The Becht Team
Michael Cooch, PE
Mr. Cooch has over twenty years of experience in petroleum refining, chemical manufacturing, and fossil power generation, primarily focused on mechanical integrity and reliability of pressure equipment. His broad experience base includes site and central engineering as an owner-user, subject matter expert support and technology development for an original equipment manufacturer, and engineering consulting.
The first eight years of Mr. Cooch’s career were in maintenance, reliability, and mechanical integrity roles for a refining company, during which he provided mechanical and fixed equipment engineering support for multiple refineries and a variety of units. He was primarily responsible for mechanical troubleshooting and root cause failure analysis, repair plans and reliability improvements for fixed equipment, and mechanical scope development for unit turnarounds. He also held other site roles in rotating equipment engineering and maintenance coordination as well as a central engineering role in the piping and pressure vessel group, where he worked with facilities to implement corporate best practices and helped facilitate the inter-site fixed equipment engineering forum.
Since that time, Mr. Cooch has worked in multiple technical roles concentrating on equipment integrity. He spent three years in central engineering for a major chemical manufacturer, providing technical support for plant site pressure vessel and storage tank mechanical integrity initiatives. He collaborated with plant sites to develop equipment monitoring and repair plans, evaluated equipment fitness-for service, and co-led a company-wide network to share mechanical integrity learnings and best practices. Subsequent to that Mr. Cooch moved into the technology group for an original equipment manufacturer of power boilers, where he focused on root cause analysis of damage to existing equipment and evaluation of potential new, first-of-a-kind pressure part designs.
Additionally, Mr. Cooch has been an engineering consultant for six years, including at Becht Engineering since 2018. He has performed numerous fitness-for-service assessments of pressure vessels, heat exchangers, piping, and storage tanks for clients in refining and chemical manufacturing using the methods of API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 Levels 1, 2, and 3. He has experience evaluating damage caused by a wide array of mechanisms such as general corrosion/erosion, local thinning, cracking, deformation, fatigue, creep, and exchanger tube/baffle vibration and has assisted clients with determining ongoing inspection and mitigation strategies.
Mr. Cooch received his MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan and his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University. His additional skills include equipment design per ASME Section VIII, Division 1 and Section VIII, Division 2 (including design-by-analysis methods) and the use of advanced numerical methods such as finite element analysis to simulate process equipment behavior. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the state of Ohio.
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- Advisor Resources
- Business Administration
- Business Development
- Capital Projects
- Corrosion Materials
- Digital Solutions
- Due Diligence
- Fired Heaters
- Inst/Elec Controls
- Leadership
- Machinery
- Maintenance & Turnarounds
- Mechanical Eng
- Mechanical Integrity
- Nuclear
- Piping
- Process Eng
- Reliability
- Strategic Business Planning
- Training
- Business Administration
Gordon Lawrence
Maureen Brody
Hearl Mead, Jr
