November 9-11, 2021
Join SCS at the RETA National Conference – the largest gathering of Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians that offers 3 full days of educational and networking activities and events. You can also take the CARO, CIRO, CRST, or CRES Review Courses.
Lee Pyle: Ms. Pyle is a Vice President of SCS Engineers, the Business Unit Director of our SCS Tracer Division, and our National Expert on Risk Management Plans and Process Safety Management. Ms. Pyle serves as lead engineer on many projects and has been involved in preparing over 100 Risk Management and Safety Management Programs. She is a key element in developing the Risk and Safety program at SCS Tracer Environmental, including document preparation for specific Administrating Agencies throughout the state of California and ensuring that all our risk programs are acceptable to these agencies.
Bill Lape: Mr. Lape is a Project Director for the Risk Management Group in our Tracer Environmental Division. His responsibilities include outlining project budgets, organizing project schedules, and quality control. He is experienced in developing and deploying standardized Risk Management and Process Safety Management (PSM) Programs, including process safety program implementation and PSM support to manufacturing facilities that utilize ammonia as a refrigerant.
Meet RETA Authorized Instructor (RAI) Daryl Davis. Davis joins the SCS Tracer Environmental training team providing ammonia refrigeration safety, Risk Management Plans, and Process Safety Management certified training.
This SCS team offers comprehensive programs including Ammonia Refrigeration Operator Classes, RETA Certification Review Classes, PSM/RMP & General Duty Clause Safety & Compliance Classes for Ammonia Refrigeration Facilities, Continuing Education, & Custom Training Classes.
SCS’s RAI’s have over 56 combined years of industrial refrigeration expertise. Our trainers use an online delivery system with a live instructor, or on-site, in-person classes, to ensure you continue training for Process Safety Management & Risk Management Program compliance. Hands-on site training can now take place under even noisy plant conditions using high-tech headsets.
RAI – RETA Authorized Instructors have certifications in their mastery teaching advanced refrigeration system concepts and operations at a level that qualifies them to assist CARO, CIRO, CRST, and CRES candidates with their preparations and activities required to earn RETA credentials.
Get the latest in RETA certified training news and classes. The Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians Association (RETA) is the most recognized organization in the U.S. dedicated to the professional development of industrial refrigeration operators and technicians.
The Florida Engineering Society (FES) and the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida (ACEC-FL) promote professional engineers in Florida. FES and ACEC support engineering education, advocate licensure, promote the ethical and competent practice of engineering, and further the public’s knowledge and understanding of the profession’s importance.
These firms create innovative solutions while upholding their responsibility to the public’s health, safety, and wellbeing.
The recent MWEA Conference covered a wealth of other important topics on water management and safety, including this presentation with SCS Engineer’s Remote Monitoring Control specialist, Brett Heist. Brett and Jarod Stuyvesant co-presented “More Than a Pretty Map – GIS Covers Your Assets,” including demonstrations of how the City of Zeeland is using GIS to enhance the efficiency of maintenance and inspection activities and improve the reliability of physical infrastructure throughout its community, leading to increased public safety and financial savings.
Click here to view these demos!
DEMOS: There are some unique methods to plan for capital improvements and streamline data storage and access being implemented in the City of Zeeland. The City has an integrated GIS map for its storm, sanitary, water, and streets, including information about each asset within the system: material, size, inverts, condition, business risk, and even televised inspection videos for some of the storm and sanitary lines.
The GIS maps’s information is used daily by public works and to create a comprehensive capital improvement map that the City uses to plan for 5-year improvements, significantly improving planning and budgeting efficiency while ultimately providing the public with safer infrastructure.
Features include televised inspection videos attached to a respective asset after uploading and accessible with the click of a mouse. Access entire buildings in the same manner as horizontal assets using a 3D online viewer.
The Zeeland Clean Water Plant RAS Building: Using AutoCAD data, the City created a 3D GIS viewer of this building and its assets. Asset information, such as blower and pump sizes and operation and maintenance tasks, are accessible without having to sort through shop drawings and as-builts.
Another example of implementing 3D GIS data like this is for MobileGR who uses a 3D GIS model to store asset data and maintenance tasks for every one of their nine parking ramps in downtown Grand Rapids.
In his latest article, Bill Lape reviews IIAR safety compliance and provides best practices. Eyewash/shower units should be within 55 feet, but that can feel like a long way if there are obstacles or hurdles to reach it.
Read his article, and review your plant or machine shop.
June 21st – 25th, 2021
Join SCS at the Annual IIAR Natural Refrigeration Conference, the largest conference and exposition dedicated to the natural refrigeration industry. We provide opportunities for the industry’s leading manufacturers, technicians, and regulators to learn more about SCS’s comprehensive programs and training.
Lee Pyle: Ms. Pyle is a Vice President of SCS Engineers, the Business Unit Director of our SCS Tracer Division, and our National Expert on Risk Management Plans and Process Safety Management. Ms. Pyle serves as lead engineer on many projects and has been involved in preparing over 100 Risk Management and Safety Management Programs. She is a key element in developing the Risk and Safety program at SCS Tracer Environmental, including document preparation for specific Administrating Agencies throughout the state of California and ensuring that all our risk programs are acceptable to these agencies.
Bill Lape: Mr. Lape is a Project Director for the Risk Management Group in our Tracer Environmental Division. His responsibilities include outlining project budgets, organizing project schedules, and quality control. He is experienced in developing and deploying standardized Risk Management and Process Safety Management (PSM) Programs, including process safety program implementation and PSM support to manufacturing facilities that utilize ammonia as a refrigerant.
