Abstract
On a rather wet and dull autumn day, around 30 instrumentation and control system design engineers made their way to Aylesbury to attend, for the first time, a 1-day seminar organised by the Institute of Measurement and Control, the IChemE and the International Society of Automation (ISA) at a manufacturing vendor’s location.
The host and principal sponsor Lund Halsey Console Systems, manufacturer of consoles and control room furniture, had organised three information-packed sessions relating to control room technologies. After registration plus tea and coffee, it was straight on to business with Atkins Global speaking about the design and ergonomic considerations for control rooms.
This first session presented by John Ryder and Alex Morley from Atkins’ Human Factors team presented a talk on effective control centre ergonomics and the pitfalls of where it’s not implemented correctly. Concentrating on real-life examples that the pair have worked on in various safety-critical industries, the presentation provided not only details of the basic areas of control room ergonomics to be considered in a project but also the ways in which they benefit the project in terms of both operational and capital expenditure. The talk also highlighted the very real dangers associated with not implementing effective ergonomics, with alarms management and human machine interface design being of particular interest to the audience.
It was then the turn of the host and sponsor of this event Lund Halsey Console Systems presented by Charles Evett. The session introduced and provided insight into how Lund Halsey incorporates the ISO11064 international standard for the ergonomic design of control room furniture into their products. Practical considerations in the selection of a console system, commercially available features and benefits, were also demonstrated with a fully height-adjustable and completely ISO11064 compliant console on display for audience inspection.
After a scrumptious networking buffet lunch, it was back to business. This time, it was the turn of Christie Digital Systems Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of Projection Systems and Image processors, who were pleased to present at this seminar. David Griffiths from Christie’s Control Room Display Systems group gave a presentation that looked at the design and use of large screen overview displays/mimic displays in 24/7 critical operation environments. The presentation overviewed human factor aspects such as image acuity, resolution and the relationship between brightness and contrast ratio. The presentation also included a comparison of the different presentation technologies available for continuous operation/high-duty cycle displays and concluded with a review of a number of actual customer installations and projects.
This was followed by a vote of thanks by Lakshan Vinod from Lund Halsey. Lakshan especially thanked Russell Baker, from the InstMC London Section’s executive committee, for all his help in organising the event. Then followed a conducted factory tour of Lund Halsey’s design and manufacturing operations and capabilities as the event’s finale. This provided delegates with a fascinating insight as to how designs move forward to the factory floor using computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) technology to produce Lund Halsey’s many types of console designs for so many different functions in various industrial applications; designed to be flat-packed for shipment across the world for site assembly at their end-users working sites – a feature most important for offshore platforms where compact transport and limited control room space pose logistical problems.
The feedback comments were very positive about this event and could be summed up as follows: ‘Thanks to all involved for the nice conference today and the excellent presenters; Thank you also for the excellent hospitality and logistics’. Lund Halsey was happy to be associated in the hosting role with this successful event.