Technical services company Furmanite is an international organisation with offices in the USA, UK, Europe, Scandinavia, MiddleEast, the Caspian, Australia, and the Asia Pacific region, serving industry around the world.
The company offers a wide range of services designed to help its customers maximise asset uptime, minimise downtime and optimise production efficiency.These include on-line pressure leak sealing, pipeline intervention (hot tapping, line plugging and pipe freezing), Trevitest valve testing, valve repair, on-site machining, controlled bolting, the recently launched Pressurized Systems Integrity (PSI) Management, composite repair, SmartShim chocking, and metal disintegration, as well as passive fire protection, portable machine tools, and environmental products and services.
In addition Furmanite specialises in designing and engineering bespoke solutions to meet specific requirements, drawing on its high level of technical expertise and the latest computer-aided design technology.
Furmanite prides itself in bringing added value, by working closely with its customers, understanding their needs, and engineering and supplying technology-based solutions.
Furmanite's expertise is widely applied in industries ranging from oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, chemical and pharmaceutical, marine, aerospace, and water, to iron and steel, mining, food processing, and pulp and paper, among others, around the world.
Founded in 1929 offering pioneering leak sealing technology (with a site service from 1967), Furmanite developed during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, introducing its leak sealing expertise to new markets around the world and expanding its product offer to include additional engineering services to meet its customers' needs.Today, Furmanite Worldwide has more than 40 offices on five continents and holds more than 200 international patents and trademarks.In 1991 Furmanite became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dallas-based Xanser Corporation, then known as Kaneb Services Inc, and, more recently in 2007 became part of the Furmanite Corporation.
In the UK Furmanite's head office is based in Kendal, Cumbria, with eight regional service centres throughout the country providing fast and efficient call-out response 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The company provides a rapid, reliable, top quality service, including a call centre (open 8am to 6pm) in addition to 24 hour call-out.A range of courses is available to customers at the company's well-equipped training centre in Kendal, to enable engineers to become fully familiar with Furmanite's services.
Extensive research and development is also carried out on an on-going basis to ensure that emerging technologies and the latest materials are used to enhance and develop Furmanite's service and products.
Recent developments at Furmanite have included the introduction of new products and services, from the self sealing clamp range (including ‘cross-asset’ contingency clamps) and award-winning patented SmartShim technology (an innovation in chocking, designed to prevent caisson and riser damage on offshore platforms), to composite repair technology and the PSI Management service to eliminate critical joint failure.The recent acquisition of Flowserve GSG including Ipsco has also resulted in an expanded hot tapping and line stopping capability.
These developments are in addition to widespread application of Furmanite designs and technology, many of which represent world firsts.Examples include a subsea sealing clamp installed by ROV at 500m depth for BP; innovative use of spark erosion technology to remove metal deposits at a Shell petrochem plant; subsea self-sealing hot tap tee clamps on a main crude oil pipeline on the seabed; a new installation technique for ultrasonic flare line monitoring; a specialist semi-permanent on-line leak-sealing clamp that saved ExxonMobil an estimated £10 million; in-situ machining of 5.5 metre pump turbines for a major power station using purpose-designed high tech equipment; the on-line repair of a 6.3 metre slide valve on a cat cracker at a major refinery; innovative engineering and pipeline intervention expertise to replace pipework and associated valves without shutdown on a 5,000 tonne ethylene tank for Huntsman European Petrochemicals; and repair of 75 metres of a 60 inch line at one of Europe’s largest oil refineries restoring full structural strength and pressure integrity at some 35-40% of the cost of replacement, among many others.
The company also offers a range of healthcare packages and broad maintenance contracts.It offers services such as valve care, and steam management, and currently holds, for example, a three year valve maintenance and overhaul contract for five UK nuclear power generating sites owned by BNFL Magnox Generation, and a five year federal agreement to provide its range of maintenance and leak-sealing services to BP’s onshore refining and processing facilities.Furmanite also offers permanent on-site core team agreements – a service that has been implemented at a number of refining, petrochem and power plant sites, including the ConocoPhillips Humber refinery and Shell Stanlow refinery, among others.
Further details can be found on Furmanite’s website www.furmanite.com.
