RAM Study

Key Capabilities

RAM Analysis

Overview

Our Client for this project was an Australian midstream energy infrastructure business that owns and operates oil and gas facilities in South West Victoria.

Vecta were engaged by the Client to perform a Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) study of compressor systems in a midstream oil and gas facility. The Client planned to use the findings and recommendations to assist in developing the most suitable scope for a major expansion project.

Scope

RAM Study of existing compressor systems in a midstream oil and gas facility

Solutions

Vecta’s tailored methodology to the RAM process for these compressor systems enabled us to meet our Client’s expectations.

Our “bottom-up” approach to RAM modelling coupled with specialist RAM software enabled rapid evaluation of options and sensitivity of results to changes in the underlying data.

We also encouraged involvement of key Client stakeholders in the RAM process to ensure a high level of ownership of the outcome.

Our RAM consultants are also experienced operational practitioners who have themselves been responsible for managing reliability, availability and maintainability to deliver business outcomes. As such, they have an exact understanding of the client’s needs.

Outcomes

Our findings supported the view that there was significant opportunity to extract more capacity from the current set of compressors through carefully deliberated compressor combinations and header pressures. Such combinations would reduce the number of compressors online at any one time and result in less stop/start scenarios.

Existing compressor systems RAM could be improved to better align with industry practice for their respective equipment classes. In the case of the reciprocating compressors, opportunities existed to extend the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and reduce Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) by instituting better failure data capture and introducing formalised root cause analysis for problematic equipment.