Vernon L. Maddox, Jr., PE

The Becht Team

Below you will find brief biographies of key Becht personnel. Click on one of the functional areas to bring up persons engaged in that service area..

*** Please note that the listing below is representative of the quality of Becht’s staff and not an exhaustive listing of all personnel ***

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Dr. Becht, Fellow ASME, former Chairman of the ASME B31.3, Process Piping Code and 2014 J Hall Taylor Medal recipient, is a recognized authority in pressure vessels, piping, expansion joints, and elevated temperature design. He has more than 40 years of experience in design, design review, analysis, check-out, mechanical integrity, development, troubleshooting, and failure analysis.

He has developed new components, design methods, and Code rules for severe service and other applications. Click here for a summary of his Discoveries and Developments.

He has more than 60 publications including two books (on B31.3 and B31.1 piping) and seven patents and is a frequent speaker and chairman in technical forums. He received the ASME Dedicated Service Award in 2001 and was the recipient of the 2009 ASME Pressure Vessel and Piping Medal. He is President of Becht Engineering Co., Inc, CEO of Helidex, LLC, and Director of Sonomatic Ltd.

His professional career began with Energy Systems Group, Rockwell International, where he became lead engineer in charge of elevated temperature piping and expansion joint R & D programs for Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactors and continued with Exxon Research and Engineering. Dr. Becht is a leader in Codes and Standards activities, some of which are listed below.

B31 Code for Pressure Piping Standards Committee Former Member
B31 Mechanical Design Technical Committee Member
B31.3 Process Piping Section Committee Member (past Chair)
Board on Pressure Technology Codes and Standards Former Member
Post Construction Subcommittee on Repair and Testing (PCC) Former Member (founding Chair)
Pressure Technology Post Construction Committee Former Member (past Chair)
Pressure Technology Post Construction Executive Committee (past Chair)
B&PV Code Subgroup on Elevated Temperature Design Former Member (past Chair)

In the hydraulic area, his work includes the study of NRC issues related to entrapped gases in liquid lines, for which he developed hydraulics models and analysis of the effects of pump start-up, and two- phase transients. He has developed a thermal-hydraulic model for short term LOCA transients in order to develop forcing functions on reactor-internals. An example of CFD experience includes developing models of blastwaves exiting high-energy line breaks in nuclear power plants. Finally, he has extensive experience modeling waterhammer transients for piping systems.

In the stress area, Mr. Becht work includes the investigation of the failure of one of the largest mobile cranes in the United States, developing the structural model for the crane failure which was benchmarked against observations of the event.

In addition Mr. Becht has worked on several rehabilitation projects on furnaces damaged by over pressure events. Responsibilities for the furnace repair have included oversight of field personnel, development of structural reinforcement, and analysis of the completed repairs. Fitness for Service analyses included analyzing both degraded structures and improperly fabricated structures, including buried cooling water pipe in nuclear facilities and large ship loader structures exposed to salt spray and sulfurous coke.

He has analyzed poor welds and stress-corrosion cracking in weld regions with the fracture mechanics methodology in Div. 3. He has helped develop the EPRI fitness-for-service analysis methods and criteria for buried piping. Computer modeling work by Mr. Becht includes FEA programs, CAD programs, and fluid modeling programs, including dynamic time-history, elastic-plastic, cyclic loads, creep studies, and strain limit damage studies from the new Div. 2., design of high pressure (15,000 psi) fiber wrapped vessels for hydrogen service, fitness-for-service of components with local thin areas in piping and weld misalignment/lack of penetration, a fully integrated approach of fluid dynamic modeling to understand potential sources of waterhammer.

Mr. Becht received his Masters of Science in Nuclear Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University.

Matthew Wizeman, CPA
Vice President – Administration

Matthew Wizeman is a Certified Public Accountant with over 25 years of experience in accounting and finance. He received his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Florida and his BBA in accounting from Niagara University, where he graduated with honors. Matthew began his career in public accounting and then transitioned into the professional services industry where he worked for a few firms and served as a Controller for a boutique law firm in New York. Mr. Wizeman spent a few years as an entrepreneur where he owned his own company. Prior to joining Becht, he served as the CFO for a rapidly growing logistics firm for 14 years.

Mr. Wizeman has been a competitive runner, having competed in numerous marathons, including Boston and New York, where he ran as a semi-elite competitor. He was a university record holder in the 1600 meter relay at Niagara University and has been a member of a few competitive club teams.

Mr. Wizeman has a long history of community service, serving as President of the Northdale Civic Association in Tampa, FL and the Treasurer of the Burns Street Owners Corp. in Forest Hills, NY.

Mr. Wizeman has also been a coach at the CYO level where his team won the Diocese of Brooklyn class B championship and his team at the Diocese of Metuchen made deep playoff runs. He also organized numerous fundraisers including creating the Brittny Zipter fund for a young neighbor coping with terminal cancer. He also founded the Northdale Pumpkin Run, an event to raise money for the community. This event is still an active community event, almost 20 years later. He was also the Editor for the Northdale News, a community paper.

Matthew and his wife Ashley will soon be celebrating their 20th anniversary and they have two children, Aidan and Meaghan, who are both active in sports and music. His son Aidan has performed twice at Carnegie Hall on the piano.

Mariano J. Bertaina has 18 years of Technical, Operations and HSE experience in the Refining and Chemical industry. Mr. Bertaina’s Refining experience includes the role of Technical Manager at Axion (now Pan American Energy) Campana Refinery, leading a team of more than 50 engineers, specialists, and managers of Mechanical Integrity, Process Engineering, Reliability, Project Development, Process Controls, and Process Safety. In that role he helped to improve margins and reliability across the entire refinery.

In support of the Latin American market, he directed IAPG Refining Commission (Instituto Argentino de Petroleo y Gas) and served on the Board of Directors at LARTC (Latin America Refining Technology Conference) for two terms (2017 & 2018).

Mr. Bertaina’s role is to help Becht better serve our clients in the Latin American region, supporting new business opportunities and also establishing a very strong talent pool in the region that will support Becht’s growth plans

Mr. Bertaina holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Facultad de Ingeniería Química of Universidad Nacional del Litoral (FIQ – UNL), Santa Fe, Argentina and a Master in Business Administration at Universidad del CEMA, Bs As, Argentina.

Andy Saunders-Tack has 30 years of experience providing multidisciplinary technical support and problem solving services to the oil and gas, chemicals and power generation sector globally, but with particular experience in the Asia-Pacific region where he has been based for the majority of his career. Andy has held senior leadership roles at Quest Integrity and Shell. He has specific expertise relating to integrity management, materials and corrosion and fitness -for-service but is passionate about partnering with clients to develop integrated solutions that address customers’ most challenging issues in order to help them succeed. In this role Andy will be representing the full spectrum of Becht’s specialist disciplines and services backed by the company’s extensive subject matter expert network.

Chris van der Beek has leadership experience in Manufacturing Operations, Plant and Project Support and Business Opportunity Development in the Refining and Chemical industry, having worked 30 years for Shell with assignments in The Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan and Qatar. Chris’ experience includes Shell roles as Operational Manager of a Chemicals Co-Polymer Plant in Germany and a Refinery Hydrocracker/Base Oil Plant in The Netherlands, as Commissioning and Start-Up Manager for the Refinery part of a Gas-To-Liquid Project in Qatar and as General Manager Engineering for Downstream Projects in EMEA region. He also worked in the Lower Olefins Business team to optimize business results and develop and implement new business opportunities and he did lead a transformation process for a Chemicals site to secure a safe, long term and profitable existence in this competitive business. Chris believes next to Strategic Step Changes, Continuous Improvement-Lean ways of working are the road to success. He integrates all disciplines to deliver as a team the best solution, with thoughtful HSSE leadership and Learning from Incidents and Experience in everything we do. Chris likes to develop and coach people to reach their full potential.

Chris’ role as Director Operations is to help Becht better serve our clients in the European, Middle-East and African region, develop new business opportunities and also establish a very strong talent pool in the region that will support Becht’s ambitious growth plans.

Chris holds a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Twente in The Netherlands.

Mr. Wright has 38 years experience in downstream plant engineering, reliability, maintenance, inspection and mechanical integrity. He comes to Becht from Stress Engineering Services (SES) where he served as Principal in the Plant Services Practice since 2013 (Engineering Manager) and on the Board of Directors. He was responsible for the Downstream Plant Engineering Practice that included 5 offices.

Prior to his tenure at SES, Bobby worked at the Tosco Refinery, Det Norske Veritas and was Vice President of US Operations at ERA Technology.

His areas of expertise include Engineering Solutions for the plant fixed equipment – Coke Drums, HTHA, FFS, AR/BF for all engineering disciplines.

Bobby holds a BSME (1980) from the University of Arkansas and a professional engineering license in Texas.

Bobby states that “I enjoy serving, teaching, training and passing along what I have learned. My focus is on providing actionable and practical engineering solutions to very tough industry problems.”

With Becht Engineering Bobby is the Lead Technical Authority for BechtTechnicalSolutions. This position covers Becht’s multi-discipline services offering unique solutions to clients’ issues and based in the Houston office.

David joined the Becht team supporting the ExxonMobil Campus Project in the Woodlands, Texas, as a SSHE lead and data analyst. His experience includes the North American Growth (NAG) project and an Ethane Cracker Project at the Total Petrochemicals Refinery.

Becht is a recognized leader in safety.

Tim Shepperd has over 30 years of experience in refining and technology licensing, working for ConocoPhillips and UOP, and most recently as VP Technology & Consulting for HF Alkylation Consultants. Mr. Shepperd has extensive knowledge of chemical and refining processes with much of his career devoted to HF alkylation units. As a licensing specialist for ConocoPhillips and principle chemical engineer for UOP Tim has traveled the world assisting clients as an SME for this unique process. Mr. Shepperd supports Becht’s Business Development team in serving the needs of our global clients.

Mr. Antaki, Fellow ASME, has over 40 years of experience in nuclear power plants and process facilities, in the areas of design, safety analysis, startup, operation support, inspection, fitness for services and integrity analysis, retrofits and repairs. George has held engineering and management positions at Westinghouse and Washington Group International, where he has performed work at power and process plants, and consulted for the Department of Energy (DOE), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He also is an instructor of failure prevention, inspection and equipment integrity courses for ASME, and has done teaching assignments for the Department of Energy as well as many other private organizations. Mr. Antaki has authored several articles, publications and two textbooks on design and mechanical integrity of plant systems and components. George serves as a member of several committees including:

ASME/API Joint Committee on Fitness for Service Member
B31 Mechanical Design Technical Committee Vice Chair
Post Construction Subcommittee on Repair and Testing (PCC) Member
Pressure Technology Post Construction Committee Member
Pressure Technology Post Construction Executive Committee Member
Subgroup on Dynamic Qualification Member
Task Group on Impulsively Loaded Vessels (SC VIII) Member
Working Group on Piping (SG-D) (SC III) Chairman

Joseph (Joe) Collins is the Heavy Lift Division Manager for Becht. He is providing Consulting and Design Services for Lifting and Transport of process equipment, machinery, chemical, refining, and nuclear vessels and components. His duties include consulting to clients using the world’s largest cranes and super heavy-lift projects.

Mr. Collins has over 45 years of experience in the heavy lift industry. He has served as Commissioner and later as Vice President for the National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators (NCCCO). Joe also served as a member of the Cranes and Derrick Advisory Committee (C-DAC) to OSHA, which wrote and delivered the initial draft of the new OSHA Crane Safety Standard. In January 2011, Engineering News-Record magazine honored Joe as one of the “Top 25 Newsmakers” for his work with C-DAC.

Joe’s long-term exposure to the industry in several key positions has made him a respected expert throughout the trade. He has applied his expertise to OSHA compliance audits, crane inspections, crane repairs, crane erection and dismantling, due diligence in crane purchases, transport or relocation of large cranes, sizing of cranes, and cost projections for bidding purposes. The holistic exposure through the complete chain of lifting operations enables Joe to conduct crane accident investigations, wherein he manages accident sites, including the removal of wreckage and determine the root cause of the accident.

John Conway has 44 years’ experience in inspection and reliability in the petroleum refining, steel, and nuclear power industries. He is the developer of a proprietary four phase turnaround inspection planning program that reduces clients’ regulatory and business risk. His expertise includes risk-based inspection, API 571 damage mechanism assessments, turnaround inspection scoping, planning, execution, and reliability centered maintenance programs. Selected positions and responsibilities:

Owner, Refinery Inspection Consulting Services LLC, Corpus Christi, TX

Provided inspection consulting services for refinery inspection programs and turnaround planning

Asset Integrity Manager, Corpus Christi, TX (contract)

Developed and managed the asset integrity management program

Consultant, Houston, TX (contract)

Provided consulting services with respect to risk-based inspection (RBI) of fixed equipment

Maintenance Superintendent, Flint Hills Resources, Corpus Christi, TX

Positions held: Inspector, Inspection Manager, Reliability Coordinator
1988- 1991 All Tech Inspection (Part Owner) – Position: Refinery Inspector
1983-1988- City of Austin- Austin Texas- Position: Public Works Inspection Manager
1980-1983- ARAMCO-Saudi Arabia-Positions held: Field Supervisor, Inspection Staff Engineer
1978- 1980- Rockwell Hanford – Richland Washington-Positions held: QA Engineer, Project Engineer
1976-1978- US Steel-Baytown Texas- Position held: Metallurgical Analyst

Certifications/Training

National Board – NBIC – National Board Inspection Code (National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors, Columbus, Ohio)
API 510 with 571 endorsement, API 570, API 653
NACE-Senior Corrosion Technologist, NACE Coatings
RBI-API 580/581-proficient in API RBI Software
CWI Certified Welding Inspector (American Welding Society AWS)

Mr. Conway holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Education from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an API Refining and Equipment Standards Member.

Dave Dewees has worked in the refining, petrochemical, and power generation industries over the last 19 years. Dave’s specialties include:

Coke drum reliability, data analysis and fatigue
High temperature hydrogen attack (HTHA) modeling and assessment
Material property data analysis and allowable stress development
Advanced material behavior modeling
- Creep and relaxation
- Cyclic plasticity
- Damage mechanics
- Creep-fatigue
Nonlinear fracture mechanics, including explicit flaw modeling
Thermal-stress and fatigue analysis
Weld residual stress modeling

He is a long time member of ASME (Sections I, III and VIII) and API committees, as well as AWS (weld residual stress modeling). Dave lives in the Cleveland, Ohio area. where he works out of the Medina, Ohio office.

Frank Fronek has worked in the fossil power industry for 48 years engineering, designing, analyzing and supporting HE Piping systems in new coal, gas, oil, biomass, solar and other type power plants, as well as condition assessment and troubleshooting of operating facilities. In 1983, Frank founded a piping engineering company in NJ and a fabrication shop in Texas to produce a complete line of pipe support components and related structures. These facilities were acquired by The Shaw Group in 1994. After working for The Shaw Group, Frank founded Fronek Power Services (FPS), a piping engineering company, acquired by Becht Engineering in January 2018. Frank will work in.. the Orangeburg, NY office as the Division Manager of Fronek Piping Group.

Frank has a wide ranging global experience with new and operating power plants utilizing ASME B31.1, EN, ASME I, AISC, MSS and other related codes and standards.

Grant is a Chemical Engineer with expertise in process engineering and operations management and he is a member of API SCHTE (subcommittee on Heat Transfer Equipment)

Grant has experience in design, operation, optimization of process equipment and operations management of cross-functional teams. Prior to joining Becht, he was at Valero Energy, where he led multiple operational practices improvement focusing on equipment preparation and troubleshooting as well as building toolsets and polices to facilitate continued operational excellence.

With ExxonMobil while supporting refinery units as a process engineer, he helped develop and lead strategic, quick payback projects to help reinforce refinery profitability during poor market conditions. He has extensive process engineering experience coupled with hands on, in the field, operational know how to drive elegant and practical solutions. He has supported or operated every major refinery process unit across his years of industry experience which he leverages to support holistic solutions for solving the most challenging problems on Fired Equipment.

Grant received his Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nebraska.

Mr. Buchheim is a recognized industry expert in damage mechanisms, particularly, sulfidation, wet H2S cracking, creep, HTHA, and fire damage assessment. He is an expert in creating IOW’s and CCD’s, conducting corrosion reviews as part of RBI projects, and in FFS assessments. With his 40 years of metallurgical, corrosion, and inspection experience, he has been involved in all aspects of materials engineering including corrosion prevention, failure analysis, RBI, and fitness-for-service assessments. He has focused primarily on aging fixed equipment in refineries, but has also worked with petrochemical and upstream facilities.

Mr. Buchheim has experience focused on the identification, repair and remediation of several common damage mechanisms encountered in the refining and related industries. He has conducted numerous corrosion reviews, risk based inspection implementation reviews, and developed CCD’s and Integrity Operating Windows (IOW’s) to assist refineries in safe and reliable operations. He has been the lead technical expert in many failure analyses, fire damage assessments, and fitness-for-service assessments. He has also been involved in Mechanical Integrity reviews, audits, due diligence evaluations for plant purchase, numerous cold eyes reviews and failure investigations providing non-testifying legal expert advice.

