Yokogawa Australia has doubled the size of its Perth office, with over 50 people now employed in major oil and gas and other infrastructure projects in that state alone.
Yokogawa Australia and New Zealand Managing Director, John Hewitt, claimed the investment in the Perth headquarters was proof of Yokogawa’s commitment to customer support on key projects.
Its customers include Chevron, Inpex, CSBP for whom Yokogawa implements control systems and instrumentation.
“Yokogowa’s new Belmont office (which was built in 2010 after outgrowing the company’s original WA office) has recently doubled in size to include expanded product training and demonstration areas," noted Hewitt.
“This enables us to train or update the skills of operators and maintenance engineers in virtual operating conditions using their type of control system before they get to their own mining, oil and gas or power plants."
Yokogawa’s presence in WA received a boost in 2012 when it won a supply bid from Bechtel for integrated control and safety systems for the Chevron-operated Wheatstone Project west of Onslow, Western Australia.
The contract, worth approximately $20 million, will be project managed and implemented by Yokogawa engineers from both its Sydney and Perth offices.
Yokogawa will be supplying the Centum-VP integrated production control system, the ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system and Plant Resource Manager (PRM), and the plant asset management system for the two LNG trains with a combined capacity of 8.9 million tonnes per annum.
This follows Yokogawa’s involvement in the upstream portion of the Wheatstone Project where Yokogawa was awarded the supply of control systems for the control and safety systems for the subsea controllers and the topside offshore infrastructure.
Hewitt said Yokogawa Australia was earning a reputation for its core competence in major LNG installations, which also include the Gorgon, Inpex and APLNG projects.
“Yokogawa Australia is developing into a centre of excellence for LNG projects as measured by total gas train capacity which will be controlled by Yokogawa’s Vigilant Plant system.
“Each project comes with its individual challenges and Yokogawa has responded by tailoring solutions including involvement in the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) of these key installations and supply of engineering design, fully integrated control systems and precision instrumentation,” Hewitt said.