Free Webinar
Drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with sensors capture a multitude of readings in a single swoop, monitoring and observing locations difficult to access on foot or by vehicle. The combination of UAV-mounted technologies produces photogrammetric and aerial photographic imagery, offering the ability to take measurements from photographs. This technology enables large-scale assessments providing a comprehensive view of a landfill’s overall health.
Mitigation is faster using collected geotagged data, which enables identifying potential problematic areas such as leachate collection headers, landfill gas headers, flares, wellheads, tanks, pipelines, equipment, even buildings. You can zero in on hot spots, unidentified tanks, or terrain that could be causing runoff problems reducing the time normally spent to locate, diagnose, and mitigate.
The same technology also helps energy firms, contractors, and other businesses inspect and monitor long horizontal projects, such as power lines and pipelines, or tall vertical structures, such as bridges and high rises. Performing autonomous flights over time provides historical data assessment and visualization of work’s progress, location of workers and equipment, and assessing and documenting weather or other impacts.
SCS Engineers’ March webinar is now online! Learn more about drone-mounted technology and how to achieve the most benefit. This webinar will help you develop capabilities to assess technology’s potential for addressing operational issues now and in the future. This is a free, live webinar with Q&A – open to solid waste, landfill, landfill gas professionals, contractors, municipalities, and the energy sector.
Our panelists bring comprehensive expertise to the discussion, including solid waste expertise and landfill management; a licensed pilot − flying and assessing over 120 landfills, pipelines, and other infrastructure; Remote Monitoring and Control (RMC) systems including Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), air quality compliance and pollutant dispersion and air measurement programs. The team answers questions throughout the presentation, and the second portion of the program is devoted to Q&A and idea exchange.
SCS Engineers and Florida East Coast Industries (FECI) are to be honored at the annual conference in Florida planned for August 2021. The firms will receive a 2021 Engineering Excellence Award by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Florida. The honor acknowledges SCS for the environmental engineering firm’s innovative design that integrates groundwater remediation with the stormwater management system on a 500-acre former landfill site. The design enabled the developer to remediate the former landfill into the Countyline Corporate Park in Southeast Florida.
Industrial real estate is in high demand, but former landfills and brownfields present environmental challenges that can become cost-prohibitive to redevelop without sound environmental expertise. FECI retained the professional services of SCS Engineers to provide consulting and design services addressing the environmental concerns preventing the transformation of a former landfill into a state of the art business park.
Environmental guidelines require 28% (or about 140 acres) of the site to be set aside for stormwater retention. The set aside would require the relocation of several thousand cubic yards of waste and prevent the 140 acres’ redevelopment. The estimated loss of $300 million in potential real estate sales, coupled with the groundwater remediation expense, made the site redevelopment cost-prohibitive. Unless resolved, the problem also impeded FECI’s corporate sustainability goals.
SCS’s experts in landfill design, closure, and remediation, developed a solution tying together the groundwater remediation and stormwater management systems. The integrated system allows for shallow aquifer recharge with stormwater and captures impacted groundwater at the site’s boundary. “We were able to provide an alternative design acceptable to all the permitting agencies, eliminating the need to set aside large areas for stormwater retention,” said Mr. Som Kundral, P.E., SCS’s senior project manager.
SCS’s remedial actions protect public health while opening the site for reuse. The project will be completed in phases. Phase I, consisting of 160 acres, is complete, with two million square feet of occupied businesses and a 30-acre community park. Development of the other three phases, which include another six million square feet, is underway.
The development will create hundreds of new jobs, deliver several hundred million dollars to the city and county tax base, and provide a 30-acre public park. “The engineering solution protects the environment while meeting FECI’s strategic, social, economic, and sustainability goals,” said Mr. Eduardo Smith, P.E., SCS’s senior vice president of client success.
Learn more about these related topics, events, and case studies at SCS Engineers:
The Emergency Planning and Community-Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) was enacted by Congress to assist local communities in protecting public health by requiring facilities to file an annual EPCRA Tier II Report, identifying hazardous chemical inventories maintained at the facility. Submitting Tier II Reports allows the local emergency personnel to be aware of the chemicals that are present within facilities in their jurisdiction, and prepare for and respond to chemical emergencies.
The annual federal deadline for submitting Tier II Reports is March 1st (more to come on
this deadline). Facilities are required to report any chemicals, which are included within the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200). A list of EHSs and their TPQs can be found at 40 CFR 355, Appendix A. The EPA has compiled a “List of Lists” which provides a consolidated list of chemicals that are subject to EPCRA Tier II reporting along with their Threshold Planning Quantities (TPQ). The TPQ is the amount of chemical kept on-site above which you must file a Tier II. It is important to note that ammonia has a Tier II reporting threshold of 500 pounds.
Some states require that Tier II forms be submitted electronically, while other states may require hard copy submittals. Still, others require both digital and printed submissions.
Keep reading to find out more from Travis Weber at SCS Engineers, Tracer Environmental Practice…
That’s Bill Lape in a word. Bill is a Certified Industrial Refrigeration Operator, a Certified Refrigeration Service Technician, and a member of the National Board of Directors of the Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians Association – RETA. He is also a certified Process Safety Management Professional through the University of Wisconsin.
PSM SAFETY & COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS IN THE AGE OF PANDEMICS PSM safety programs and training remain a top priority during the pandemic. While online training is not a complete substitute for live, face-to-face PSM training and instruction, in the age of pandemics, it is a viable option. What to look for in PSM – ammonia refrigeration system safety training?
EPIC FAIL: ICE BUILD UP When developing your inspections for your system’s mechanical integrity program, always be mindful of the potential consequences of ice buildup, particularly if it continues for an extended period of time.