In support of these efforts, Mr. Buchheim has been active in developing several API and NACE standards. He is a charter member of the API/ASME 579 committee and is currently task group chairman for Part 7 (hydrogen blistering/HIC/SOHIC), and is a member of Part 11 fire damage, and Part 10 creep damage and Part 3 Brittle Fracture. He has also taught the API 579 course for 10 years. He was past chairman of the API 571 Damage Mechanisms task group and has taught an API 571 course for 15 years. He is also a member of the API 581 API RBI API 584 IOW, and API 941 HTHA committees. He is the original author of API 939-C Sulfidation and was Vice Chair of that committee revising API 939-C. He is past chairman of the API 945 Amine SCC committee. He was the vice chairman of API 970 CCD’s. He was the vice chair of the NACE SP02-96 committee on wet H₂S cracking for the past two updates and was vice chair of NACE TG 176 Sulfidation in hydroprocessing units. In addition he has organized workshops for API and NACE on HTHA, Cr-Mo cracking, Sulfidation, and wet H2S Cracking. He also has over 30 industry publications in these areas.

Mr. Buchheim worked about 20 years for refiners (Exxon and BP) in central engineering roles and refinery assignments and consulted for 11 years with another company and for the past 6 years with Becht Engineering. He has been an active volunteer for industry groups such as API, NACE, IPEIA, WRC, and MPC. He acts as the plant metallurgist/corrosion engineer to answer misc. questions for about 15 refineries. He has built a first class Metallurgical/Integrity Management team at Becht with over 50 members.

Mr. Buchheim received both his BS and MS in Metallurgical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is a licensed professional engineer in Ohio.

Mr. Buchheim is based in Kihei, HI.

Mr. King has over 10 years of mechanical engineering experience in the Oil & Gas Industry. Mr. King’s areas of expertise include FCCU maintenance and turnarounds, pressure vessel design, and risk-based reliability work. He has built turnaround work scopes and packages utilizing risk-based work selection and developed equipment strategies for existing and grassroots units. His turnaround engineering support includes unit coverage of FCC, HF Alkylation, Crude, Coker, Hydrotreating, Sulfur, and Utilities units. His software experience includes the use of Auto Cad 3D, PV Elite, Compress, Math Cad, VCESage 8.0 and Caesar II Software.

Abby holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and is an API Certified 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector.

Frederick L Lea, Jr. has over 45 years of domestic and international mechanical engineering experience in the oil, petrochemical, power and mining industries. He formed and operated a small, privately held corporation that dealt with industrial training, equipment consulting, industrial sales, and real estate development. Mr. Lea has significant experience related to Capital Projects and FEED studies and has provided expertise as Principal Design Engineer, to projects including Nexus Pipeline, Flint Hills Compressor Replacements, Enbridge Pipeline Study, Cerro Verde 2 Mine Expansion, and BGTT Trinidad Power Generation upgrade. He was also led the mechanical design team that won the design competition for the Gladstone Coal Seam Gas Project in Australia.

Mr. Lea holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas. He has also been an active member of the API Subcommittee on Mechanical Equipment (SOME) for over 35 years and is a former Task Force Chair of the API 618 Reciprocating Compressors Task Force.

Robert Ohmes, formerly Regional Operations Manager Americas at KBC Advanced Technologies, has joined the Becht team. With over 25 years of experience in refining and technical consulting working for KBC and Flint Hills Resources, Robert has extensive business planning and optimization expertise. He has broad experience consulting internationally including Korea, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and other countries. Robert brings with him a passion for helping clients succeed and developing long-term partnerships.

Jeannie Lewis is a Mechanical Engineer with 16 year’s industry experience providing consulting services, products, and account management to petrochemical organizations worldwide. Jeannie has 10+ years leading multi-disciplinary teams to deliver customized engineering standards programs worldwide. In addition to providing engineering standards programs, she has led many engineering standards implementation projects which include legacy document consolidation, legacy piping cross-reference projects, program training, and overall engineering standards program roll-out.

Additional activities include:

Responsible charged for maintenance and on-going development of new content and integrated tools for globally used customized engineering standards programs to ensure compliance with current Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practices and industry Best Practices to support an industry and globally diverse userbase.
Served as Practices Coordinator to provide Owner’s Engineer program support for numerous clients’ Practices Coordinator counterparts, ensuring successful implementation and on-going use of their customized engineering standards.
Led development of functional and non-functional specification requirements as well as project management of a customized engineering standards platform revamp which included integration of numerous integrated, value-add tools.
Developed and executed the first, and numerous additional, Practices User Group events to support knowledge transfer and networking for customized engineering standards users.
Developed and executed the first, and numerous additional, Practices Technical Network Webinars and Engineering Standards Newsletters to improve communication and support knowledge transfer throughout engineering standards community.
Led development of a custom Rebrand and Document Management Tool to support improved onboarding for organizations adopting a new standards program.
Initiated and facilitated integration of engineering standards with industry standards available through third-party providers.
Piping database product manager for a customized engineering standards solution.
Developed a Piping Minimum Thickness Calculator and provided on-site implementation of program to address additional considerations for minimum thickness outside of code requirements such as local buckling and pipe deflection.
Participated in an organization’s first Culture Committee to positively affect and improve company culture as well as initiated a prior company’s Wellness Program.

Jeannie Lewis holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Akron. She is also certificated in Six Sigma Lean Black Belt and Continuous Improvement Manager.

Mr. Seipp has over twenty-three years of experience in design, analysis, review, and failure analysis of process and power equipment, piping and structures. Extensive analytical experience includes linear and non-linear finite element analysis using ANSYS and ABAQUS, buckling analyses, steady state and transient heat transfer and thermal stress analysis of pressure vessels and piping, fitness-for-service evaluations, fatigue assessments, and flexibility. In his current role with Becht, he has performed many evaluations using finite element analysis. He has developed a 4-day course on Design-By-Analysis using ASME Section VIII, Division 2, Part 5 and has presented the course around the world.

Mr. Seipp is also involved in ASME Codes and Standards, serving on the ASME Board on Pressure Technology Codes and Standards, as well as serving as a member of the Subgroup on Design of Section VIII, Subgroup on Interpretations of Section VIII and the Working Group on Design By Analysis of Section VIII. For the ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Division, Mr. Seipp has served as past-Chair of the Design and Analysis Technical Committee, past-Chair of the Division Honors and Awards Committee, Technical Program Chair for PVP2019, Conference Chair for PVP2020, and Chair of the PVP Division for 2020-2021. Mr. Seipp is a Fellow of ASME.

Mr. Seipp is also extensively published at peer-review conferences and journals. He has authored 30 conference papers and presentations to several international conferences, published 4 journal articles, and presented several tutorials at ASME Conferences.

Before joining Becht, he worked for Fluor, Syncrude, Wascana Energy, and Imperial Oil. Mr. Seipp received his M.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota and his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Saskatchewan. He is a licensed professional engineer in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, and a responsible member for the Alberta Permit to Practice and the Saskatchewan and Ontario Certificates of Authorization.

Clayton Smith has over 30 years experience in refinery maintenance, turnarounds, engineering operations and site management; based on his long-term career with Shell/Motiva. His experience includes plant engineering, business development, operations and refinery maintenance/turnaround – both at a site and corporate level. Since joining Becht, Clayton has brought his knowledge of Turnaround and Maintenance, to Becht’s Turnaround Services Division, to better coordinate the diverse services Becht Engineering provides related to turnarounds. He is assisting clients to facilitate turnaround readiness reviews, scope optimizations, peer reviews and critical path reviews.

While Corporate Turnaround Director at Motiva, Clayton was responsible for managing the turnarounds budget of over $200MM annually. As a member of Motiva’s corporate team, he was responsible for setting direction, targets and goals, and improving work processes to improve Motiva refinery turnaround performance in the US.

Clayton also brings a wealth of maintenance knowledge to Becht Engineering, both in process development and execution. As Shell’s Downstream Maintenance Excellence Manager, Clayton implemented many new work processes. In cooperation with site work process leaders, Clayton served as a member of the corporate team responsible for setting direction and priority for implementation of new work processes across global downstream sites. His experience at Shell also includes work as both a Maintenance Manager and Major Projects Manager, with extensive experience in managing routine maintenance and implementing cost controls for both scheduled and turnaround maintenance activities.

Mr. Smith holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with Honors from Florida State University , Tallahassee, Florida.

Mr. Swett began his career with Dow as a Process Engineer contributing to unit optimization, reliability and training.

Since then, he has honed his refining and petrochemical experience with some of the world’s largest companies including ExxonMobil and BP, at over 30 different operating units including locations in the US, Singapore, Japan, Australia, St. Croix, Kazakhstan, and Mexico.

Mr. Swett has also broadened his experience and client portfolio beyond the oil industry, consulting with several other Fortune 500 companies, including Pfizer.

Mr. Swett and the Becht Performance Group team collaborate to bring their unique approach to developing strategic solutions, blending consulting with professional training expertise. The Becht Performance Group consults with clients to identify gaps in training and assists in the development of knowledge transfer materials. Becht Performance Group works collaboratively with clients toward improving the safety and skills of their workforces.

Mr. Swett earned his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Mr. Swett founded Dynamic Performance Management, a training and workforce excellence company which was recently acquired to form Becht Performance Group, the training division of Becht Engineering.

Becht has more than 800 specialists on our worldwide roster, most with over 25 years experience in their specific areas of expertise. Becht’s resources also include experienced and seasoned professionals (many with more than 30 years of experience in pace-setting owner organizations) who successfully manage, plan, review, and supervise process plant projects and turnarounds on behalf of the owner.

Bonnie Winkler and the Becht Advisor Resources Team are poised to handle the commercial terms, rapid mobilization, travel logistics and everything in between for Becht’s specialists who are called to a client site for both emergency short-term and long-term support assignments.

A particular strength of the Advisor Resources Team is the ability to identify the required skill set and mobilize resources with unit-specific experience and successful track records.

Whether you need assistance for one day or one year, Becht Engineering is the company to call to have the job done right. We are poised to provide rapid response to your requests for technically excellent engineering services, as well as project and turnaround management and support.

Eric Ye is the Process Engineering and Process Safety Manager for Becht. Mr. Ye is responsible for ensuring that client’s needs are meet with the highest level of quality and that projects are properly coordinated, resourced, and delivered in a timely manner. Mr. Ye is also responsible for developing offerings and business development for the Process Engineering and Process Division by cultivating existing or developing new relationships and identifying/developing new opportunities and offerings.

Prior to joining Becht, he worked as a Project Leader for DuPont Sustainable Solutions where his responsibilities include leading project teams to help clients in improve resource, personal safety, and risk management.

Eric spent 10 years as Technical Development Manager for DuPont Clean Technologies where his responsibilities included the development and analysis of opportunities relating to advanced emerging technologies in the refining, sulfuric acid, and related industries. Prior to joining DuPont in 2005, he was involved in the petroleum refining and petrochemical industry for the past 22 years, where he has held a number of positions in engineering, operations, construction management, and financial analysis with companies such as Chevron, Hess, and Sunoco.

Significant expertise:

Product Development and Commercialization
Business and Technology Acquisitions Due Diligence and Valuation
Capital Project Design, Management, & Construction
Strategic Planning and Financial Analysis
Plant Optimization & Troubleshooting
Regulatory Policy & Industry Advocacy
Industry and Plant Benchmarking Analysis

Mr. Ye has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan (1984) and an MBA from Drexel University (1996). He is a licensed professional engineer in the State of New Jersey and is a member of the American Chemical Society.

Mr. Caserta is a registered professional engineer in the states of Ohio and Texas. He has over 18 years of a wide breadth of engineering experience in oil refining, chemical processing, and consulting. Mr. Caserta’s varied background provides unique insights into process interactions, equipment reliability, and corrosion and materials concerns. He currently manages Becht’s corrosion control document (CCD) /integrity operating window (IOW) implementation team. He has personally been involved in development of CCDs and IOWs for over 50 different process units.

The past 12 years of Mr. Caserta’s career has focused on mechanical integrity, fixed equipment reliability, and inspection. He has a strong knowledge of damage mechanisms through practical experience. He has been involved in risk-based inspection assessments, mechanical integrity audits, and process engineering. He has experience as a Chief Inspector planning and executing turnarounds, supervising day-to-day inspection needs, and managing projects.

Prior to joining Becht Engineering, Mr. Caserta served Inspection Supervisor at a 100,000 bpd refinery. During this time, he managed a team of over 25 inspection and engineering professionals. This experience included inspection planning and executing turnarounds, supervising day-to-day inspection needs, and managing projects. He has overseen a complete re-circuitization and inspection of refinery piping systems. Mr. Caserta also implemented corrosion under insulation and fireproofing programs. He has also led the implementation of onsite and offsite quality assurance programs. Mr. Caserta also has experience as a reliability engineer focusing on fixed, fired, and rotating equipment. This experience included fitness-for-service assessments, inspection planning, turnaround execution, bolted joints, and reliability upgrades.

Additionally, Mr. Caserta spent over 5 years as an engineering consultant prior to joining Becht Engineering. His accomplishments included risk-based inspection implementations of over 100 different process units, developing mechanical integrity audit protocols, procedure development, and inspection planning. He was also an API certified trainer for the API 580/581 training course. Mr. Caserta has traveled to refineries and petrochemical facilities throughout North America and Europe.

Before becoming involved in Mechanical Integrity, Mr. Caserta worked as a production supervisor and process engineer at multiple food and chemicals facilities. Mr. Caserta received his BS in Chemical Engineering from The University of Dayton. He holds an API 510 certification and formerly an NBIC certification.

John Hackett has over 40 years of experience in all areas of Human Resources including recruiting, staff development, benefits administration, and employee relations. In his role as Human Resources Manager with Becht, Mr. Hackett facilitates effective human resource policies and procedures across the business. Mr. Hackett oversees talent acquisition, staffing, employment processing, compensation, and health and welfare benefits. In addition, Mr. Hackett is a trusted source of coaching and counsel for all Becht employees of every level.

Prior to joining Becht, Mr. Hackett served as the Senior Human Resources Manager for McLaren Engineering Group, where he provided full-scope HR expertise and developed programs and procedures that drove employee satisfaction, retention, and organizational performance. During his tenure with McLaren, Mr. Hackett also implemented their full-service Human Resources Information System.

Mr. Hackett also spent his earlier career as an Operations Manager for Metrocall and as an Operations/Human Resources Manager for Satellite Paging.

Among his numerous accreditations, Mr. Hackett holds a Bachelor of Science in Communication Arts from St. John’s University, an M.B.A. with a concentration in Human Resources Management from Columbia Southern University, and he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership from Columbia International University. Mr. Hackett is a member of the National Society for Human Resources Management, the New Jersey Society of Professional Mediators, and he serves as the mediator for the Community Dispute Resolution Committee in Vernon, New Jersey.

Dan Giuliani is the Manager, Capital Project Services for Becht. He started his career as an Engineer Officer in the US Army and progressed through Mobil Torrance, ExxonMobil Joliet, BP Whiting, Brand Energy and Middough in a variety of Engineering, Turnaround and Capital Project roles. Dan will focus on growing our capital project services including stage-gate reviews, project assessments, engineering assurance, and seconded resources while cross-selling our other project related divisions such as heavy lift, dimensional technology services, performance group and others.

Rick Hoffman joined Becht in June 2009 as a Senior Engineering Advisor. He has more than 39 years of experience in engineering, reliability management and maintenance in the refining, petrochemical and synthetic fuels industries. Before joining Becht he was the Director, Specialty Engineering for LyondellBasell Industries. In this role, he had worldwide responsibility for corporate technical support, mechanical engineering, and maintenance for more than 40 chemical plants and two refineries. He was also responsible for capital project support, setting the strategic direction for Lyondell maintenance and reliability programs and all engineering and maintenance standards.

During his career, he has developed reliability programs for refineries, chemical plants, and synthetic fuel operations He also served at the Mechanical Design Coordinator for a major refinery expansion in the UK.

Other highlights of Mr. Hoffman’s career include a serving as a member of the Texaco Speakers Bureau where he was responsible for communicating with the public concerning the refining industry. Mr. Hoffman also led a team for the final construction, startup, and operation of the world’s first commercial shale venture for Unocal. His team solved over 200 reliability problems to bring the plant into commercial operation. While at ARCO Chemical, which was acquired by Lyondell, he implemented a maintenance efficiency and work prioritization effort, resulting in a $70 million reduction in maintenance cost, and a 37% reduction in maintenance craft personnel, while improving reliability. While with Lyondell, Mr. Hoffman also headed a group of individuals to pioneer fitness for service evaluations, and to implement “program maintenance” to allocate funds for major programs to assure plants could not divert funds from key long-term upgrades. This program was highly successful in reducing failures and improving overall safety and reliability.

Rick has a BSME (with honors) degree from the University of Wyoming. He is a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional, a member of the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals, and holds his Professional Engineer license in Texas. He has published numerous papers and spoken domestically and internationally on the topic of reliability management. Mr. Hoffman is based in Silverthorne, Colorado.

