Instruments maintenance technician regular day to day duties?

Hi Guys,


Please what are the regular day to day activities of an Instrumentation Maintenance Technician/Engineer in the oil and gas?

Are you talking about direct hire for a O&G company or being a Contractor in the O&G business? Are you talking Refinery work or field work?

Major difference on the day to day activities in the 2.

Bullzi said:

Are you talking about direct hire for a O&G company or being a Contractor in the O&G business? Are you talking Refinery work or field work?

Major difference on the day to day activities in the 2.

Click to expand...

Direct hire
Field work (FPSO)

This would be hard to answer as I think it would be different from company to company.

To many variables - Small company, Big company - New hire, or been with company for 30 years. (Experience?? - fresh out of school, or a lifetime of working in this field).

I do think with a smaller company you might wear a few more hats.

I only worked in offshore drilling so it may not be directly related and even then it depend on the organization of each company and even at times drilling unit.

A huge part of their day was fire and gas detection system testing... This would take on average 24 hours per week for two guys to do. The other that took a regular chunk of time were ATEX checks on instruments.

The other chunk of the time was consumed on preventive maintenance which would be stuff like making sure that instruments weren't showing signs of damage or showing weird readings, checking up on the SCADA systems health and if possible rebooting the units, check for maintenance related alarms in the control systems, clean filters in computers and panels, etc...

There is always something going wrong and they'd look into it too.

There was a bit of time dedicated to small projects or projects like running cables, installing panels, etc... but generally won't be massive or interesting things from a control perspective.

One installation in particular was interesting as they had set aside 1 hour per shift per department daily for cleaning. At the beginning of the week, the department head would plan which rooms were to be cleaned and each department would use that hour for cleaning. I must say that apart from the hoarder's room (which netted me about 2 weeks of not having to think what to clean next) everything was spotless.

damica1 said:

This would be hard to answer as I think it would be different from company to company.

To many variables - Small company, Big company - New hire, or been with company for 30 years. (Experience?? - fresh out of school, or a lifetime of working in this field).

I do think with a smaller company you might wear a few more hats.

Click to expand...

I mean on a General perspective.
General day to day activities of an Intrumentation Maintenance Technician.

Go to work, do work, go home. Seriously, this will vary from place to place, as the title doesn't really confer much of what you will be doing.

Id guess IO maintenance.

Lots and lots of calibrations.

I know when I worked at a water utility, (not offshore, of course, and no chemicals except chlorine bleach, nothing hazardous) the telemetry shop did most of the instrumentation. They had a PM schedule, and calibrated and checked all instruments in the system over the year. They were also responsible for the RTU's and the radios to SCADA, and had a small department within their shop that did just that. I was an electrician, and we had to know instruments, naturally, especially on call outs where operations had lost a reading (level, flow, pressure, etc.) We wouldn't call telemetry at 2 am unless absolutely necessary.

Bottom line was it seemed to me to be very borr-ring. They didn't seem to do much of anything IMHO. We called them "twidgets". They didn't run conduit or pull their own wire, and if they had to work with anything over 24VDC, then that was a major concern to them.

If I had to go into a plant again or do anything other than mostly writing programs and doing my own start-ups, I would get back into electrical. I really liked trouble calls--interesting, challenging, rewarding. I really enjoy troubleshooting and fixing things. And although they're necessary, I hate PM's. Each to his own, I guess.

PM days at a plant are sometimes nice, the one I was add had time estimates all over the place. A blender inspection was rated to take say 1.5hrs each. I'd get 4 for the day. 6hrs there, then a printer maint/cleaning for 1hr. a dumper inspection for an hour. the blenders would take 45 minutes each. then the 15 min test run time. so a 6hr job done in 3.25hrs. I'd run all 4 blenders at the same time for their test run. Book it for full time as trained by leads and supervisors. Dumper inspection was a 30 minute job in reality. and the printer, about the same unless I had to strip it down and clean it because production messed it up and got labels through out it. that could easily double the time. If everything went well. PM days had a little lax time.

I have a contractor and 2 tech employees - I rotate them through duties each month, one calibrates or verifies equipment in plant and field sites each week - the other 2 work on new installs or physical maintenance as needed. We do almost everything in house so there's plenty and quite a variety. Next month the next guy does the calibrations.

My contracted Instrument Tech however is also a journeyman electrician (and excellent Bartender) and being a contracted service has tons of tools and assistance at his disposal that he brings in to play when needed - so his absence would be felt the most. That's the guy to be. They tend to make more money too.

In my area the Oil & Gas fields are very active. New wells and equipment are going in all the time. So most of the company guys spend their day lining out contractors and following up on the work. I dont see them with tools in their hand much. They are more or less in an administrative role now.

I am sure that when the field gets less active they will get back to doing I&E work but for now its Herding Cats.