ENGINUITY PROJECT PERSONNEL:

Logan Astle – Client Liaison, Project Manager, Prototype Testing
William Hanna – Electronics Design, Board Assembly and Testing

Credit: Prosaris

Product Idea

Founder Colin Sewell has over 25 years of practical experience in the oil and gas industry. As someone who provided support for Process Safety and Loss Prevention, he had to regularly detect and locate small leaks in all aspects of offshore gas production, as fluid leaks can be very costly in material loss and process inefficiency.

However, it was difficult for him to find products that could help him manage this aspect of his work. In searching for the right technology, he found products that could help him detect that there were leaks in a particular area of operation. However, they couldn’t identify and locate the origin of the smallest leaks.

His rationale was, ‘find new leaks to prevent tomorrow’s problem’. This prompted him to look into the technology and see how practical it would be to design and build an actual product that could both detect and locate gas leaks, as well as manage the data as part of his Inspection, Repair and Maintenance Strategy (IRM).

Prosaris envisioned a product that uses ultrasonic technology, so that it can be administered to detect the smallest of fluid leaks, particularly gases. They wanted to develop a product that not only detects that a leak is happening, but also be able to accurately pinpoint its location in order to accelerate a repair plan. Inherent in the product strategy was a data management capability to support effective leak management.

Product Development Process

Enginuity helped Prosaris through our agile product development process. In the early stages of our relationship, we did this with our unique design control process from the discovery phase, conceptual design, design validation, analysis, and design for manufacture (DFM) and building the physical products. You can learn more about our process here.

“Enginuity provided really good value when we needed it, and they helped us with the very early concept evaluation phase of the project and [with] a couple of different projects that we did, one was helping us with just understanding the process of quantification. The second one was helping us flesh out the actual arrangement that we would use. They’ve been very supportive with the legwork – basically helping us get our design down on paper, getting it into a format that supported both our earlier phases of prototyping and manufacturing ones,” Colin said, when asked about his experience working with Enginuity.

Furthermore, Colin said that what makes Enginuity different from other engineering teams would be “the [team’s] depth and breadth of skill.” He continues, “[Enginuity has] a lot of highly skilled people that support different applications, different sectors, different skill sets from our perspective. It’s very broad. A lot of other places we would only be getting support in a very specific niche area, which is not necessarily what we need when we’re at this stage of the project. We need people with the flexibility and ability to help us with every evolving challenge as they arrive. The response time has been excellent.

When we’ve needed something, I don’t think we’ve ever had to wait. Enginuity has always been supportive and had resources available. Although I know that [Enginuity] has been busy as well, so it’s a big plus. [Enginuity’s] ability to help customers with all aspects of our work, as well as response time, would be the best.”