Mr. Larson has 40 years of domestic and international operations experience managing various projects and specialty consulting on Fluid Catalyst Cracking processes. His project management experience includes strategy analysis and due diligence of refinery and system wide modifications taking into account local and international market projections. His consulting services specialize in process troubleshooting and profit improvement analysis in the FCC, Unsaturates Gas Plant, Alkylation, and Naphtha Reformer areas.

KBC Advanced Technologies

Project Management including Strategic Analysis, Due Diligence, and General refinery knowledge and experience along with being FCC Specialists. Mr. Larson has been on 60+ FCC units globally and more refineries.
Due Diligence analysis and advisor for clients pursuing oil processing assets.
Project Manager to Latin American Oil Company completing over $9 Billion strategic new refinery build evaluation and configuration
Project manager on Profit Improvement Programs. Extensive international experience, working in Europe, Latin America/South America, South Korea, and Japan. Personal responsibility requires overall refinery knowledge and capability to manage and coordinate multiple disciplines on both client and company aspects of the work. Strong leadership and team building are key to success in this role.
Refinery General Skills, knowledge and operational experience on Crude /Vac, Reforming, FCC, Alkylation. Worked on large multi-Billion dollar projects as technical advisor for major oil company. Have participated in several due diligence activities for potential purchasers focused on technical accuracy and integrity analyst.
Completed over 6 Due Diligence analyses with Global Commodity trader for refinery investment.
Technical Advisor to National Oil company new Latin American refinery project. FEL-0 through FEL III assistance from conception and strategy analysis and in detailed work assistance with owner, licensors and EPC firm. Over $4 Billion project.
Identified and implemented over 20% additional capacity in Japanese FCC Unit without investment. Completed environmental improvements on FCC in Australia through improved catalyst retention system and operational changes.

While at a major oil refinery, Mr. Larson directed process design/implementation of $30 MM$ FCCU/Unsaturates Gas Plan revamp project; designed and implemented installation of an auto FCCU Emergency Shutdown System; and was a technical engineer in charge of pre-commissioning training of operating personnel, start-up, and operation of a UOP CCR Platformer.

Mr. Larson graduated from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering.

He has worked in more than 40 countries world-wide, with extensive knowledge of the European, Middle East and African refining industry. Prior to joining Becht, Jean-Gaël held multiple positions at IFPEN, Axens and KBC, including business development, client account development, project delivery and multi-disciplinary team’s management, subject matter expert consultancy, marketing material development and ISO certification preparation.

Jean-Gaël is a Chemical Engineer specialized in supply chain and refinery economics, with a wide-range experience including Due Diligence and Business Analysis for Mergers & Acquisitions (refinery, oil terminals, petrochemical and chemical plants), Refinery Configuration & Feasibility Studies (grass roots, brown field revamp or expansion projects), Planning & Scheduling, Supply Chain & Logistics Optimization (including Stochastic Modelling and Discrete Event Simulation), Crude Evaluation, Product Blending, Margin Improvement (Energy & Yields), On-Site Implementation Services, Capital Employed Optimization, Asset Integrity and Health Check Assessments, Turnaround Preparation, Technical Training (including Operator Training Simulators), Executive Workshop Facilitation, Technical Advisor Services, Performance Benchmarking, KPIs Development, Business Analytics and Data Visualization, Process Mapping, Operational Excellence, Digitalization and Energy Transation.

He holds a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from ENSEEG-INPG Grenoble (France), as well as a post-graduate research degree in Chemical Engineering and another post graduate degree in Refining, Petrochemicals & Gas from IFP-School (France). Jean-Gaël completed his national service as Research Engineer for IFP, on foreign assignment at Stuttgart University (Germany) working on dual function zeolites for hydrocracking of heavy poly nuclear naphtheno-aromatics. Jean-Gaël is a member of EVOLEN, French Association of Petroleum Professionals.

Jean-Gaël’s passion is to help Becht clients succeed by supporting them in making the right decision at the right time.

Mr. Staats is an experienced refining metallurgical and corrosion engineer. He’s knowledgeable on creep, HTHA, environmental cracking and sulfidic corrosion damage mechanisms and associated fitness-for-service methods. As a refinery based metallurgical and corrosion engineer, he’s proficient on materials selection, failure investigations, failure analysis, inspection planning, TA support, repair plans, RBI, IOW’s, and CCDs. He’s been intimately involved with implementation of RBI, CCD’s, and corrosion reviews both as a consultant and refinery metallurgical and corrosion engineer. Mr. Staats has also participated in mechanical integrity reviews and audits for fixed equipment, both as a consultant and end user.

Mr. Staats has authored papers covering fitness-for-service methods for wet H2S cracking, particularly the API 579 Part 7 HIC rules. He’s also authored papers on brittle fracture and the background research for temperature, stress, and fracture relationships as well as papers covering risk assessment techniques for High Temperature Hydrogen Attack (HTHA).

Mr. Staats is the current chair for API 571 – Damage Mechanisms Affecting Equipment in the Refining Industry. He is past vice chair for NACE TG 326, Weldments, Carbon Steel: Prevention of Environmental Cracking in Refining Environments and also led the NACE State of the Art session on processing tight oil crudes and associated corrosion issues.

Mr. Staats has over 13 years’ experience as a refining metallurgical and corrosion engineer. Prior to joining Becht Engineering, he worked as a consultant both in a central office and as an onsite refinery contractor. Mr. Staats also worked for Flint HiIls Resources as a refinery metallurgical and corrosion engineer at their Corpus Christi location. He has spent the last 5.5 years working for Becht as a Materials and Corrosion Engineer and now is an assistant Division Manager for the PONO Division. More recently at Becht Engineering, Mr. Staats has focused on projects that incorporate CCD and IOWs into inspection data management systems. He is also active in materials and corrosion issues in the chemical and pulp and paper industries.

Mr. Staats received his BS in Metallurgical Engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, MO. He is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Texas.

Mr. Staats resides in Raysville, MO.

Jesudha Sithersingh is Becht’s Financial Controller. She joined the company in 2002 and has over 20 years of accounting experience. Leading the finance team, she oversees and directs the day-to-day accounting and payroll functions for the company. Additionally, she works with the HR team to administer and manage employee benefits and employer sponsored retirement plans.

In her free time, Jesudha likes traveling to new places, trying new activities, and spending time with her family. She is also an avid gardener, with a focus on tropical plants.

Kathy Lipski joins Becht as Marketing Manager. She has 20 years of marketing experience with a focus on customer engagement and sales enablement. During her career she managed value proposition, content development, conferences, global sponsorship and analytics.

Kristen Becht is a chemical engineer with expertise in process optimization and planning and economics working for Valero and most recently as an LP Forecaster for Marathon.

Her expertise in process engineering is around process optimization, troubleshooting, and debottlenecking with a focus on online, low-capital intensive improvements. Her experience in process engineering includes FCC, HF Alkylation, Sulfuric Alkylation, Hydrocracker, Hydrotreaters, Crude and Vacuum, Hydrogen, Naphtha Reforming, and Benzene Saturation. In her career she has identified and resolved a chronic hydrocracker hydrogen quench chloride fouling issue, increased a Sulfuric Alkylation unit capacity by 10%, increased butane distillation capacity by 40%, improved FCC pentane recovery by 200%, and increased diesel recovery by 120% all with low operational expense investment.

She has extensive experience troubleshooting fouling issues in the Crude and Vacuum towers, which included identifying temporary and permanent capital projects that prevented a site-wide shutdown. She has co-authored “Rigorous Troubleshooting Identifies Crude Constraints” published in PTQ 3Q2017, summarizing these efforts.

In the turnaround area, her work has included managing personnel, planning work scope, and acting as an individual contributor. She has inspected equipment in the FCC, Crude and Vacuum, Naphtha Reforming, Hydrocracker, Hydrogen, Naphtha and Gas Oil Hydrotreater. She has wide experience in managing catalyst change-outs.

In Planning and Economics, she has experience in Gasoline Blending and Scheduling, Diesel Scheduling, LPG Scheduling, and LP Forecasting. In her latest role she was leading the audit of the refinery’s LP, utilizing her broad process engineering experience to find defects in the program.

She received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University. She is pursuing her Masters in Business Administration and Masters of Science in Business Analytics from Indiana University – Bloomington.

Kristen’s role as BechtCONNECT Manager is to coordinate the efforts on the new BechtCONNECT platform.

Eric holds degrees in Chemical Engineering and Marketing from New Mexico State University. He joined the refining industry with Nalco Champion, holding roles of Application Engineer, District Representative, and Account Manager. Eric helped implement and maintain corrosion control and fouling prevention programs in utilities and process systems as a member/manager of the Nalco site team at Valero Ardmore. Eric participated in and led various continuous improvement projects and managed small capital projects including the installation of automated chemical injection systems for multiple high pressure boilers.

As a Process Engineer at Marathon Petroleum, Eric held unit responsibility for the FCC, Gas Plant, and Utilities. Eric was integral in the technical development of a FCCU catalyst reformulation geared toward maximizing profitability in alignment with the overall refinery strategic plan. He led troubleshooting efforts and developed mitigation plans for multiple production threats including FCC air blower degradation, boiler/steam system failures, and reboiler and overhead condenser performance loss. Eric is experienced in the utilization of process modeling tools, specifically applied to FCC yield optimization and LP sub-model comparison and validation.

Eric works in the Business Development Division with the primary focus of ensuring partner clients receive timely, value-added support from the outstanding team of Becht SMEs.

Ida Soto has 18 years of experience in Consulting, Engineering Design, Project Management, Curriculum Design, and Training. Ms. Soto’s broad practical experience includes work at a variety of facilities and engineering offices in refining and petrochemicals, both domestically and internationally.

As a native Spanish speaker, Ms. Soto has the unique ability to impart knowledge and training to both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking audiences, while understanding unique cultural considerations of the population. She has developed and taught in-language training programs in Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela.

Ms. Soto is a resourceful and detail-oriented project manager with highly developed leadership skills. As part of an effort to create a new office in Bogota, Colombia for her previous employer, she was responsible for screening, interviewing, hiring, and training new personnel to serve the needs of downstream refining and petrochemical clients in South America. She fostered a collaborative working environment that helped a multicultural and multidisciplinary team excel and achieve outstanding results.

As part of her supporting role with Kuwait National Petroleum Company, Ms. Soto trained consultants from the India office to perform competency analysis for operations and maintenance personnel, develop and deliver training content including process and equipment manuals, operation and maintenance procedures, and training guides.

Ms. Soto earned a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, and a MS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston.

During his 20 years refining / petrochemical / midstream / upstream experience, he has been involved in multiple aspects of managing operational risks from changing feedstocks and process conditions; including corrosion and fouling prevention, utility optimization and bioremediation troubleshooting. He has led and developed technical sales staffs in delivering value added projects to customers as well as best practice gap analyses to drive customer ROI.

Mr. Watt received his Bachelors of Science in Chemical Engineering from Colorado State University with Minors in Environmental Engineering and Microbiology as well as a certificate in Business Leadership Development from Texas A&M Mays School of Business.

Darren York has 23 years of Supply Chain Optimization and Industrial Engineering experience in the Refining and Chemical industry. Darren’s experience includes roles with KBC Advanced Technologies as a Principal Consultant and Global Product Manager for Strategic and Supply Chain Services working with international clients in all regions including the US, Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Uruguay, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Russia, EAU, Oman, South Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, China and Japan. Prior to KBC, Darren held multiple positions, including management roles, at Flint Hills Resources Corpus Christi refinery in business development, economics and planning, production accounting, compliance and performance management. In these roles he has focused on business success and margin capture through applied optimization, project leadership, planning, coaching and technical development of an integrated hydrocarbon supply chain.

Darren has expertise in refinery and petrochemicals planning (operations, annual, long term, and strategic), refinery scheduling, crude evaluation/selection, product blending, logistics, commercials/trading, economics and business analysis, LP modelling (PIMS, RPMS, GRTMPS, Petro and Spiral), Scheduling and Blending modelling, compliance and Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) management, performance management with KPIs and scorecards, business analytics and data visualization, process mapping, stochastic modelling/simulation, and discrete event simulation.

Darren holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Southeastern Oklahoma State University and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University – Kingsville.

Darren has built and led multi-functional teams to build single and multi-plant, multi-period as well as country wide circuit LP models, integrated refinery and petrochemical scheduling models, multi-blend optimization models, participated in multi-discipline feasibility, configuration, profit improvement, strategic, investment and due diligence studies, detailed opportunity crude evaluations, supply chain optimization work process and tools assessments, economic evaluations for oil producer for pricing and marketing decisions, as well as improvement and integration of hydrocarbon supply chain optimization functions and tools with clients around the world.

Darren’s passion is to help Becht clients succeed through hydrocarbon supply chain optimization that results in greater margin capture at all levels and stages from strategic feasibility to operational production.

Greg Zoll leads Becht’s Power Generation Plant Services group providing over 35 years of experience in utility and independent power generation including advanced technology combined cycle, cogeneration and simple cycle plant consulting, technical assessments, project development, feasibility and efficiency improvement studies and renewable generation.

Greg is a subject matter expert in G, H and J Advance Technology “Frame” and aero derivative combustion turbines and in their firing of high hydrogen content fuel gas. He is experienced with contract development and negotiation, Independent Engineering due diligence including M&A, project feasibility/FEED studies and proposal development activities. Equally experienced in utility scale, IPP fossil generation plants including renewable and smaller combined heat and power (CHP) facilities.

He comes to Becht from Burns & Roe and POWER Engineers where he was VP of Strategic Consulting responsible for Owners Engineering project development support and Independent Engineering review. At POWER, he managed a team of professionals responsible for marketing, development and execution of all Owners and Independent Engineering work. Prior to that, Greg worked for 15 years as an Independent Power Project (IPP) Developer and as a Utilities and Offsites Design Engineer at Exxon Research & Engineering Co. Greg is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New Jersey and holds a BSME from the University of Vermont along with an MBA from Boise State University

Mr. Annon has over 45 years of engineering, managerial (including Nuclear Oversight), training and management consulting experience at approximately 50 nuclear and fossil fueled power plants, and several Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. He has authored multiple technical, project management and training related papers.

Mike’s career has included employment with Stone & Webster, Gilbert Associates, Proto-Power (Zachry Engineering), Northeast Utilities (Millstone), and I&C Engineering Associates where his areas of expertise included project management and management consulting, Instrumentation and Control (I&C) and electrical systems as applied to design, licensing, startup, testing, operations, and interfacing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

David has worked in the power industry for 8 years with Fronek Power Systems. David’s experience includes pipe stress analysis of high energy piping systems, on-site field inspections of piping and pipe hangers, pipe support design, troubleshooting and implementing recommendations on piping that has been damaged from transient events, and developing outage plans for the replacement of piping. He has experience with ASME B31.1, ASME B31.3, API 579, API 610, ASCE 7, and other various codes and standards. David is working out of the Becht/Fronek Piping Group office, located in Montvale, NJ.

Mr. Baham is a degreed Engineer who has focused most of his career on Integrity Management and inspection of Petrochemical and Refining Equipment. He is involved in detailed plant MI audits, fire assessments and writing integrity management procedures. He is an expert in reviewing past inspections and doing Inspection Planning using risk-based methodologies. He is also very knowledgeable in refining and chemical plant damage mechanisms. He has varied experience as a Chief Inspector, performing shop QA, executing damage assessments and helping execute shutdown inspections. Extremely knowledgeable in the inspection and repair of steam methane reformers, cold boxes, Packinox exchangers, among other items in refineries and chemical plants

Most recently Dana has led a team conducting damage mechanism identification (CCD) of a large ethylene facility. This was used to build inspection isometrics and pressure vessel inspection plans, a two-year program involving four professionals. Has worked as a contract Inspection Engineering Manager of contract inspectors at several plants. As an ASNT Level III, he has trained and certified NDE technicians. He has managed API RBI work, from pressure vessels to pressure relief valves. Completed contract turnaround work at refineries and chemical plants and performed shop QA for a variety of capital projects and equipment types.

Prior to contract work, for 7 years he worked as the Inspection and Mechanical Superintendent at the ConocoPhillips Lake Charles Refinery. He managed a permanent staff of 10 API Authorized Inspectors, one Materials/Corrosion Engineer, one Fixed Equipment Engineer and a staff administrative assistant and many more contract inspectors. This department was responsible for the fixed equipment integrity of a large complex refinery. They implemented RBI of pressure vessels, exchangers, piping, relief valves, exchangers and supplemented with special emphasis programs. Specific equipment plans (SEP’s) were developed to provide efficiency for T/A’s which described in detail what was required for inspection of all turnaround vessels and communicated the probability and the extent of repair or replacement. The department also maintained certifications of contract inspectors NDE technicians and site welders.

