Optimising Control Team Capability and Capacity for Reliable Process Performance
Presented by IET Coventry and Warwickshire
About
All Are Welcome
Presentation Abstract:
Understanding what control is for, how it should be delivered and maintained is often misunderstood. This presentation is based on Sean's experience as both consulting engineer and client engineer, working in the energy and other process industries for more than 30 years with many different companies; knowing “what good looks like” for site control teams.
Performance of processes is dependent on the capability (and capacity) of the control engineer staff available to the site. Capability refers to the skills needed to work with the complexities of modern controls – to understand instrumentation, the systems, the networking, operational/information technologies and human machine interfaces – as well as understanding the safety, operational and business needs of the plant being controlled. Capacity refers to having staff with time to do all that; it is perhaps ironic that modern control systems are more demanding because of the underlying computer systems maintenance requirements and some sites can become overly focused in that area. It is tempting to outsource much of the control system work because of the specialist needs. This true story aims to illustrate why that can approach can lead to expensive mistakes.
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Continuing Professional Development
This event can contribute towards your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours as part of the IET's CPD monitoring scheme.
24 Nov 2025
6:00pm - 7:00pm
Organiser
- Coventry and Warwickshire Local Network
Speakers
Dr Sean Goodhart
Honorary Teaching Fellow and Freelance Senior Consultant - Coventry University
Sean is a control engineer with over 35 years of experience in traditional and advanced control systems. He is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology and an Honorary Teaching Fellow at Coventry University. Sean holds a PhD in industrial applications of self-tuning control and specialises in process operation, control troubleshooting, regulatory control configuration, multivariable controller design, inferential development and project management. He has delivered industrial training in basic process control and model predictive control and has worked internationally with bp, British Gas, Cambridge Control, AspenTech, and Applied Manufacturing Technologies. Sean served two terms on the AspenTech Advanced Control & Optimization World User Group Board and managed the technical relationship between bp and AspenTech for APC products for more than a decade. He recently retired from bp, where he was Control and Automation Advisor, inspiring and developing control engineering capability across the company.