Why Project Feasibility is Important

The national snack producer was in the process of upgrading its oven controls and carrying out a gas safety and reliability project. They were experiencing ever-increasing downtime due to a loss of gas pressure causing gas burner lockouts.

WSP Engineering was chosen to manage the installation of the new oven controls and the gas safety and reliability project. Part of our project management processes is to conduct a feasibility study before work commences to understand the scope and requirements for this business improvement project.

Our engineers attended the site to conduct the feasibility study and, despite this being a new project and environment, through their agility and versatility, were able to uncover an underlying root cause issue in a short space of time.

The feasibility study identified various pressure and flow issues within the facility’s gas network. Unfortunately, the problems identified meant that any new oven controls installed would most likely suffer from the same issues, and the production facility would continue to endure downtime and disruption.

Our team mapped the entire gas network and calculated the gas pressure losses based on the pipe’s width, length, bend and components. We are now fitting temporary monitoring devices to the existing oven controls to verify our calculations and gather data on gas flow and pressure when all the ovens are in use.

Through our feasibility study, we identified issues accurately and began to implement measures to solve the root cause issue. This will save the client from starting unnecessary work, increasing the efficiency of their operation and allowing them to make educated and informed decisions on where and how to invest their budget.

Stay tuned for our next update on this project.

Follow the links below to speak to a team member about your feasibility requirements or to learn more about what we do at WSP Engineering.