Before becoming involved in Mechanical Integrity, Dana worked for many years as a production and operations manager for a polyethylene facility, a 1000 t/d ammonia/1500 t/d urea plant, and prior to that a maintenance superintendent, and production engineer. Dana inspected and directed repair of pressure vessels in each of those capacities. He also has three years’ experience in Department of Labor and plaintiff litigation, testifying and discovery.

Mr. Baham is a member of ASME, ASNT, and the API-ICP testing committee.

Mr. Baham received his MS in Civil Engineering from Montana State University in 1977. He holds the following Certifications: API– API-510, 570, and the API 571 Supplement

ASNT- Level III.

Mr. Baham is based in Lake Charles, LA.

Blagoje is mechanical engineer with 36 years of power plant and piping engineering and design experience on coal fired and combined cycle power plant, solar power plant, offshore oil drilling platform, process plant and mining projects as design and project engineer, stress analyst and construction site engineer. Experience includes 28 years of use and implementation of plant 3D CAD systems (Aveva Plant Design Management System [PDMS] and Intergraph Plant Design System [PDS]).

Mr. Basile’s experience includes pressure vessels, piping, fluid solids systems, and advanced mathematical analysis of vessels and internals in fluid catalytic cracking (FCCU), fluid coking, Flexicoking, and hydroprocessing units. His career has included a diverse range of assignments relating to capital projects, commissioning of new facilities, turnaround support and R&D.

Gordon is a Chartered Chemical Engineer with over 30 years of experience in capital project management and maintenance turnaround preparation and planning. This experience has been gained with owner, contractor and consulting organizations working at onshore and offshore facilities across the globe. Gordon specializes in project and turnaround preparation, planning best practices, and execution control; this includes front-end development, estimating, risk mitigation and change control. He has published a number of articles in technical magazines and several cost estimating recommended practices with the AACE-I. He is a dual-national British/French, residing in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Mr. Bolinger is a recognized industry expert in Mechanical Integrity, Inspection and Corrosion Engineering. During his 35 years of Mechanical Integrity experience he has been involved with all aspects of Mechanical Integrity including developing and implementing Inspection and Mechanical Integrity programs for several refineries and Mechanical Integrity site audits, materials selection, failure analysis, and Fitness-for-Service evaluation. He has primarily focused on refineries but has also worked at Petrochemical sites and upstream facilities.

Mr. Bolinger has extensive knowledge in developing and implementing Mechanical Integrity programs for large refineries. His experience has been developed through many years of leading Plant Integrity Departments at several refineries. He has implemented Risk Based Inspection programs, developed and implemented Corrosion Management systems including damage mechanism reviews, inspection plan development, turn-around scope rationalization and execution. He developed an in-house Pressure Equipment Integrity Review program and audited several sites.

In support of these efforts, Mr. Bolinger has been active in API, NACE and MTI. He is the past chairman of the API Sub-Committee on Inspection and Mechanical Integrity. He has been active on several API tasks groups including past chairman of Injection Point Design, Installation and Inspection. He has authored numerous papers including:

“Sulfide Stress Cracking Susceptibility of T-91 Tubulars in Coker Service”,
“Unusual Stabilization Behavior in Type 347H Tubulars for a Refinery Heater
“The Implementation of a Corrosion Control Plan for a Regenerative Catalytic Reformer Fully Integrated with Risk Based Inspection”
“Carbonate Cracking Risk Assessment for a FCCU Gas Plant”

Mr. Bolinger has worked more than 27 years for refiners, including BP, Marathon, Tesoro and Shell, in central engineering roles and refinery assignments. He has recently been the Chief Engineer – Engineering Integrity for BP Downstream.

Mr. Bolinger during his time with Becht has performed numerous FEMI assessments for multiple companies and sites. Additionally, he has developed a set of Becht MI standards and performed HTHA assessments.

Mr. Bolinger received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tulsa and his MS in Materials Science from the University of Virginia. He is a licensed professional mechanical engineer in California.

With over 24 years of Conventional and Advanced Non-Destructive Testing Experience, Mr. Brandt has been providing testing and inspection solutions in an effort to always surpass client expectation. His straightforward and personable style has been an asset on many team projects.

Ben’s primary role is for Becht’s Pono Division. Within Pono, he provides in-depth analysis of client inspection data supporting creation and updates of Corrosion Control Documents (CCD’s) and Risk Based Inspection planning. Mr. Brandt also performs on site services such as metallurgical scoop sampling. He has also served in the role of refinery project manager at multiple client facilities.

Current Professional Qualifications Include:

American Society of Non-Destructive Testing: ASNT Level III Radiographic Testing
American Society of Non-Destructive Testing: ASNT Level III Ultrasonic Testing
American Society of Non-Destructive Testing: ASNT Level III Magnetic Particle Testing
American Society of Non-Destructive Testing: ASNT Level III Penetrant Testing
American Society of Non-Destructive Testing: IRRSP (X-Ray and Gamma)
American Petroleum Institute: 510 Pressure Vessel Inspector
American Petroleum Institute: 570 Piping Inspector
American Petroleum Institute: 571 Corrosion and Damage Mechanisms
American Petroleum Institute: 580 Risk Based Inspection
American Petroleum Institute: QUTE Qualification of Ultrasonic Testing Examiner
American Petroleum Institute: QUPA Qualification of Phased Array Examiner
Eddyfi Technologies: Pulsed Eddy Current Testing (PEC)
Federal Aviation Administration: FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot in Command

Mr. Brandt has also proven to be proficient in the development of custom innovation in order to satisfy customer needs. These client solutions have included both physical and digital tools. Some of these successes include:

Project lead for a NSF grant opportunity using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning applied to refinery inspection data.
Design and implementation of remote viewing system to monitor internal vessel repair activities in real time and from anywhere on the globe
Design and construction of a custom 400 Kilovolt Real Time X-Ray System
Development of panoramic x-ray technique for oil refinery heater tubes to reduce required time from 16-man hours down to 2-man hours

Ben’s Formal Education Includes:

Degree – A.A.S, Non-Destructive Testing and Inspection, Ridge Water College
Inspection and Testing, QA/QC, Metallurgical and Manufacturing Technology
Advanced course work in additional studies at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in Physics, Statics and Dynamics

Mr. Brandt is based in Seattle, WA.

Allen Hamilton is a Subject Matter Expert in the area of Cost Management including Project Execution Planning, Cost Estimating & Control and Risk Management. He spent 25 years with ExxonMobil research & Engineering Co. in the Project Management Department in cost management including cost estimating, cost control and data analysis. He also has experience in contracts management including bidding, analysis recommendations and claims. He has extensive experience in the process industry including upstream, chemicals, downstream and pharmaceutical manufacturing including GMP. He has also managed and supported construction claims in the process industry in both US and International Court of Arbitration jurisdictions. His extensive experience includes pipelines (Trans Alaskan), offshore platforms (North Sea), refineries (many), chemical plants (many), open pit coal mine (Columbia SA), and tar sands (Canada).

Allen is a Past National President of the Association for the Advancement for Cost Engineering (AACE International) and is past Chairman of the International Cost Engineering Council. He is a fellow of both organizations and is listed in Who’s Who in Science and Engineering. He has extensive publications including AACE Recommended Practices and Standards, contributing author to Engineer’s Cost Handbook and numerous publications at meetings and symposia.

He has a bachelor’s degree in Construction Management from the University of Florida and an MBA in International Business from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Mark Fronek has over 20 years of experience in all facets of technology supporting Engineering and Services in the Energy sector. Mark is well versed in the intricacies of IT infrastructure administrating and managing Windows and Unix servers, networking, security, telecom, mobile, etc. He has administrated and customized several 3D plant design packages and most common engineering software tools. By implementing best business practices, Mark has recently focused on automation/optimization of work processes and led the development of various internal and client facing cloud-based software packages. He has a passion for ensuring technology is fully leveraged within Becht.

Marga is the Manager of Advisor Resources. She also works with other Becht Divisions, namely engineering, providing resources for various clients which include both remote and onsite support. She works closely with the accounting department for payroll review and client invoice review and setting up projects in the accounting system.

Marga enjoys spending time with her husband and two kids, reading and running.

Tim Scholand has over 10 years of experience in design, operation, optimization of process equipment and operations management of cross-functional teams. At ExxonMobil and PBF Energy he gained extensive process engineering and strategic optimization experience coupled with hands on, in the field, operational know how to drive elegant and practical solutions.

Prior to joining Becht his experience included work at the Chalmette Refinery in Chalmette, LA, supporting operations troubleshooting, monitoring, hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs) and risk assessments, hydrotreaters, reformers and aromatics units, personnel and process safety, environmental compliance, and reliable operations.

Tim holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

David Keen is a qualified Metallurgist with over 45yrs domestic and international experience in fertilizer and explosives manufacturing facilities across 12 countries globally. These facilities include Ammonia, Urea, Nitric Acid, Sulphuric Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Ammonium Nitrate, Fertilizer plants and Steam Generation utilities. David is a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on equipment integrity management and has in recent years downloaded this knowledge into a series of training modules focused on preventing equipment failures through experiential learning and team problem solving sessions.

He has held various positions including Company Chief Engineer, VP Reliability & Risk, Company Engineer Fixed Equipment, Operations Manager, Maintenance Manager, T/A Manager and Plant Metallurgist. David also worked as a consultant for 8yrs to ammonia and downstream facilities in Australia, New Zealand, SE Asia, Canada, United States and South America. This work included:

Qualitative risk-based assessments on > 50 process plants
Quantitative analyses & fitness for service assessments
Facilitating the completion of plant reliability assessments on 14 process plants
Condition assessment, remnant life studies on:
Hydrogen reformers, waste heat boilers, cooling water exchangers, synthesis loop converters, waste heat boilers & superheaters.
Failure investigations in such areas as:
- High temperature hydrogen attack & hydrogen embrittlement of vessels and piping
- Stress relaxation cracking in alloy steels, stainless steels, Incoloys & Inconels
- Creep & creep-fatigue; reformer components, boilers & so on.
- Waste heat boilers and Superheaters
- Stress corrosion cracking of duplex stainless steels in hot cooling water service & in low pH acid service
- Corrosion failures of equipment in nitric acid, sulfuric acid & phosphoric acid service
- CO2 corrosion & amine stress corrosion cracking in amine systems
Auditing the manufacturing performance of plant, with particular focus on:
- Critical controls management, including process controls, design / construction controls & inspection practices
- risk management of critical plant
- shutdown / turnaround management
- root cause analysis and failure investigation

Victoria is the Track/Cost Coordinator for Becht. She handles timekeeping for all Track sites which includes reconciling daily time/charges, verifying accuracy for billing, and keeping costs current. Victoria is also responsible for reviewing and approving Advisor expense reports and maintaining the company’s overhead travel program.

Victoria enjoys running, spending time with her family & traveling.

Keith Austin has over 35 years of experience in refining based on his long-term career with Shell and subsequent consulting. He has extensive experience in furnace operation, Infrared (IR) imaging, operations training, run & improvement, incident investigation and combustion system tuning. Work experience includes:

Consulting

Participated in three-week process heater study at a Canadian Refinery
Provided ongoing heater IR monitoring, run and improve, combustion system tuning, and training for field personnel to many domestic US Refineries

Site Fired Equipment Specialist, Shell Oil Deer Park

Responsible for reliability and efficiency of site fired heaters. Tracked the site wide energy efficiency using the Solomon Energy Intensity Index.
Managed the heater infrared monitoring program for the site. Liaison to the Corporate IR team from the central office.
Trouble shooting day to day operational issues with the heaters and flares. Investigating heater issues that may cause unit rate constraints.
Developing new projects for heater and flare improvements.
Managed heater maintenance work during turnarounds, such as decoking, convection/radiant tube replacements, stack damper replacement, and burner repair or replacement.
Worked with the burner vendors on firing issues. Witnessed new burner performance testing at the manufacturer’s facility for all new burners.
Trained operators in basic furnace operations. Trained craftsmen in proper maintenance of burners.
Participated in incident investigations involving heaters at the Deer Park site. Also, participated as a team member in a head office study, investigating Boiler and Heater incidents for a five year period occurring within Shell worldwide.
Member of the Corporate Heat Transfer Technology Team.

Multiple Roles, Shell Oil Deer Park

Start-up crew of new power station including two 1250 psi boilers, two 50 MW steam turbines, de-mineralized water and condensate treatment, cooling water system and associated equipment. Construction oversight, commissioning and start-up.

Progressed through roles including Console Operator, Shift Supervisor, Training Coordinator, Operations & Maintenance Supervisor and Turnaround C

Francie is a Process Engineer with process engineering and supervision experience in the refining industry including experience on most refining process units. In addition to supervising a team of process engineers, she has also led a multi-site technology team focusing on Delayed Coking and Solvent Deasphlating.

As a Process Engineer, Francie’s work included optimization and debottlenecking of various process units. She also led initiatives to improve process safety and equipment reliability. She has been a part of multiple major turnarounds and maintenance activities. This includes the start-up and day to day operation of a new FCCU Gasoline Hydrotreater and 50,000 BPD Naphtha Fractionation Unit.

She has spent time leading a multisite technology team in which she worked to train new engineers and facilitate various initiatives amongst process engineers and SMEs. In this role she developed a system for identifying process initiated Lost Profit Opportunities which was later adopted throughout the organization. Francie’s experience also includes temporary assignments in Operations including one in which she worked with Operators to implement a Delayed Coker Short Cycled Drum procedure. She has also participated in HAZOPs, PHAs, design reviews, and critical check valve identification projects.

Francie received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas and her Masters in Energy Business from the University of Tulsa.

Haley received her Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Felician University in 2014. She joined Becht in 2016 as a Junior Accountant and is currently the Senior Billing Specialist.

She enjoys spending time with her family and traveling with her friends.

Meredith Bell is the Nominations Coordinator for Becht. She helps in identifying well-qualified, available and interested candidates in response to requests received from clients for onsite support. She also maintains Becht’s overhead travel program.

Meredith enjoys hiking, reading, and traveling with friends and family.

Michael (Mike) Bober holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He served as a Process Engineer, Project Developer, Economist, and SECTION HEAD at Exxon’s Bayway Refinery for twelve years. He then joined Mobil Research and Development as an FCC Specialist. He managed technical training for Engineering, worldwide, until Exxon and Mobil merged in 2000. At this point, he managed worldwide technical training for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering and then retired from managing the Technical Portfolio for ExxonMobil’s Global Manufacturing Training initiative – with a combined service of 37 years to the two companies. Mike currently serves as Senior Training Advisor for Becht Human Performance Group, where he works with clients, old and new, to improve the knowledge and skills of their employees.

Bob Brown has thirty years of mechanical engineering experience as both a consultant and an owner-user, providing engineering support to petrochemical, process and power plants worldwide. He is an industry expert in the development and practical use of advanced finite element analysis techniques to evaluate mechanical integrity and to optimize the life cycle of in-service pressure containing equipment.

Mr. Brown was integral in the development of the major revision to the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section VIII, Division 2 (2007), specifically the “design by analysis” section of the new Code. He was also a contributor in the development of the landmark Fitness-for-Service standard API 579-1/ASME FFS-1. Bob lives in the Cleveland, Ohio area where he will be opening the Medina, Ohio office shortly.

Mary Buchheim has 24 years of engineering consulting experience in the petroleum refining industry. Her activities range from managing the development of Corrosion Control Documents (CCD), participating in corrosion and damage mechanism reviews, providing project management of brittle fracture and HTHA studies, to project management of proprietary software products.

Participated in the development of Corrosion Control Documents (CCDs) for various refinery and oil sands units.
Participated in Corrosion and Damage Reviews for various refining units for RBI.
Managed brittle fracture and HTHA studies.
Participated in refinery process reviews to optimize energy conservation
Applied engineering skills to facilitate the technology transfer between technical experts, software developers, and end users in numerous software development projects.
Developed software requirements specifications for a proposed engineering data warehouse.
Managed project developing API 581 compliant Risk Based Inspection software tool.
Managed project developing API 571 compliant Damage Mechanism software tool.
Managed technical document development projects including API and ASME documents and engineering practices collections.

Ms. Buchheim began her career with Exxon Research and Engineering Company, and continued her career with Mechanical and Materials Engineering and then with Equity Engineering, before joining Becht Engineering. She received a B.S. Chemical Engineering from University of Pittsburgh. She has received training as a lead auditor for ISO 9001 Quality Management and also as an application expert in Meridium software.

Ms. Buchheim is based in Kihei, HI.

Mark is an accomplished executive with proven track record in program management, process safety, engineering, strategy development, business development and logistics optimization. He is an innovative thinker with a unique combination of operational, technical, and sales skills along with extensive experience building successful relationships around the globe.

As a Technology Program Manager with Becht, Mark helped secure the development of CCDs and IOWs for all of LyondellBasell’s chemical facilities across the US. The multi-year program successfully launched in 2019 with Corpus Christi as the pilot site, and is expanding to include 19 units at ten sites in 2020.

Mark also manages a team tasked with developing a comprehensive approach to addressing customer questions about hot oil corrosion. The team recently developed a rigorous kinetic model that simultaneously considers both sulfidic and acidic corrosion. This model fills an important gap for many refiners, the vast majority of whom do not have corrosion modelling capabilities. The finished model will enable Becht to advise its customers as they evaluate the corrosion impacts of their crude oil purchasing, blending and processing options.

