, taking cameras the size of a match head down into the inner sanctums of sophisticated engineering equipment to identify cracks, corrosion or other problems.