Eric Smith - Senior Control Engineer
Eric has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University. He enjoys coming up with solutions for new problems and learning new software. At APCO he has worked with a range of DCS's, PLC's and HMI's. Some of these include DeltaV, Wonderware, iFix, Rockwell PlantPAx, FT-View, ScadaPack, and Wago in the Refining, Oil and Gas, Natural Gas, Manufacturing, Water, and Foods industries. He has also worked with many reporting packages and historian systems and has created many "advanced" reports by integrating reporting software, Microsoft Excel VBA functionality, and Windows scheduling capabilities.
A selection of highlights from his work at APCO are included below:
Refining
Developed control logic infrastructure for a Rockwell Software PlantPAx DCS for use in a refinery. Expanded the supplied libraries to fit refinery needs and implemented logic to accommodate redundancy requirements within the refinery. In conjunction with the conversion assisted in system checkout, safety system design and programming, alarm rationalization and other functions. Implemented a conversion from a previous historian to PI including adding advanced watchdog scripts and auto recovery functionality on top of the PI system. Made extensive modifications to base FT-View libraries and added extra capabilities to the manufacturer supplied system via VBA.
Oil and Gas
Developed extensive knowledge of the DeltaV programming environment including class and module template creation, bulk Import/Export capabilities, and auxiliary DeltaV software packages. Expanded capabilities of manufacturer supplied function blocks and module templates with Non-Linear tuning (gain scheduling) and advanced voting logic. The non-linear tuning, in particular, improved plant stability significantly and allowed PID loops to function accurately over wide variances of process conditions where originally they only functioned in narrow regions (due to butterfly valve flow characteristics).
Completed a large conversion from a Genesis HMI system to a Wonderware HMI including interfacing with many different PLC types over a variety of communications protocols.
Foods
Integrated a complex scheduling procedure into Wonderware that allowed for precise production of varying products for varying recipes. Retrieved recipe data from a corporate database and auto calculated ingredient quantities based on batch weight. These data were loaded into the PLC automatically for batch production. Developed extensive knowledge of the SQL language and Wonderware API's to interface with databases (SQL access manager).
In addition to his work at APCO, as a student he worked for Celanese Chemical’s marketing department and developed an application in Visual Basic to automate and standardize their sales contracts for a sales force that sold $8 billion worth of product world wide. He also worked as a research assistant for a professor at Brigham Young University to study ammonium perchlorate solid rocket propellant burn models.
Outside of work, Eric is usually spending time with his wife and kids. He also enjoys photography and graphic design, reading, playing guitar, learning new computer-related technologies, fishing, and motorcycling.