Control system design, from process to I/O
The expensive mistakes in automation are made early — the wrong architecture, an undersized network, safety bolted on at the end. Design decisions made in a week determine what the plant costs to run for a decade.
Architecture before hardware
What has to be controlled, what has to be measured, what has to be interlocked, and what has to keep running when part of it fails. Those questions set the controller, the network and the I/O distribution. Choosing hardware first and retrofitting the requirements onto it is how projects end up with a PLC that can't scan fast enough or a network that falls over when a drive is added.
Safety is designed in, not added on
Emergency stops, guarding interlocks and safe states belong in the design from the beginning, because retrofitting them means revisiting the architecture. What a machine does when it loses power, air or a sensor is a design decision, and it needs to be a deliberate one rather than whatever the logic happens to do.
Hazardous areas
Some environments — fuel, gas, dust, certain processing plant — restrict what equipment can be installed and how it's wired. Experience working to IECEx and ATEX requirements informs how equipment gets selected and installed in these areas. Formal area classification and certification remain the responsibility of the appropriately qualified parties on the project.
Documentation that survives handover
A control system that only its designer understands has a single point of failure with a résumé. Drawings, I/O schedules and functional descriptions are part of the deliverable, not an optional extra — and having built panel design software, producing them consistently is a solved problem here rather than the thing that gets skipped when a job runs late.
Common questions
Can you design a system somebody else will build?
Yes. Design and documentation can be delivered as a package for your own workshop or another builder to construct, which is often the sensible split when you have build capacity but not design capacity.
Do you work in hazardous areas?
There's experience working to IECEx and ATEX requirements on plant in these environments. Area classification and formal certification sit with the appropriately qualified parties on the project — the design work is carried out to suit the classification you've been given.
How does this get quoted?
Either as grouped technical hours where the scope is still forming, or as a fixed-scope project where the requirements are defined. Which suits depends on how well understood the problem is at the start.
Talk through the scope
Grouped technical hours or a fixed-scope project, depending on how defined the work is.