BUSSTOP 2002 to feature wealth of experience from Australia

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One of the many interesting topics to be presented at this year's Process Industry Networking Conference at Dikhololo Lodge in September is 'Training and development within the process industry'. Steve Mackay, IDC Technologies, will be in South Africa (back from Australia) at BUSSTOP 2002, to deliver his views on the issues at hand.

Steve Mackay of IDC Technologies

Mackay has worked in the process control and scada industry for the past 22 years, based for the past 15 years in Perth, Western Australia. After reluctantly working with the early PC-based scada packages in South Africa in the mid-eighties, he then went onto consulting and engineering industrial communications systems for various industries worldwide - mining, oil and gas industries being key areas. He recognised the tremendous savings possible in the use of industrial communications systems and cut his teeth on a very large and, at completion, very successful installation in the early nineties on a large offshore gas platform (worth over $US2 bn) in Australia's booming North West Shelf region.

Thanks to the imaginative and courageous investment by the client (Woodside Energy), over 20 000 analog and digital points were conveyed using data communications systems rather than the traditional hard wired approach. Mackay recognised the tremendous worldwide shortage of skills in these new technology areas, such as industrial data communications systems, and this project 'kick-started' IDC Technologies, which focused on training and consulting in the area of industrial data communications systems.

Since then IDC has trained over 80 000 engineers and technicians worldwide in these new technology areas focusing on industrial Ethernet/Fieldbus and Devicenet and the plethora of industrial communications standards. Today Mackay is proud to be working with the enthusiastic team of engineers and support staff at IDC involved in technology training and consultancy throughout the world with clients that include NASA, Boeing, BHP Billiton, Rockwell and Siemens in locations as widespread as New York, London, Trinidad, Caracas and Johannesburg. Mackay's brief at present is to focus on identifying new technology trends, to manage the resultant new courses and books published around these new areas and to manage the burgeoning consultancy work.

The focus of IDC's training is on practical hard hitting new technology topics in the areas of process control, automation, scada, instrumentation, project management, mechanical and chemical engineering. Mackay believes one of the significant common enabling technologies in all these areas is industrial communications (whether it be Fieldbus, Ethernet, Profibus, ASI Bus, Devicenet, etc) and he is keen to share his perspectives with conference attendees on these issues and how they can significantly improve the productivity of their staff.

For more information contact: Hanli Nangle, èlancommunications, tel: 012 244 3107, e-mail: [email protected], website: www.busstop.co.za

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