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What we do

The controller is rarely what failed

Plant does not usually ask for an upgrade because the controller stopped. It asks because the controller cannot be supported: the vendor has ended the product, the spares come from the second hand market, the software that opens the logic will not run on any machine anybody still has, and the engineer who wrote it has left.

That is a different problem from a breakdown, and it needs a different answer. Age on its own is not a reason to replace anything. The test is whether you could buy the spare today from somebody you would trust, and whether anybody can still change the sequence.

Almafor does this work on running plant. Sometimes the answer is a full controller replacement. Often it is not: the controller is sound and the weakness is in the reporting path, the drives or the instrumentation around it. Establishing which of those is true is the first deliverable, and it is worth paying for on its own.

Typical brief

The three outcomes of an upgrade survey

Once the installation is properly established, an obsolete system resolves into one of three answers.

Keep it, add a reporting path

A gateway or protocol converter lifts the existing data into a modern supervisory layer without touching the control logic. Cheapest and least disruptive, and correct when the controller is supported and the logic is understood. The limit is that you can only report what the controller already knows.

Keep it, rebuild around it

New panel, new instruments, new communications, new HMI, with the existing controller retained. This is common on pumping plant, where the pumps and motors are sound and the weakness sits in the control and the visibility.

Replace the controller

Right when the hardware is unprocurable or the logic is unrecoverable. At that point a modern controller wired properly costs less across ten years than a translation layer nobody fully understands.

Scope

What the scope usually covers

  • Survey of the installed controllers and firmware
  • Recovery and documentation of existing logic
  • Obsolescence and spares risk assessment
  • Protocol and interface audit
  • Replacement PLC and RTU specification
  • Control logic migration and reprogramming
  • Variable frequency drive replacement
  • Medium voltage drive and motor replacement
  • Supervisory platform version upgrades
  • Gateway and protocol conversion
  • Panel modification or replacement
  • Parallel running and proving before cutover
  • Point to point and site acceptance testing
  • Control centre and SCADA reintegration
  • As built documentation and configuration backups

Track record

Upgrades we have delivered

Completed contracts with the client and the dates. Follow any card for the full detail.

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Platforms

What we upgrade from and to

The replacement platform is chosen against the installed base and the client's standards, not against a preferred product line.

  • PcVue version migration
  • GE and Alstom SCMS replacement
  • Schneider Electric C264
  • Allen Bradley PLC
  • Siemens PLC
  • Modbus RTU and TCP
  • DNP3
  • IEC 60870 5 101 and 104
  • IEC 61850
  • Medium voltage variable speed drives
  • ISO 9001:2015
  • ISO 45001:2018

Method

How an upgrade runs

  1. Audit

    Make, model, firmware, I O count, ports and protocols, panel and power condition, network topology. Then the two questions that decide the project: does the source code still exist, and does anything that can open it still run.

  2. Decide the path

    Keep and report, keep and rebuild, or replace. This is a commercial decision as much as a technical one, and it should be made with the obsolescence risk written down rather than assumed.

  3. Design

    Migration plan, point schedules, panel modifications and the cutover sequence, including what happens if the new system has to be backed out.

  4. Build and factory test

    Panels and configuration proven in our Mussafah workshop with your engineers present, against the recovered point schedule.

  5. Prove in parallel

    Monitoring runs alongside the existing controls until it agrees with them. Control moves last, because that is where the interlocking and the failure behaviour change.

  6. Document

    Configuration, addressing, alarm philosophy and as built drawings in a form the next engineer can use. Skip this and the obsolescence problem simply regenerates.

Common questions

Questions we are asked about this

When should a PLC actually be replaced?

When the hardware is unprocurable, when nobody holds the logic, or when the gateway layer propping it up has become more complex and more fragile than the controller itself. Age alone is not the test. The real test is whether you could buy the spare today from somebody you would trust, and whether anybody can still change the sequence.

Can you upgrade a supervisory platform without replacing it?

Often, and it is usually the better answer. For Abu Dhabi Investment Council we upgraded the existing PcVue installation from version 9 to version 16, with field devices replaced, reprogrammed and recommissioned around it. That is a platform migration rather than a platform replacement, and it preserves the operators' familiarity with the system.

What if nobody has the original program?

It happens more often than people expect, and it changes the asset you are dealing with. A site that cannot open its own logic can still be integrated and reported on, but it cannot be modified. That usually moves the decision towards replacement, because a system you cannot change is a system that cannot follow the process it controls.

Do you replace drives and motors as well as controllers?

Yes, including at medium voltage on running plant. That work is sequenced around the duty of the station and the availability of the standby set, and the supervisory interface is kept in scope from the start, because a replaced drive that operators cannot see has moved the problem rather than solved it.

Does the plant have to stop?

Rarely for monitoring, which can usually be added in parallel with the existing controls and proven against them before it is trusted. Control is the part that needs a planned window, because that is where the interlocking and the failure behaviour change.

Can you work on systems another contractor installed?

Almost all of this work is exactly that. On TRANSCO project N-15223 the systems we retired across six grid stations were Alstom and GE equipment, and at Al Khazna the scope included removing the legacy ICCP link.

Related

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Emailinfo@almafor.com
Sales+971 55 954 5801
Technical+971 55 954 5802
Office+971 2 665 5540
Address
Office 4, Mezzanine 2, Dongfeng car showroom building, Khalifa Bin Zayed The First St
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

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