Benign industrial spying

During the course of its remote video inspections of industrial sites, Digital Insight finds some extraordinary non-energy related objects hidden from sight, from cellphones to bicycles.

“We were doing a pre-commissioning inspection of a ship under construction in South Korea last year and we discovered a push bike had been welded inside a ballast tank,” recalls Digital Insight managing director Ash Peters.

“We told the client, who thought we were pulling his leg. It was only when he saw our digital footage that he believed us and ordered that the tank be re-opened, the bike broken into little pieces for removal, and the tank re-welded.

“The bike had to be broken up and removed physically, otherwise it would have corroded and possibly caused some major maintenance issues.”

Peters says the client had wanted some remote video inspections of the inside of the floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessel done before pre-commissioning flushing and cleaning checks.

“That was the most amazing thing we have found so far, though we have also found people’s glasses, watches, cellphones, calculators, as well as other bits and pieces of other construction equipment, such as gas bottles inside sealed sections of other industrial projects.”

Digital Insight Ltd (DIL) is a Taranaki-based company specialising in remote digital video inspections (RDVI), taking cameras the size of a match head into the inner sanctums of sophisticated engineering equipment to identify cracks, corrosion or other problems.

The company’s 18 camera units range from a tiny 6mm-diameter up to 250mm-diameter, with lengths up to 150 metres. They primarily use digital video scopes, pipeline cameras and large pan and tilt units, that allow them to inspect a large range of plant and equipment from the small to extremely large pressure.

The company is now in its 11th year of operation after being set up in 1999 by Ash and his wife Fiona. The company now employs seven people fulltime, one part-time, and has an annual turnover of about $2 million.

Up to 60 percent of its workload is now offshore, with overseas work starting to outstrip that sourced from a loyal Kiwi client bases, says Peters.

The company late last year shifted lot, stock and machine shop from suburban Inglewood to a nearby rural address where it has the space for future growth.

As well as conducting remote video inspections, Peters and his staff also design their own specialist RDVI tools, some specific to customer needs, for reaching into the inner recesses of such things as pipelines, pressure vessels and production platforms.

“We have continued to grow the company which, in the current global financial climate, is excellent.

“A lot of clients are now getting us to do construction and pre-commissioning checks for new plant, as well as specific inspections for their existing facilities.

“We cover all of New Zealand and Singapore, as well as parts of Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and now China.”

New Zealand clients include energy firms Maui and Kapuni field operator Shell Todd Oil Services, Contact Energy, Mighty River Power, Ballance Agri-Nutrients, Cheal oilfield operator Austral Pacific, Greymouth Petroleum, and non-energy companies global dairy giant Fonterra and Carter Holt Harvey.

“In more recent months we have been doing a lot of work for new offshore oil rigs and a lot for LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants in Aussie and South-East Asia,” adds Peters.

Australian projects have included work on the Moomba gas pipeline in northern South Australia, coal seam gas facilities in Queensland, conventional petroleum plants in Western Australia and LNG in the Northern Territory.

“We finished some inspection work of storage tanks aboard a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel in the Timor Sea the other week and that contract will run until at least 2010.”

Asian projects have included work at Jurong, an amalgamation of seven islands off the coast of Singapore into a huge industrial estate, that is home to over 90 petroleum, petrochemicals, specialty chemicals and manufacturing companies, including oil majors such as ExxonMobil and Shell which have refining and-or storage facilities there.

Peters says the cost of RDVI services may only be 20-30 percent of the cost of traditional confined space inspections.

“We once saved a client about $280 million in terms of savings incurred as a result less lost production and fewer shutdowns. If clients can see we save them money, then they will come back again and again.”

He says DIL will continue aiming high, perhaps even out of this world, in its quest to finding the most innovative and cost-effective RDVI solutions.

“Although NASA has yet to hire us,” he quips.