Prior to joining Becht in the fall of 2018, Mark launched the Corrosion Management Improvement Program (CMIP) across the BP Downstream. He developed team mission, staffed initial effort, and led the program through the pilot phase of the Corrosion Review Process, a systematic, circuit-by-circuit review of damage mechanisms at work in all of BP’s refineries and petrochemical plants.

Mark led the Paraxylene Business Optimization team in meeting all supply obligations in 2005-2006 despite two Gulf Coast hurricanes that took out 80% of BP’s production capacity. He was responsible for the global optimization of BP’s aromatics value chain. He initiated a company-wide collaboration on new technology implementations. Result was a consolidation of several projects that yielded capital savings ($1m), reduced personnel requirements (4 technicians), and accelerated two field trials by six months each.

Mark holds multiple patents related to FCC units and catalyst separation. He was previously an adjunct faculty member for the College of DuPage in the Chemistry Department.

Mark worked over 33 years at BP and Amoco in various roles, starting from research engineer through business development and optimization engineer, ending as a Program Manager for Corrosion Management Improvement. He has held positions overseeing business in both the US and Europe.

Mark received his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from The University of Michigan, and his MBA in Marketing and Finance from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Indiana.

Mark Camp is based in Darien, IL.

Everett Chatham has over 20 years of experience with deep bolted joint and mechanical expertise across plant equipment in the refining, petrochemical, and chemical industries from his many years at Shell, Lyondell Houston Refinery, and Dow Chemicals. Everett developed scope of work for repairs and alterations to pressure equipment including vessels, piping, tanks and bolted joints analysis. He holds a BS degree in Science Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Mark has served industry for 45 years as a Non Destructive Examination (NDE) Practitioner and Consultant. His NDE experience spans Up, Mid and Downstream Petroleum and Petrochemical Industry. He also has extensive NDT experience in Aerospace, Military and Power Generation.

Mark’s expertise includes design, fabrication and testing of NDE equipment along with mock-ups, calibration/performance demonstration standards and NDE procedures/work processes and training.

Expert in developing multidiscipline NDE approaches; detection and quantification for FFS work for specialized damage mechanisms, such as:

Wet H2S Damage, High Temperature Hydrogen Attack, Chloride Stress Corrosion Cracking

Expert in developing unique NDE Applications:

Tube to Tube Sheet Welds, Phased Array UT Scanner, Mock-Up, procedure and inspection work process; Boiler Tube Cracking, internal inspection with Phased Array UT Angle Beam; Multi-Layered Vessel weld inspection with Phased Array UT, ToFD and FMC TFM; ERW Piping Long Seam inspection; Small bore instrument piping

Expert in Validating Thickness Measurements and Thickness Data Analysis and Teaching inspectors how to Review Data.

NDE Trainer:

Mark actively provides hands on NDE training including UT, PT MT WFMT & VT for Operating Company employees and NDE service providers. He has ASNT Level II certifications in the aforementioned disciplines. Mark conducts NDE training workshops on-site using samples of damaged material, NDE equipment, surface preparation examples with emphasis on true capabilities of NDE techniques.

Industry Involvement:

API Subcommittee for Inspection and Mechanical Integrity. (SCIMI)
API Inspection and Mechanical Integrity Summit Vice Chair
Materials Technology Institute (MTI), National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE)
Harwell Offshore Inspection Services (HOIS)

Mark is based in Houston, TX.

Zumao Chen has worked in the power industry for more than 11 years with Babcock & Wilcox and 4 years with Reaction Engineering International. He has over 15 years of experience in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of utility and industrial boilers, burners, over-fire air (OFA) ports and other boiler components. He also has more than 6 years of experience in model development for fluid dynamics, convective and radiative heat transfer, combustion, and computer programming to simulate two-phase flow systems.

Zumao lives in the Cleveland, Ohio area.

Nadarajah (“Ranjan”) Chithranjan’s career has spanned over 18 years of worldwide involvement in petrochemical industries for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering. Prior to joining Becht, he worked as a fixed equipment specialist at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering and he has worked in more than a dozen countries worldwide to solve complex mechanical plant problems as well as a mechanical support for large scale projects. He has extensive knowledge in pressure vessels, piping, and storage tanks, design and maintenance codes. At ExxonMobil, he was the lead fitness for service specialist and he is very well versed with the fitness for service codes as well as linear and non-linear finite element methods to solve complicated plant problems. Ranjan was also the Mechanical Delayed Coker and Storage Tank subject matter expert at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering.

He was a former member of API-650 Welded Steel Tank for Oil Storage and presently he is a member of the ASME Working Group on Section VIII, Division II, Design by Analysis and Working Group on Section VIII, Division II, High-temperature design. He has more than twenty publications and two patents. Dr. Nadarajah received his Ph.D. and Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom.

Harold G. Clem, Jr. has over 30 years of experience in corrosion engineering and materials of construction based upon his long-term career with Union Carbide Corporation. As an Engineering Technologist, Mr. Clem was responsible for developing standards and specifications for External Painting and Coatings, Internal Coatings and Linings, Thermal Insulation, and Non-Metallic Materials of Construction. He provided technical support in these technology areas for capital projects, plant facilities, distribution, business/technology, inspection/expediting, and maintenance. He initiated the development of a computerized maintenance painting program for petrochemical facilities in 1985, and actively participated in on-site paint condition surveys and programs. He also directed laboratory and field work for the evaluation and qualification of coatings, linings, elastomers, non-metallic materials of construction; and for chemical compatibility studies required for the shipment and storage of chemical products.

Since joining Becht Engineering, Mr. Clem has provided technical support in the corrosion and materials engineering discipline on external coatings, internal linings, thermal insulation, and non-metallic materials of construction in petrochemical and marine facilities. His activities, in part, include on-site condition surveys and programs for maintenance painting and thermal insulation; the repair of RTRP fiberglass equipment; and consultation and field inspection for internal linings and external coatings for vessels, tanks, and equipment. He was also the principle investigator and primary author for a technical repair manual project entitled “Guidebook for the Repair & Alteration of Lined Equipment” for the Materials Technology Institute of the Chemical Process Industry (MTI).

Mr. Clem is a current member or was a past member of the following technical standards organizations:

NACE International: Chairman of W. Va. Section (1990 term), NACE CIP #4044 Level III Certified Coating Inspector.
Society for Protective Coatings (SSPC): Standards Review Committee (2000-2002 term), Co-Leader of Maintenance Painting Committee (2000-2002 term), SSPC
Protective Coatings Specialist #575-480-0955.
ASTM: Past Member of Committees: C03, C-16, and D-20.23.
Process Industry Practices (PIP): Coatings & Insulation Function Team Leader (1999-2001 term).

Mr. Clem received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Fairmont State University (West Virginia) and a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from the University of West Virginia – College of Graduate Studies.

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.

Danny joined Becht in October of 2018. He has served as the site Manager for Valero Port Arthur Refinery since that time. His current responsibility is oversight of Turnaround and Major Maintenance planning, scheduling, and project controls for the refinery.

Prior to joining Becht, Danny worked for Motiva/Shell for 12 years. During that time, he served in various leadership roles at the Port Arthur Refinery such as Turnaround Execution Manager, Routine Maintenance Manager, Reliability Centered Maintenance Focal Point. In 2012 he was promoted as the CSU Manager responsible for the start-up of the Crude Expansion Project.

Danny is a graduate from Nederland High School, class of 1981. He started his career working in various roles in the refining and petrochemical industry. He has held leadership roles at Chemical Waste Management, Firestone Polymers and Anheuser Busch. Danny has 40 years of extensive technical knowledge across all disciplines for field execution, leading large projects and complex maintenance jobs.

Danny was a member of the executive board for the Golden Triangle Business Roundtable (GTBR) from 2017 – 2018, serving as the turnaround chairperson. Danny has been living in the southeast Texas area his whole life and is married to Joni; they have 3 children and a grandson. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with family, cooking and traveling.

Pete has 48 years’ experience in the power industry in the principal areas of piping, supports, mechanical engineering for various types of power plants including fossil, combined cycle and nuclear plants. He has designed critical systems for new plants, troubleshot during start up and operation, designed modifications to existing plants, and performed remaining life evaluations. Pete also has experience in other types of plants and facilities as well as I&C. Pete is an active member of many ASME Code Committees including B31 Piping Committee and B&PV Code Technical Oversite and Management Committee.

Denise Dewees is an Accounting and Human Resources Specialist with Becht. Denise has an Industrial and Systems Engineering degree from The Ohio State University. She spent her early career in the automotive industry as an engineer with specializations in ergonomics, logistics, and lean manufacturing. After taking time off to raise her children, she returned to the workforce where she discovered a passion for learning the administrative side of business. As a contributing member of the Accounting and Human Resources Teams, she has found the ability to apply her previous engineering experience to recruiting and to facilitation of internal process improvements within Becht.

In her free time, Denise enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, and tending to her pack of special needs dogs.

Olavo Dias has over 40 years refining, gas and petrochemical experience with major oil and gas companies equally split between field and corporate locations. Prior to joining Becht in 2015, he was an internal engineering consultant with Saudi Aramco where he helped pioneer, develop and implement Asset Integrity Management, Corrosion Management and Root Cause Analysis. He previously held key positions at Lyondell-Citgo, Amoco, Dakota Gasification and ExxonMobil. His major strengths are:

Practical troubleshooting, decision making skills and field expertise that are urgently needed with subtle compositional, capacity and process changes
Utilizing a multidisciplinary, integrated and predictive risk based approach to address continuing problems facing aging and new facilities
Allowing timed replacements of critically damaged equipment after vetting of inspection, safety and reliability risks
Conducting and facilitating due diligence and health checks of producing plants, refineries, gas operations, terminals and petrochemical complexes
Coordinating and performing materials and corrosion project reviews for new and expanding upstream and downstream facilities
Utilizing consultants to proactively assess units and develop integrity plans for handling changing crude slates and plant modifications
Training, coaching and mentoring engineers including developing individual development plans and competency maps
Providing several best practices and corrosion control documents that included:
- Generating corrosion loops and damage mechanisms
- Determining corrosion rates and integrity operating windows
- Providing operating and maintenance guidelines
- Establishing competencies and KPI indices
Representing companies in Joint Industry Projects that helped simulate, predict, monitor and assess corrosion, cracking and remaining life:
- Corrosion Simulation Program Consortium (light gas)
- Chemistry in Refining Overheads Consortium (crude distillation)
- Aging Hydroprocessing Reactors

Mr. Dias obtained his MS in Metallurgy from Penn State University and BTech in Metallurgical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has over 20 publications and presentations.

Mr. Dias is based in Baytown, TX.

Phong Diep is a Mechanical Engineer with over 19 years of experience in the petroleum and chemicals industry. His career started out with ExxonMobil at their Baytown Refinery as a project engineer/manager and then a facilities engineer for various units. He subsequently joined the ExxonMobil Research and Engineering division where he was the group lead for the pressure vessels group. He has since worked at Fluor as a senior vessel design engineer for large capital projects and at Becht in various roles and projects.

Phong has a wide breath of experiences that include pipe stress analysis, fitness-for-service, design and analysis of pressure vessels and their internals in accordance with ASME Section VIII Divisions 1 and 2, capital projects, non-process quality control (NPQC) support, and development of client specifications and standards. He is experienced with the various industry codes and standards, such as ASME B31.3 and ASME Section VIII Divisions 1 and 2. Phong grew up in Beaumont, Texas and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Lamar University in Beaumont.

Tom Doolin has 40 years of domestic and international experience in refinery operations, process engineering, economics & planning and project development. During his time with operating companies, Tom has been assigned to 4 separate refineries and in headquarters roles has contributed to countless more. During the last 17 years the focus has been on front end project development. Projects successfully developed, approved and installed include Crude/Coker expansions, logistics & mid-stream improvements, diesel maximization modifications, utility upgrades and a host of Capacity Maintenance & SHE investments.

Tom joined Becht in 2018 after retiring from ExxonMobil, and with Becht has supported clients as a Process Advisor and as an Account Manager on the Business Development team.

Tom holds a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Lafayette College, Easton, PA and an MBA from University of Delaware, Newark, DEL.

Mr. Dubil has been providing engineering services in the field of Fired Equipment to the petrochemical industry for over 36 years. This includes engineering and design, as well as commissioning, maintenance, troubleshooting, operation, and training. He has also been very active in the development of Industry Standards governing the design and purchase of fired equipment through participation with The American Petroleum Institute. In addition, Mr. Dubil has participated in the development of similar international standards, working with the ISO Standards Committee. While working with the API, Mr. Dubil has helped produce the current editions of Fired Equipment Standards; API 560, Fired Heaters for General Refinery Service and API Standard 530, Calculation of Heater Tube Thickness in Petroleum Refineries.

Listed below are a selection of Mr. Dubil’s accomplishments:

Development of current engineering design and purchasing practices.
Design and supervision of the engineering design of fired heaters for petroleum refining applications including Delayed Cokers.
Engineering follow-up of fired heater projects, working closely with the General Contractors and Fabricators.
First-time commissioning of numerous fired heaters for Exxon, domestically, and in Europe and South East Asia.
Provided assistance in troubleshooting and de-bottlenecking fired equipment, as well as improving energy utilization and emissions reduction.

Mr. Dubil received a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of New Jersey.

Frank Engli has over 30 years of experience in project, maintenance, health, safety, security, environmental (HSSE), and turnaround management in the petroleum refining industry. His experience includes:

Reorganized the Project, Maintenance, and Turnaround department to meet budget and safely execute work
Implemented a major maintenance management and improve project management which was able to successfully execute pitstops, infrastructure upgrades, capital projects and tank maintenance budgets of 100 M$ plus per year.
Led the reorganization of the execution departments. resulting in reduced safety incidents
Significantly improved the cost and duration of turnarounds and day to day maintenance by extending unit run lengths and reducing duration
Have reduced over all execution annual cost
Built a caring and collaborative safety culture by working with contractors and building trades using a tripartite approach.
- Improved safety performance from a TRFC of >1 to >0.17.
Planned and executed turnarounds in 2013, 2015, and 2016 of 130M$, 230M$ and 230M$ using over 2500 contract employees.
Reduced budget for 2016 Turnaround from 250 M$ to 167 M$ through work scope reduction and further unit decoupling.
Improved the cost and duration of the site’s turnarounds by extending unit run lengths and reducing duration
- Most units are in Q1 Solomon.
Instituted flange management/leak control program which resulted in a leak free start up in 2016.
Managed overall budget, safety, planning, scheduling, and execution of turnaround and cat cracker cyclone replacement project work utilizing company and contract personnel of up to 2000 individuals on site.
Led, audited, and implemented maintenance and turnaround management system and contractor safety management programs
Directly supervised a staff of five to fifteen supervisors, planners, technicians, engineers, and contractors in the preparation and safe execution of maintenance and turnaround
Managed the overall budget, safety planning, scheduling and execution of all Turnaround work related to refinery special projects.

Mr. Engli holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, a Master of Engineering from the Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He holds Six Sigma Black Belt certification.

Jeff Everett has over 28 years of experience in project management and project management consulting within the refining, petrochemicals and polymers extrusion industries. He has managed large ventures which include the conceptual development, front-end engineering and execution of venture portfolios. These venture portfolios included both new units, revamp and offsite components. Additional experience includes mid-cap projects management and turnaround management for a large refinery and petrochemicals complex on the gulf coast. His experience as both Turnaround Manager and Project Manager have given Jeff unique insight into project deliverables and methods which ensure success within both turnaround and project organizations.

Jeff has worked with Becht, Flint Hills Resources, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, and has also served with the US Navy and US Navy Reserves.

Walter F. Farmayan has over 30 years applied technical service and R&D experience in the oil and gas industry, in diverse areas related to fire and explosion safety, and combustion engineering. His experience includes:

Perform fire and explosion modeling
Perform blast modeling utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD),
Produce quantitative risk assessments (QRA),
Develop site process plant
Develop comprehensive explosion risk studies for deep water platforms in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM)
Develop numerical “evergreen” fire and explosion Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) models for major manufacturing facilities in North America
Perform furnace and process heater design, burner design
Make calculations concerning combustion chemistry and kinetics, solid fuel combustion, coal gasification, slagging and fouling, incineration.
Participate as burner design specialist in downhole/ sub-surface string heater R&D program for mobilization and recovery of heavy hydrocarbon resources / shale oil
Produce innovative recuperative burner designs for down hole sub-surface heating at “lean” oxygen limits
Produce commercial 2-phase flow process heater designs for clients
Carry out numerical modeling of sub-surface groundwater flow and transport, saturated and unsaturated groundwater flow, multiphase flow and transport, soil and groundwater remediation.
- Produced advanced saturated / unsaturated and multi-flow modeling to develop “nomograms” or look-up tables for rapid evaluation of contaminant infiltration, as well as non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) impacts.
Provide litigation support on contaminant flow and transport issues
- Produced advanced numerical groundwater modeling instrumental to resolution of multi-party litigation cases
Provide expertise on pulverized coal and coal gasification, combustion chemistry and chemical kinetics, burner design, incineration, ash deposition and high temperature slag phase behavior.
Provide technical support to R&D on coal gasification and to coal marketing to power industry
Develop multi-component slag fluxing methodology to enable application of gasification process to a broad range of coal types around the world
Provide technical support/resolution of slagging, fouling, combustion reactivity, and emission issues for major power stations burning coals ranging from Powder River basin lignite to eastern bituminous coals.

