Following the success of International Petroleum Week, two of the management team undertook a trade mission to Qatar and Kuwait early in November.

The mission explored various trade opportunities in the two countries. In Qatar, the team met with the chairman of Qtech Qatar, Mr Haydar Al Nassery, and agreed terms with them to become sole agents for Tagus services in the country.

In Kuwait, the team met Duncan Hoyland, the Head of Trade & Investment at the British Embassy, who was very helpful in providing advice and contacts within the country.

The team also met with a number of companies in both countries to discuss specific consulting projects.

Caroline Gerrie, Vice President International Business Development said, "This trip has really exceeded our expectations. There are a lot of opportunities for trade between Tagus and companies in this region and we are really excited by the prospects of doing business in Qatar and Kuwait in the near future".

Chris Cox, Vice President Process and Delivery said, "Qatar and Kuwait are both undergoing significant expansion at the moment and our meetings developed significant interest from a number of companies. We look forward to developing those relationships over the coming months".

Determined to make a success of their drive for Overall Equipment Condition (OEC), the Corrib onshore processing plant, which will be operated by Shell E&P Ireland, asked Tagus to run workshops for Operation Technicians (operators), their supervisors and some maintenance personnel as the processing plant is being constructed around them.

The aim was to ensure personnel were able to apply autonomous maintenance in a structured and supported process from the very beginning of the project life cycle.

Autonomous maintenance is at the core of world class maintenance performance. The term autonomous doesn't mean performing maintenance in a vacuum or solely by the traditional maintenance department. Rather, it means that operators perform certain equipment maintenance activities aligned with the daily operation of equipment.

The focus of the operating team is on husbandry, cleaning, inspecting, lubricating, monitoring and other such essential daily tasks, such as collecting and trending equipment performance data.

Each workshop was designed to run in small teams of three or four so the highly interactive content allowed everyone to practice the principles in the comfort of the training room before the final activity on the actual equipment. The feedback from the 20 delegates was very positive, but the proof of the workshop's success was when they applied the ideas and practices to the equipment that had been handed over from the construction team.

In the two separate workshops, the attendees spotted and raised over 45 different issues with the current equipment, from the use of labels and visual aids on gauges and meters, location of tools and cleaning materials, changes to the infrastructure to improve HSSE, locating data sheets close to the equipment and overall husbandry of the area.

The workshops have given the operators the confidence to apply the OEC principals to all new equipment as it is in the process of being handed over from the construction team, and more importantly, address any issues that need to be resolved before acceptance and operation.