Managing industrial control groups and projects

A new reference book outlines how to establish and manage industrial control groups, and how to initiate and execute industrial control projects.

“The book, Managing Industrial Controls, is designed to fill the void in the marketplace for essential reference information dedicated to managers of industrial control groups,” says the book’s author, Nabil (Bill) E. Battikha, P.E., a widely recognized expert in process instrumentation and control engineering, and president of BergoTech, Inc., a firm specializing in online engineering courses. “Up to this point, there has been very little guidance available to industrial control managers. More often than not, these people have been getting promoted to these positions with no or very limited training.”
Industrial control groups, Battikha explains, exist principally in three business areas: manufacturers of industrial control equipment; organizations that implement control systems in plants (such as engineering consultants); and plants (the end users) that rely on control systems to operate efficiently.

The book is organised into three components:

1. A foundational component that includes an overview of industrial control systems, organizational, training and human resources issues; the tools for business development; and the corporate standards that guide implementation and ongoing execution.
2. A central component that covers three essential topics: (a) learning how to assess plant needs and a take a quantified approach to decision making; (b) selecting the management tools to justify the budgets needed to implement industrial control systems; and (c) defining what constitutes the active management of industrial control projects, from project definition and scheduling to front-end and detailed engineering.
3. The final component encompasses the post-engineering phases, including equipment installation, check out, commissioning, start-up and ongoing maintenance activities. (The last two chapters in this section focus on auditing, a key process that managers need to identify control system implementation problems and to measure compliance with plant needs.)

The book, Battikha emphasizes, is a valuable resource for:

• All managers of industrial control groups, especially those seeking a handy manual that covers the key matters relating to industrial controls from a management perspective
• Professionals working in industrial controls who intend to become industrial controls group managers or supervisors.