Mr. Farmayan holds a B.S. degree (with Highest Honors) from the University of Texas at Austin, TX, and an S. M. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, both in Chemical Engineering.

Allen Feltzin has over 30 years of experience in process engineering, maintenance, operations, and construction in large scale industrial plants based on his long career with BOC Gases, Murray Hill, New Jersey. He developed world class, state of the art cooling systems which were installed at over 80 sites in North America. He was responsible for every aspect associated with cooling towers: design, specification, erection, inspection, testing, retrofits, upgrades, and demolition.

Al developed and presented training courses on cooling water treatment and cooling system equipment, both in North America and globally. He conducted a comprehensive audit achieving cost reductions and optimizations on a 360,000 gpm seawater cooled system at a 360 MW combined cycle power plant.

As an Advisor with Becht, Al has worked with a European refinery to control calcium phosphate deposition and Legionella. He provided consultation to a US Gulf Coast Refinery on cooling tower life cycle optimization: repair vs. replace, review of inspection reports, thermal performance assessment, oversight of contractors, and asbestos abatement. He has built strong professional organizational affiliations, authored numerous technical papers and made presentations to various industry groups including the Cooling Technology Institute, American Chemical Society, National Association of Corrosion Engineers, Compressed Gas Association, and American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Mr. Feltzin has the following professional affiliations: Cooling Technology Institute, American Chemical Society, National Association of Corrosion Engineers, Compressed Gas Associations, and American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Mr. Feltzin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Delaware.

Dr. Forbes is recognized in the petroleum & petrochemical industry as an expert in civil onshore and marine terminal structures with more than 40 years in active professional practice and consulting. His professional expertise includes blast resistant design; design criteria for earthquake, wind and other extreme loads; evaluation and upgrading of existing structures; design of machinery support structures and foundations, water cooling towers, concrete chimneys and steel stacks; and structural vibration. He has been a lead structural engineering consultant responsible for the development and application of civil/structural engineering technologies and project support/audit for a major international oil company. He currently provides such consulting services to oil companies worldwide.

Mr. Frikken is an internationally recognized authority in piping systems, valves, and the development of standards and specifications. His work with Becht includes designing new piping systems, analyzing existing piping systems, assisting manufacturers with respect to code compliance issues, and providing instruction on process piping and piping flexibility analysis courses. Don has received a number of awards including the ASME B31 Forever Medal for Excellence in Piping, and the ASME Melvin R. Green

Codes and Standards Medal in 2002, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of documents used in ASME programs of technical codification, standardization and certification.

He received the ASME Fellow Award in 1994 and the ASME Dedicated Service Award in 1995. Prior to joining Becht Engineering, Don spent 34 years with Solutia, Inc. and Monsanto Company working on a wide range of activities including piping and mechanical design, project engineering, and engineering standards. Mr. Frikken is a registered PE in Missouri.

ASME Standards and Certification activities include:

B16 Standardization of Valves, Flanges, Fittings, and Gaskets Standards Committee Member
B31 Code for Pressure Piping Standards Committee Member and Past Chair
B31 Executive Committee Member
B31.12 Hydrogen Piping and Pipelines Section Committee Member
B31.3 Process Piping Section Committee Member and Past Chair
B31.3 Task Group on Edit (TG-C) Member
B31.3 Task Group on Inquiry Review (TG-IR) Member
Board on New Development Chair
Board on Pressure Technology Codes and Standards Past Member
BPV Project Team on Hydrogen Tanks Contributing Member
Council on Standards and Certification Member and Past Chair
Board of Governors Past Member

Other Standards Activities:

US TAG for ISO/TC 153/SC 1 – Design, Manufacturing, Marking and Testing Member
US TAG for ISO/TC 5/SC 10 – Metallic Flanges and Their Joints Member
US TAG for ISO/TC 197 – Hydrogen Technologies Member
American Petroleum Institute, Refinery Department, Committee on Refinery Equipment, Subcommittee on Piping Past Member
Materials Technology Institute, member of two groups involved with evaluation of gaskets
ISA – The International Society for Measurement and Control, SP 93, Sealing Technologies Committee, Member

Mr. Geiger is a Rotating Equipment engineer who developed his specialty over 32 years working for ExxonMobil Corporation and prior to those worked 2 years with John Deere Research Company in their Gas and Diesel Engine Development Group. Joe has worked on a broad spectrum of machinery that is used in oil production, refining, chemical, and maritime industries. He is a recognized expert for general purpose and large turbo machinery. He has extensive experience in operation, maintenance, reliability practices, problem/failure analysis and solutions and processes for maximizing machinery operating efficiency.

Since joining Becht in 2002 Joe has contributed to the development of the rotating machinery elements for the processes Becht uses for Risk Based Work Selection and Reliability Assessment and has participated in application of these processes at several refineries and power plants. He has been involved in numerous RCFA investigations on rotating equipment components and has been an Expert Witness for litigations related to rotating equipment.

Joe received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Iowa State University.

Robert “Bob” Goodrich has over 32 years’ experience in evaluating and applying environmental control technology to operating plants and capital projects with Exxon Mobil’s engineering company. He now continues to specialize in evaluating industrial water pollution control processes as part of independent or cold eyes assessments and project cost reduction reviews.

He was a member and chaired groups in the American Petroleum Institute that sponsored and oversaw technical studies to improve large and small treatment facilities at petroleum plants. These groups also developed cost-effective industry practices and commented on government regulations.

Mr. Goodrich is a licensed professional engineer in N.J. and has 2 patents; one in oil/water separation and another in hazardous waste management. He is a Diplomate in the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (DEE) which board certifies engineers and lists members in Who’s Who in Environmental Engineering.

Mr. Goodrich received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He continues to be a member of the professional organizations including AICHE, ACS and the Water Environment Association.

Mr. Gustafsson has over 10 years of experience in the design and analysis of mechanical components and systems in the Petrochemical and Railway industries. Prior to joining the Becht team he worked as Mechanical Engineer with ExxonMobil for 8 years. His experience includes Fitness-for-service assessments and design support of pressurized equipment including elastic-plastic Finite Element Analysis, transient heat transfer analysis, creep, high-and-low cycle fatigue, fracture mechanics, fluid surge and piping flexibility analysis.

He is a member of the API-579/ASME-FFS-1 joint committee on Fitness-for-service and is a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Virginia. Mr. Gustafsson holds a Master of Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Linköping, Sweden and studied Mechanical Engineering and German in an International Exchange Program at Rhenish-Westfälische Technische Hochschule, Aachen, Germany.

Mr. Gysbers is a recognized industry expert in refining and petrochemical plant materials and corrosion mitigation. His expertise are recognized in HF Alkylation, Crude Corrosivity, Integrity Operating Windows, Corrosion Control Documents, Inspection Data Analysis among many others, With his 42 years of materials/corrosion/inspection experience, he has been involved in all aspects of materials engineering including materials selection and specifications, corrosion mitigation programs, failure analysis, and risk based inspection assessments. He has focused primarily on aging fixed equipment in refineries but has also worked with petrochemical and distribution facilities. Some highlights include:

Leadership role in HF Alkylation Damage Mechanism Understanding including:

Chairman of Joint Industry Program and Co-Author regarding Residual Elements
Lead and Contributing Author of HF Alkylation Standards including:

- API 751 Section 3 and Annex D
- NACE Publication 5A171
- API 571 Damage Mechanisms
- ASTM Supplementary CS Requirements for HF Alkylation
- NACE Refining Corrosion Course for HF Alkylation
Author of over 25 HF Alky specific IOW/CCDs

Leadership role in NACE International:

Past Chairman of Specific Technology Group 34, Refining and Gas Processing
Chair/Vice Chair roles for various task groups including: SP0472 (Environmental Cracking Controls), Publication 34101 (Mix and Injection Points)
Co-author of several units (Cat Reforming, Light Ends, HF Alkylation) for Refining Corrosion Course
Received NACE Technical Achievement Award in 2017 for recognized role in improving safety and reliability in all aspects of the refining industry

Mr. Gysbers spent 33 years with ExxonMobil primarily with its Canadian Affiliate Imperial Oil in a variety of roles related to materials, corrosion, and inspection of petroleum refining, oils sands upgrading, and downstream distribution (tanks and piping) systems. He retired as a Senior Engineering Advisor with worldwide corporate recognition as a troubleshooter and systems developer for these technical areas. Mr. Gysbers was the initial developer of corporate Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) techniques starting in the early 90’s and has focused on developing tools and systems for use at plant levels to facilitate consistent application of degradation assessments, RBI, thickness data analysis and inspection processes. He was at the fore front of understanding the plant wide implications of processing heavy sour and bitumen based crudes in refining and upgrading plants. Since retiring, he has been working as a consultant in these technical areas.

Mr. Gysbers received a B.Eng. degree from McMaster University in Metallurgical Engineering and a M. Eng. degree from the University of Toronto in Welding Engineering. He has authored or co-authored 18 papers in NACE or other publications and has lead and presented topics at many industry exchange meetings. He is based in Ontario.

Ernest Woodard “Woody” Harrison has over 50 years of domestic and international experience in engineering design in the petroleum refining industry, including a 32-year career with ExxonMobil and its predecessors. His experience includes Instrumentation and Control Systems (I&CS), Analyzers, Safety Systems, Computer Simulation and Training, project HAZOPS, and start-up assistance.

While supervising I&E engineering at Humble/Exxon, Woody served as Chairman of the Instrumentation Refining Technical Subcommittee (RTC), where he led the development of company-wide Instrumentation standards. During his career with Exxon and later as a Becht Advisor, he has provided engineering support or has been responsible for Control and Safety systems design for production, refining, marine, chemicals and synthetics (coal, lignite, oil shale) projects in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia.

Since joining Becht Engineering in 2005 as a Senior Control & Safety Systems Advisor, his work has taken him to Singapore, China, Europe and Canada over 40 times. Mr. Harrison holds a BSChE degree from Louisiana State University and a MSChE degree from the University of Texas. He was a registered Professional Engineer in Texas for 30 years.

Glinda is the U.S. Site Coordinator for Advisor Resources. She works with Becht clients and Advisors to secure projects and follows each project to completion. She works closely with the accounting department to prepare monthly cost reports, QC, and setting up new projects in our system.

In her free time, Glinda enjoys being creative with machine embroidery and craft vinyl. She loves getting away, camping and spending time with her grandbaby Lance.

Jon has an experience of more than 11 years in the Power Industry. He has worked the last 7 years as Mechanical Engineer in Fronek Power Systems LLC. Responsible for the analysis work, piping and support design. Multiple visit and walkdowns to Construction sites to resolve installation and startup issues and operating plants to perform piping assessment. He has experience in ASME B31.1 and other codes and standards. Before joining FPS, Jon worked in an EPC company and AE firm in Spain. Jon lives in Bilbao (Northern Spain), the city where the new office is located.

Tracie Henderson Hoines is a degreed Chemical Engineer who has spent many of her 25+ years working as a Process Engineer in several refineries where she has been responsible for the design, installation, and startup of various refinery processes. Ms. Hoines, prides herself on being a good steward of manpower, materials, and project funding.

She is noted for her excellent communication skills which facilitate teamwork and strong computer skills which enable her to quickly learn new systems. Recent assignments have included Process Engineering support during Turnarounds and in Turnaround Planning.

Ms. Hoines earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemical Engineering from Louisiana Technical University in Ruston, Louisiana.

Mr. Hollinger has 37 years of professional engineering experience in nuclear power generation. He has been involved in design and fabrication of reactor vessels, steam generators and pressurizers, and piping for commercial and non-commercial nuclear systems since 1978, as well as, non-nuclear vessel design, fabrication and certification. Specialization includes stress classification, fatigue and elevated temperature design for pressure vessel components. Additional specialization in ASME Code certification for construction of Section VIII Div. 1, Div. 2 and Div. 3 vessels and Section III, Division 1 Class 1, 2 and 3 vessels. Mr. Hollinger teaches Design of Section III Division 1 components for ASME Professional Development.

An ASME Fellow, Mr. Hollinger has over 20 publications in his areas of specialty, and has received numerous honors and awards in recognition of his work, such as the ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Division Award in 2004, and the ASME Board of Governors Award for Chair of the ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Division in 1995.

Greg serves or has served on the following committees:

- ASME Board on Nuclear Codes and Standards
- ASME Board on Pressure Technology Codes and Standards (former member)
- Subcommittee on Design of BPV III Member/Secretary
- Subgroup on General Requirements (BPV III) Member
- ASME B&PV Code Subcommittee VIII (former member)
- ASME B&PV Code Subcommittee VIII Subgroup on Design (former member)
- Task Group Duties and Responsibilities (SGGR, BPV III) Member
- Subcommittee on Accreditation (QAI) Alternate
- Committee on Boiler & Pressure Vessel Conformity Assessment (CBPVCA) Former Alternate
- Associate Editor for The ASME Journal of Pressure Vessel Technology (term ended 2006)
- Member, International Council on Pressure Vessel Technology, Secretary of The Americas Regional Committee
- The ASME Pressure Vessels and Piping Division, Senate of Past Chairs

Arve Holt has an extensive background in refinery/petrochemical operations, process instrumentation and control systems, process safety management, and energy conservation. A long-term Sunoco employee, Mr. Holt also managed his own consulting business and has been a Becht Advisor for more than 10 years. Mr. Holt’s recent worked as included the evaluation of ship terminal crude oil unloading piping and related facilities and design of improvements resulting in reduced demurrage fees. He has also been involved in the design, installation and performance oversight for IR level control instrumentation in an extremely challenging service environment.

In the area of process safety management, Are has coordinated and implemented OSHA 1910.119 PSM regulations for all Sunoco, Inc. refineries, introduced Computer Based Training and coordinated individual refinery implementation efforts, focusing on PSM. As the manager of Sunoco’s instrumentation group, Mr. Holt has been involved in the design, procurement, and commissioning of Honeywell TDC-3000 Digital Control systems for a variety of refinery process units, as well as the design of instrumentation used in very sour and highly toxic heavy oil service. Additionally he has served as an expert third party for the inspection and certification of various refinery instrumentation and operations as mandated by state and federal agencies.

Mr. Holt holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. He has completed courses in linear programming, statistics, communications, management/supervision, quality systems and process safety management. He is a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania and California.

Jerry R. Horak has 34 years of domestic and international experience in engineering risk assessment, equipment reliability, pipeline inspection, materials, and corrosion in the upstream and downstream petroleum, and petrochemical, industries based on his long-term career with ExxonMobil. He possesses in depth knowledge of API Inspection codes for pressure vessels, piping and tankage. Since joining Becht in 2009, he has been involved in numerous RBWS reviews and has led training sessions on the RBWS process.

During his tenure with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, Jerry served as the Principal Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Reliability and Maintenance Risk Assessments which included the following accomplishments:

Provided support to Refining, Chemicals, and Exploration affiliates in risk assessment.
Developed and implemented risk assessment work practices and software tools for documenting risk assessments. In ExxonMobil terminology, these risk assessments are referred to as “Equipment Strategies.” All of this effort is consistent with RCM principles and methodologies.
Co-developed ExxonMobil’s Equipment Strategy Software, PESTRA, utilized globally by ExxonMobil Upstream, Downstream, and Chemicals affiliates.
Served as initial chairman of ExxonMobil’s Equipment Strategy Network.
Made major contributions to the design of the next generation of Risk-Based Work Selection tools.
Facilitated Risk Assessments, particularly for fixed equipment including pressure vessels, heat exchangers, tanks, and piping.
Served as principal instructor and trainer for other risk assessment facilitators. Risk Based Inspection is a key component of the risk assessments Mr. Horak has led.
Pipeline Inspection Specialist, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering
Detected underground pipeline leaks.
Conducted pipeline inspections (including intelligent pigging) and supervised repairs.
Supervisor, Inspection and Materials, Exxon Bayway Refining/Chemicals Facility
Managed the water treatment program.
Managed the heat exchanger monitoring program.
Coordinated chemical cleaning activities for the site.
Served as chairman of the Exxon Chemicals Materials and Inspection Network.
Developed and implemented the initial version of ExxonMobil’s Inspection Data Management System (IDMS).
Scoped, developed, and implemented the inspection/materials component of Exxon Chemicals initial Computerized Maintenance Management System (Teroman).

Mr. Horak holds a BS degree in Materials Science from the University of Notre Dame, and an MS degree in Metallurgy from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Daniel C. Hunt is a mechanical engineer experienced in specification, design, installation, operation, and maintenance, repair, and troubleshooting of petroleum and petrochemical plant equipment, particularly rotating equipment. During his long career with ExxonMobil he has served at Exxon Central Engineering, Florham Park, NJ, and at ExxonMobil Core Engineering in Baytown, TX, and held leadership positions at manufacturing locations worldwide.

As the Lead Machinery Engineer for North American Plants, Mr. Hunt was responsible for all aspects of machinery in five world scale chemical plants and served as the Lead Chemical Company worldwide specialist for gas turbine technology. He co-authored a Best Practice for Machinery Instrumentation and Controls and and a Best Practice for Machinery Turnarounds in Petrochemical Plants.

Mr. Hunt holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University, and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Lindell R. ‘Bob’ Hurst, Jr. has over 30 years of experience as a materials engineer in the petroleum refining and chemicals industries. His experience includes corrosion engineering, materials selection, coatings and insulation selection, and failure analysis. Selected skills and accomplishments:

Provided corrosion and materials engineering support to Shell downstream operations.
Served as failure analysis focal point for Shell Americas.
Led failure analysis on major refinery failure that had resulted in large financial loss. Provided testimony in arbitration.
Worked on development of Shell internal standards.
Developed over 40 corrosion control documents (CCD’s).
Prepared corrosion control documents for multi-billion dollar new chemical site.
Section editor of the Materials of Construction section of the Ninth Edition of Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook.
Supported turn-around operations at refineries.
Before Shell, worked for Solutia (formerly the chemical business of Monsanto) for 24 years.
Spent 17 years at three different plant locations supporting plant operations.
Familiar with all common NDE techniques.
Supervised fixed equipment inspection program at two plants. Updated inspection software at both plants including UltraPipe installation for over 2,000 pieces of equipment.
Familiar with all common corrosion testing and measurement techniques.
Served as coatings and insulation focal point for Solutia.
Was active on Process Industries Practices (PIP) Coatings/Insulation/Refractory Team including serving as Team Lead. Familiar with PIP coatings and insulation standards.
Was the author of all Solutia engineering coatings and insulation standards.
Proficient in the use of the 3E Plus insulation sizing program.
Conducted materials engineering testing program and made materials recommendations for proposed $100M new chemical facility
Conducted fitness-for-service study and wrote final report on eight 35+ year old chemical reactors. Resulted in extended service for reactors rather than replacement
Conducted major failure analysis after brittle fracture of a pressure vessel. This study was published in March 1986 issue of Materials Performance, “Brittle Fracture of a Brick-Lined Pressure Vessel”.

Mr. Hurst holds a B.S. Degree and an M.S. Degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, MO. In addition, he holds M.S. Degrees in Engineering Mechanics, and in Engineering Management, from the Missouri University of Science and Technology Extension. He is a Registered Professional Metallurgical Engineer in the states of Alabama, and North Dakota. He is a National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) Certified Corrosion Specialist and NACE Certified Materials Selection/Design Specialist.

Mr. Hurst is based in Humble, TX.

A.S. ‘Jamal’ Jamaluddin has over 30 years experience in combustion and heat transfer, based on his long-term career with Shell.

Selected skills and achievements:

Provided technical support to projects including low-NO_x burner retrofits, heater rebuild and revamp projects, heater control and safeguarding, flare replacements, repair and revamp of thermal reactors and incinerators in sulfur recovery (SRU) units, energy efficiency improvement, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and onshore gas projects.
Provided design and troubleshooting of fired and unfired heat transfer equipment. Served as lead expert within Shell in the Americas on fired heat transfer. Provided technical support to third party refiners in the Americas.
Directed research and development, most recently on oxy-firing in process heaters and boilers for CO₂ control and sequestration (patent issued); development of a fuel-flexible burner system (patent pending); testing and successful demonstration of an anti-coking tube coating for heaters in coking service (patent applied for).
Developed training programs on combustion and heat transfer equipment, and presented training programs within Shell and to third party clients, including

◦ Fired Process Heater course in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, repeated annually

◦ A one-day workshop on Fired Process Heater Troubleshooting

◦ A training course on CO Combustor and Waste Heat Boiler for Takreer refinery of Abu Dhabi national Oil Company (ADNOC), UAE

◦ Performed heater simulations for a mid-western USA refinery to help evaluate revamp options

◦ Training course on a waste heat boiler for IRPC, Rayong, Thailand

Facilitated the introduction and utilization of new technologies including application of advanced thermal imaging techniques for trouble-shooting of heat transfer equipment.
Lead in the development of Shell internal and industry standards and best practices

Dr. Jamaluddin holds a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. He has presented over 50 publications in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, in addition to more than 100 Shell internal reports, internal standards, and best practices. He is a frequent reviewer of papers for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) J. of Heat Transfer, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) J. of Thermo-physics & Heat Transfer and Industrial Combustion, online journal of the international Flame Research Foundation (IFRF). Dr. Jamaluddin is presently serving as the General Chairman of American Flame Research Committee (AFRC), coordinating and managing AFRC’s Industrial Combustion Symposia. He is a past chairman of the American Petroleum Institute (API) Sub-Committee on Heat Transfer Equipment, and led the Heat Transfer Technical Discipline Network (HT-TDN) for Shell in the Americas.

Scott Jernigan has over 35 years experience in the petroleum refining industry with the last 20 of those years specializing in the FCC technology area. During those years, Mr. Jernigan worked for an operating company supporting multiple FCC units and provided licensor support to international clients. His experience includes FCC equipment design, unit troubleshooting, catalyst selection, unit optimization, training, start-up and turnaround support.

He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

James Johnson comes from Stress Engineering Services (SES) where he managed and worked on a wide range of projects that include metallurgical support for fitness-for-service activities, fitness-for-service assessments, metallurgical failure analyses, specialized field inspection services, corrosion assessments, and material selection. These projects exposed him to a wide range of clients, industries, standards, and materials.

At Becht, James supports the Mechanical Engineering division with his unique perspective of material properties and their role in pre- and post-construction engineering assessments. James has a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. degree from the Colorado School of Mines in Metallurgy and Materials Engineering. He is a licensed P.E. in the state of Texas and works out of the Houston office.

Annette is an industry expert in structural integrity with extensive experience covering assessments of engineering components relating to hydro power, fossil power and petrochemical plants. Her main expertise is the application of crack assessment and remaining life assessment procedures such as BS7910 and API 579 to develop allowable crack sizes and/or time for failure for components subjected to cyclic loads or high temperature exposure. Prior to Becht, Annette spent 18 years with Quest Integrity in Asia Pacific and 7 years with TWI in the UK. With the project work predominantly focused on structural integrity or as parts of failure investigations. Over the last 12 years Annette has conducted more than forty API 579 training courses in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

Previous projects include:

Integrity assessment of anhydrous ammonia storage tanks including leak before break calculations.
Combined creep and fatigue assessment of steam headers subjected to cyclic pressure and temperature fluctuations.
Leak rate analysis of through-wall cracks in a pressure vessel subject to pressure fluctuations.
Probabilistic fracture assessment of 304 stainless steel elbows with stress relaxation cracks
Acceptable crack size calculations and creep crack growth analysis of high energy steam pipework
Integrity based prioritization of weld inspection in high pressure high temperature pipework

Annette holds a MSc in Active Vibration Control of Engineering Structures subjected to earthquake (in Danish), Aalborg University, Denmark and a PhD in Constraint Estimation Schemes in Fracture Mechanics, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Glasgow University, UK. She is a Registered Professional Engineer of Australia and Queensland (RPEng, RPEQ) and a professional member of the Welding and Joining Society in the UK (CEng, FWeld).

Tracie is the International Site Coordinator for Becht Advisor Resources. She provides project coordination for all International locations and Alaska. Tracie enjoys sailing. She lives on and sails a 43′ sailboat which she purchased, along with her husband, two years ago and has lived on for a year now. Tracie and her husband plan to call Bocas del Toro, Panama their home port post-retirement and sail around the Caribbean and Pacific.

Gersh Kogan has 37 years’ experience in the power industry in the principal areas of piping, supports, mechanical engineering for various types of power plants including fossil, combined cycle and other types of plants. He has participated in design of critical piping systems for new plants, providing troubleshooting consultation during start up and operation, assisted in balancing pipe loading at steam turbines, feedwater pumps and other rotating equipment, and designed modifications to existing plants. Additionally, Mr. Kogan has assisted in setting up inspection programs and performing plant piping inspection in compliance with B31.1 Chapter VII, as well as setting up an ISO 9000 QA program.

Kyle is a recent graduate from Rutgers University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and has worked in the power industry for over a year with Fronek Power Systems. Kyle’s experience includes pipe stress analysis of high energy piping systems, pipe support design, and on-site field inspections of piping and pipe hangers. In addition, he is proficient with various engineering applications such as CAESAR II, AutoPipe, SupportModeler, Smartplant3D, AutoCad, and Microstation. He has experience with ASME B31.1, ASME B31.3, API 579, and various other codes and standards. Kyle is working out of the Fronek Piping Group office, currently located in Orangeburg, NY.

Mr. Kurle has over 30 years of experience with mechanical design and analysis of pressure vessels and heat exchangers after a long career with Union Carbide. Don spent several years with Codeware, Inc. as a technical support engineer and developed and presented training classes in the use of COMPRESS vessel design software.

Mr. Kurle holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, and is the co-owner of a patent for a tubular reactor in the United States and Europe. Mr. Kurle is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Welding Society (AWS). His ASME Code Committee activities include Vice Chair of Subgroup External Pressure (BPV II), member of Subgroup Design (BPV VIII), Vice Chair of Subgroup Toughness (BPVII & BPV VIII) and member of Subgroup Heat Transfer Equipment (BPV VIII). He is a past member of the Repair and Testing (PCC) and Special Working Group Bolted Flange Joints committees.

Don is the Vice-Chair of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Subgroup on External Pressure, member of the Subgroup on Toughness of Section II & VIII, member of the Subgroup on Design of Section VIII, and member of the Subgroup on Heat Transfer Equipment of Section VIII and was previously a member of the Post Construction Subcommittee on Repair and Testing. Don is based out of Becht’s St. Albans, West Virginia office.

His activities have included:

Preparation of purchase specifications for, and review of manufacturer’s designs for pressure vessels and heat exchangers
Fitness for service assessments, design of repairs and alterations, and performing rerating calculations in accordance with API 579/ASME FFS-1, API 510 and NBIC for existing vessels and heat exchangers
Developed technology and practice of gasket selection and joint assembly for use by all Union Carbide plants and provided bolted joint assembly training
Performed design review of EPC work for new projects
Instructor for Codeware on design/analysis of pressure vessels using COMPRESS and providing technical support for COMPRESS

Richard T. Lackey, Jr. has over 35 years’ experience as a mechanical engineer in the chemical industry, based on his long-term career with DuPont. His experience includes mechanical integrity and quality assurance (MIQA), quality control, compliance auditing to industry codes and standards, and Process Safety Management (OSHA Standard 29CFR 1910.119; PSM) with respect to hose assembly, welding, fabrication, relief devices, pressure vessels, tanks, piping, valves, fasteners, gasketing, and boilers.

Mr. Lackey has performed over 200 site assessments over his extensive career including all elements of OSHA 1910.119 Process Safety Management.

Mr. Lackey holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and a Registered Professional Land Surveyor in the State of West Virginia.

Sarita Lasrado is a HR Generalist at Becht and is responsible for managing onboarding of employees and assisting in recruiting and supporting daily HR functions. She loves every opportunity to make people’s working lives better, even in a small way and enjoys interacting with a variety of people from different industries.

Prior to joining Becht, Sarita has worked as a HR professional in organizations across US, Singapore and India. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Science and a Masters Diploma in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations.

Sarita enjoys spending time with her family and loves reading, cooking and travelling.

Ms. Li has 11 years of experience in the refining industry. She began her career at Shell Norco refinery as Site Materials and Corrosion Engineer providing daily technical supports in areas of corrosion, metallurgy, welding, inspection and equipment integrity management, developing corrosion control strategies for refining units. She also worked at Shell Technology center as Materials and Corrosion Research engineer supporting plant operation and leading corrosion control management and materials selection research projects.

As Senior Materials and Corrosion engineer in Air Products and Chemicals, she provided materials engineering supports for Hydrogen plants in Gulf coast region. Most recently, she was the Lead Metallurgical Engineer in Andeavor Martinez Refinery providing technical expertise on materials selection, corrosion control management, welding repair, risk-based inspection (RBI) implementation etc.

Ms. Li has joined Becht since Jan. 2019 as a CCD/IOW Project Manager and Refining Corrosion engineer. She has heavily involved in Marathon LAR and Martinez Refineries’ CCD/DMR projects. She also provided supports for furnace tube remaining life assessment, various level of MPT curve development, and HTHA evaluation etc.

Ms. Li is experienced in materials selection, materials property testing, root cause failure analysis, RBI implementation, corrosion control management, heater tube remaining life assessment, HTHA evaluation, coke drum skirt to cone weld repair, process/operation and Turnaround support, setting up IOWs, new product development and application, materials QA/QC and project management. She has managed several Corrosion Control Documents (CCDs) development/revalidation projects both in Shell Norco Refinery and Andeavor Martinez Refinery.

Ms. Li received her Master of Science degree in Materials engineering from University of Alberta in Canada. She is an active member of NACE and API.

Ms. Li resides in San Jose, CA.

David Lindsay has over 30 years’ experience in the petroleum refining industry. His experience includes training, process design, hydroprocessing, catalysis, and sales. Mr. Lindsay has worked for both an owner operator organization and licensor giving him a unique perspective for unit support. He has provided troubleshooting and unit performance support, catalyst monitoring, onsite sulfiding support, unit technology training and other services to international clients.

Mr. Lindsay holds a B.S. degree from Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon and an M.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, California, both in Chemical Engineering.

Frank Liu has over 40 years experience in the refining, petrochemical and chemical industries based on his long-term career with Shell and subsequent consulting. Frank held positions of increasing responsibility throughout his career including Worldwide Infrared (IR) Technology Leader. Frank has been engaged in extensive Research & Development in the heater industry establishing best practices and know-how through field and lab-based research. Work experience included:

Founder and President of Furnace Infrared (IR) Technology Business
Worldwide IR Technology Leader, Shell Global Solutions
Various positions of R&D, process development within Shell

Education

D. in Mechanical Engineering & Heat Transfer, University of Minnesota
S. in Engineering Mechanics & Fluid Mechanics, University of Minnesota
S. in Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University
Professional Engineer, State of Texas
Member of American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME)
Member of American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE)
Member of American Computing Machinery (ACM) Society

Carlos Lopez has over 35 years of chemical engineering experience in the petroleum refining industry based on his employment with ExxonMobil and Sun Oil Company. His experience includes hydro processing process design, unit commissioning and support, process analysis and optimization, research and development, budgeting, and supervision. Mr. Lopez additionally has plant unit based experience in Lubes and Fuels Hydrocracking, Hydroprocessing, Reforming, Crude, Hydrogen Technology, and Utilities. He served as catalytic hydroisomerization expert for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering in Fairfax, VA, and a fractionation subject matter expert for BP Amoco in Texas City, Texas.

Mr. Lopez holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Recinto Universitario de Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

Lauren is Becht’s Senior Financial Analyst and will be working on analyzing and preparing the Month End Reports among other month end tasks. She has over 10 years of accounting experience and over 5 years’ experience in the professional services field. She attended Kean University and graduated with her Bachelor’s in Accounting in 2010. Shortly after she completed her Masters of Business Administration in Global Business at Kean University in 2015.

Lauren enjoys music and in her spare time teaches herself how to play different instruments and teaches her daughter piano. She enjoys spending time and traveling with her family and friends. When traveling, Lauren loves to explore and learn about the different cultures. She has a list of places she still wants to visit and tries to visit one new place every year.

Manuel X. Lozano joined Becht in January 2010 with over 40 years of experience in construction with specific focus on Critical Lift Planning and Execution. During his long-term career with Zachry Construction Corporation and other major EPC firms, Mr. Lozano planned and supervised Heavy Lifts on projects including petrochemical plants, power plants, cement plants and various other greenfield and brownfield projects. Since joining Becht Engineering, Mr. Lozano has successfully supervised numerous Super Lifts for various Oil & Gas Owner Organizations utilizing Super Cranes up to 5000 metric tons and Gantry Cranes up to 2000 metric tons. Throughout his career, Mr. Lozano has maintained an enviable Safety record and has been recognized for his efforts via a national Safety award.

One of Manuel’s notable accomplishments as a Heavy Lift Specialist for Becht was the successful replacement of a two stage Acid Settler in an HF Acid Unit. Manuel planned and supervised the erection of the 1500T crane in an extremely tight area where the crane boom had to be assembled over a live pipe rack. The job was completed without incident and the client saved several million dollars by avoiding an early shut down to remove the pipe rack.

Vernon L. Maddox, Jr., P.E. is a Mechanical Engineer with over 47 years domestic and international experience in rotating machinery selection, installation, startup, maintenance, problem solving, and vibration analysis. His experience includes the machinery engineering, commissioning, startup and operation of a world-class ethylene plant and many smaller facilities. He has established, and supervised engineering groups at two plant sites involved in machinery reliability and condition monitoring/vibration analysis.

Mr. Maddox is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas.

Mr. Magaletta is an Instrument and Control Systems (I&CS) Engineer with 48 years of international experience with ExxonMobil and Becht. Throughout his career with ExxonMobil he served in key technical and management positions providing broad based direction, leadership, and supervision of I&CS R&D and capital projects that spanned five generations of I&CS technology. His assignments often involved extensive coordination with control system vendors, EPC Contractors, and local affiliate engineers.

He is a specialist in project planning, development, and execution of large and complex I&CS capital projects.

Key career accomplishments to date have included, but have not been limited to the following:

Technical Roles (41 years)

Lead a Control Projects Team which provided, over a two decade period, hundreds of I&CS design specifications for Exxon’s global Upstream, Downstream, Chemical, and Pipeline affiliates and for 3rd Party Licensing customers.
Lead a Planning Study to develop a business case, a technical plan, and an execution strategy which resulted in a decade-long billion dollar program that replaced the legacy IBM / ACS control systems that had been installed in Exxon’s refinery facilities.
Chaired an Interregional Task Force on Instrument Reliability and Maintenance that developed a strategy for subsequent corporate-wide I&CS reliability and maintenance improvement programs.
Lead an I&CS Scoping Study covering Low Sulfur Mogas Projects costing over 700 million USD for four Exxon Refineries in Japan (Kawasaki, Wakayama, Sakai, and Chiba).
Lead I&CS Development Engineer on a 400 million USD Low Sulfur Mogas Project for the Exxon Refinery in Campana, Argentina.
Lead Scoping Study to replace a legacy Control System at Exxon Refinery in Augusta, Sicily.
Planned, developed, and oversaw project execution for the first wave of “DDC / Control House Consolidation Projects” including Exxon’s Rotterdam and Hamburg
Refineries and the Baton Rouge Chemical Plant (early 1970s).
Lead several unique user-vendor interactions that leveraged user needs and hands-on equipment evaluations with vendor technology innovations and product developments. This included a field trial of the first Honeywell DCS (aka TDC-2000) at Exxon’s Refinery in Sarnia, Canada.
Lead I&CS Design and Startup Engineer on: Exxon Antwerp Refinery Expansion project (1974-1976); Exxon Benicia (Grass roots) Refinery Project (1967-1969); Esso-Pappas Refinery and Chemical Plant in Thessaloniki, Greece (1966); and Pipestill Unit at Fawley, England (1966).
Developed a framework to improve I&CS Cost Estimating methods and tools for use on ExxonMobil capital projects. Developed specific tools as part of the resulting cost estimating improvement program.

Management Roles (7 Years)

Section Head: Instrumentation, Analyzers, and Computer Control Projects Section.
Section Head: Project Technical Quality Assurance (TQA) and Global Practices / Design Practices Update Section.
Section Head: European (London) Regional Office – Regional TQA and Shop Inspection Section.

Mr. Magaletta has a BSEE and MSEE from Newark College of Engineering (NCE) – now known as New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). He has made presentations at numerous internal Exxon technical functions as well as industry symposia and technical conferences including: ISA (International Society of Automation); SAMA (Scientific Apparatus Manufacturers Association); Stevens Institute; the Rijkswaterstaat (the Dutch Water Ministry), and the ARAMCO Automation Conference.

Richard Manner has over 35 years experience in progressive consulting experience including technical expertise in Hydrocracking, Hydrotreating, Hydrogen Manufacturing, Reforming, and Isomerization, as well as various synthetic fuel processes such as Fischer-Tropsch, Coal Liquefaction and Shale Oil upgrading. He previously served as Vice President supporting over 100 profit improvement programs in his prior career. These programs identified profit improvement concepts and evaluated their merit.

Additionally, he has reviewed refinery and petrochemical expansion projects to develop reduced cost/higher value expansion alternatives that more fully utilized new and existing facilities.

Mr. Manner holds a Bachelor’s of Science and Master’s of Science degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

Peter has more than 36 years experience in the oil refining and engineering contacting businesses in various technical, operational and leadership roles. The majority of his career has been spent with BP where he worked at 4 different refineries and in the technical centre. He has specialist knowledge in all types of naphtha isomerisation and naphtha reforming processes and served as a refining advisor providing technical support in these technologies to BP’s global refining portfolio. Activities included process technology training, troubleshooting, unit optimization, turnaround and project support, developing process safety standards, promoting application of technology and sharing best practices.

Mr. Marsh also has experience in many other refinery process technologies and was lead process engineer for an EPC contractor on several major revamps of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) units and a grass roots residue cracking unit. He has a strong focus on process safety, plant reliability and use of technology to enhance plant capability.

Mr. Marsh gained a BSc in Chemical Engineering and a Diploma in Industrial Studies from Loughborough University (UK). He is a Chartered Engineer with the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) and serves as a voluntary member on the committee of the IChemE’s Safety & Loss Prevention special interest group (SIG).

Todd Marut has over 40 years of experience in fractionation, liquid-liquid extraction, and vapor-liquid, liquid-liquid, and vapor-liquid-liquid separations. He provided process engineering support to ExxonMobil’s global business clients in the areas of fractionation, extraction, and separation vessel and internals design, debottlenecking and troubleshooting. He was also responsible for assisting refining and petrochemical plant operations with meeting operational and capital improvement objectives.

This technical support included:

Compliance with design practices and engineering standards
Defining commercial experience bands
Process improvement, energy management and technical quality assurance consulting
Capital project process design basis, facilities definition and technical support
Applications of vendor supplied high performance tower trays/packings, mist eliminators, coalescers and compact separation devices
Review of vendor tower and separator internals detailed designs
Tower/separator vessel inspections
Process unit start-ups

His process engineering experience also includes gas treating, thermal conversion, and oil sands processes, along with experience in process design.

Todd holds a Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts. He co-authored AIChE publications with Fractionation Research Inc. (FRI) and patents while employed at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company. He served on the FRI Design Practices and Technical Committees, and is a member of AIChE.

Mr. Masiello is an Instrumentation and Control Systems (I&CS) Engineer with more than 40 years of international experience with ExxonMobil and Becht. He has been the Lead ExxonMobil I&CS Design Engineer, Project Engineer, and Engineering Manager for numerous multi-million dollar projects involving conceptual planning, basic design (FEED), detailed engineering, construction, and in-plant start-up. He is a specialist in Safety Instrumented System (SIS) and High Integrity Protective System (HIPPS) design and implementation.

Frank has authored and served as an instructor for numerous I&CS training courses for ExxonMobil affiliates and associated companies, including Saudi Aramco. He was the developer of many I&CS Cost Estimating methods and tools for ExxonMobil capital projects.

Mr. Masiello has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of NYU (formerly the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn). He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New Jersey. He is conversationally fluent in Thai, reads and understands Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French, and understands some Japanese.

Cassandra Manzato’s role with Becht is to develop client Corrosion Control Documents and Integrated Operating Windows. Prior to joining Becht, Cassandra held several roles with Flint Hills Resources, including Piping Engineer and Plant Manager. Her experience includes compliance; B31.3 Process Piping code, API 571 – Damage Mechanisms, and API – 579 – Fitness-For-Service FFS, static plant equipment assets, preventative equipment maintenance strategies, lean concepts and six sigma workflow processes.

Cassandra has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Mr. McKinney is a recognized industry expert in refinery and petrochemical damage mechanisms, corrosion under insulation management, and asset integrity management systems. During his 36 years of metallurgical/corrosion/inspection experience, he has been involved in all aspects of managing asset integrity risk including corrosion prevention, failure analysis, damage mechanism review, and implementation of asset integrity management systems. He has worked with refinery, petrochemical, Gas-to-Liquids and LNG facilities.

Mr. McKinney’s experience has focused on the identification, repair and remediation of damage mechanisms encountered in the refining, petrochemical and LNG industries. He has conducted numerous corrosion and turnaround workscope reviews to assist plants in safe, reliable and cost effective operations. He has been the lead technical expert in failure analyses, fire/explosion damage assessments, and fitness-for-service assessments, including managing multi-discipline engineering teams to perform the recovery. He has also led Mechanical Integrity and multi-discipline Asset Integrity management system/process safety reviews and audits including due diligence evaluations for plant purchase. In addition, Mr. McKinney has performed failure investigations and provided legal expert advice in several cases as a corporate expert.

Mr. McKinney has spent a significant part of his career helping manufacturing sites implement effective asset integrity programs and management systems. This included the development of company mechanical integrity standards and best practices and working at the site level to implement them. Over the last 15 years, Mr. McKinney led the development in implementation of risk assessment and mitigation strategies for corrosion under insulation (CUI) for the Royal Dutch Shell Group.

Mr. McKinney worked for 35 years for the Royal Dutch Shell Group and Phillips 66 in central engineering roles and refinery assignments in the USA, The Netherlands and Malaysia. During his time with Shell, he also supported strategic third parties worldwide outside of the Royal Dutch Shell Group on various integrity issues and programs. Prior to his retirement from Shell, Mr. McKinney was the Global SME for Corrosion Under Insulation and managed and the Focused Asset Integrity Reviews/Audits process safety assurance program within Shell Downstream Manufacturing and LNG.

Mr. McKinney received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University – College Station. He is a licensed professional engineer in Texas.

Jim McLaughlin has over 30 years experience in materials engineering in the petroleum industry working with Chevron, Exxon and ExxonMobil. He has been involved in all aspects of materials engineering including corrosion prevention, failure analysis, fire damage assessment and fitness-for-service assessments in the entire range of equipment in refineries, petrochemical units and upstream facilities. In addition to serving as a lead technical expert in areas of crude corrosion, high temperature corrosion, fitness-for-service (including high temperature remaining life assessments), risk-based inspection and metallurgy, Mr. McLaughlin has conducted research on and evaluated the effects of harsh environments at high temperatures involving such phenomenon as carburization, metal dusting and sulfidation in reducing conditions.

He has had a lead role in performance of API-579 Fire Damage Assessment and has held leadership roles in several API efforts to develop standards including:

Brittle fracture prevention guidelines inAPI653
Research on creep embrittlement of Cr-Mo steels
Research and guidance on minimum pressurization temperature for heavy wall reactor vessels
Risk-based inspection standards 580 and 581
Fabrication of heavy wall Cr-Mo and Cr-Mo-V reactors (series of 934 standards)

Jim has led an effort to increase refinery ability to process increasing volumes of corrosive crude through improved understanding of crude corrosion mechanisms and optimal use of mitigation strategies, such as inhibitor injection and selective use of alloy and has taught courses to plant engineers on subjects including metallurgy, corrosion, risk-based inspection, degradation mechanisms, fitness-for-service and assessing remaining life of equipment in the creep range.

Mr. McLaughlin has a BS degree from the University of Notre Dame in Metallurgical Engineering and a MS degree from Lehigh University in Metallurgy and Materials Science. He has authored or co-authored over 10 papers in ASME/PVP, NACE or other conferences, and has lead and presented topics at many industry exchange meetings.

Hearl is a recognized industry expert in refinery damage mechanisms and mechanical integrity management. During his 40 years of metallurgical/corrosion/inspection experience, he has been involved in all aspects of materials engineering including corrosion prevention, failure analysis, damage mechanism review, and fitness-for-service assessment. He has worked primarily with refinery and petrochemical facilities.

Hearl has extensive knowledge with the identification, repair and remediation of several common damage mechanisms encountered in the refining and petrochemical industry. His experience has been developed through many years of performing failure analysis, leading root cause investigations, leading inspection programs and inspection/corrosion/materials organizations, and providing technical support to refinery and petrochemical facilities, including turnarounds and corrosion control documents. He developed and has lead internal audits of Fixed Equipment Integrity Management Systems.

Hearl was a member of API Committee on Refining Equipment and a past chairman of the API Subcommittee on Corrosion and Materials. He has been active on a number of API Subcommittee on Corrosion and Materials Task Groups, including a past Task Group Chairman of API RP 941 on High Temperature Hydrogen Attack and a leader of the Task Group on Corrosion Research.

Hearl worked more than 37 years Shell Oil Company. About half of his career with Shell was in central engineering roles providing material/corrosion and mechanical integrity support to multiple refineries and petrochemical plants and as team lead of both downstream and upstream materials and corrosion engineers. The other half was at the Shell Dear Park Manufacturing Complex (refinery and chemical plant) where he had roles as materials and corrosion engineer, inspection engineer, and head of inspection and engineering teams. His final role at Shell was manager of the fixed equipment department at the Shell Dear Park site which included inspection, corrosion/metallurgy, and mechanical engineering.

Hearl has spent the two plus years with Becht Engineering working with clients to develop corrosion control documents and manage asset integrity.

Hearl received his BS (1978) and MS (1979) from Texas A&M University in Mechanical Engineering with a Metallurgy Minor.

Hearl is based in Friendswood, TX.

Gorka has been working in Mechanical and Piping Engineering (mostly in Power projects) for more than 11 years. Gorka started his career in a multidisciplinary Engineering firm and has spent the last 7 years working as a part of Fronek Power Systems staff. Gorka’s experience is mostly based in Pipe Stress analysis for Critical Piping systems plus other mechanical areas such as developing P&IDs, hydraulic calculations, equipment specifications and data sheets and pipe supports design. As part of the piping team, Gorka worked in several Critical Piping Design Reviews, as well as site inspections and troubleshooting during erection and commissioning. Gorka lives in the Bilbao metropolitan area (Northern Spain).

Mr. Moore is a recognized industry expert in refinery damage mechanisms. During his 41 years of metallurgical/corrosion/inspection experience, he has been involved in all aspects of materials engineering including corrosion prevention, failure analysis, damage mechanism review, and fitness-for-service assessment. He has focused primarily on refineries but has also worked with petrochemical and upstream facilities.

Mr. Moore has extensive knowledge with the identification, repair and remediation of several common damage mechanisms encountered in the refining industry. His experience has been developed through many years of performing failure analysis and leading root cause investigations, through refinery project materials selections, through technical support to refinery turnarounds and through leadership of refinery inspection organizations. His recent work activities have been primarily related to the development of CCDs (Corrosion Control Documents) and IOWs (Integrity Operating Windows), including serving as Master Editor for the second edition of API RP 584.

During his career, Mr. Moore has been active in API, NACE and MTI. He is a past chairman of the API Committee on Refining Equipment and a past chairman of the API Subcommittee on Corrosion and Materials. He was the author of the MTI book “Fabrication of 2205 Duplex Stainless Steel REACs in Refinery Hydroprocessing Units.” His consulting work includes additional work to increase the understanding of industry failures of 2205 Duplex Stainless Steel REACs, including work for API to complete an industry survey of experiences.

Mr. Moore worked more than 41 years for refiners, including BP, ARCO and Chevron, in central engineering roles and refinery assignments. He retired from BP as the Discipline Leader and Senior Advisor for Materials and Corrosion in their Refining Technology and Engineering organization.

Mr. Moore received his BS in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA and his MBA from UCLA. He is a licensed professional metallurgical engineer in California.

Mr. Moore is based in Chicago, IL.

Ellah was a College Dean for 15 years in the Philippines before moving to the United States in 2009. Her academic career started at an early age right after her graduation from college with a degree in Computer Engineering at the University of San Carlos, Cebu. During that time, she was the youngest Dean in the country at the age of 21. She finished her master’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering at De La Salle University, Manila. She had developed, administered, and promoted many academic programs over the course of her academic career.

She is proficient in software design and implementation. She retrofitted conventional machine tools and convert it into a computer numerical control (CNC) machine with complex programming without using sensors, with 100% accuracy of the X-Y-Z movement and the machine reaches the required resolution to cut gears. The machine was used back then by the ComClark-EID Department in Clark, Pampanga, Philippines to manufacture different gears and other small-provisioned machine parts for their printing machines.

Isaac Pabon is an experienced metallurgical and corrosion engineer with over 11 years in refining, chemicals and polyethylene facilities. He has extensive experience developing corrosion models and damage mechanism assessments, materials selection, repair planning, IOW’s, CCD’s and executed failure analysis assessments as well leaded failure investigation. He is experienced and knowledgeable with all damage mechanisms effecting refining and chemicals including HTHA, creep, environmental cracking, sulfidic corrosion, HF acid corrosion, sulfuric acid corrosion, amine corrosion and sour water corrosion. During his career he has implemented and managed (RBI) Risk Based Inspection & (MI) mechanical integrity programs and is experienced with turnaround scope work list development, RBWS reviews, inspection planning, as well as development of inspection effectiveness criteria.

Prior to joining Becht, he worked as a consultant as an onsite refinery contractor as well as an owner operator. He has worked for P66 as a corrosion materials engineer Alliance Refinery and with ExxonMobil as the materials engineering group lead for the Beaumont Refinery, Chemicals and Polyethylene Complex and finished his career at EMRE as an Associate Engineer in the Materials group. Whereas a global corporate research and development resource, perform advanced technical analysis to research and develop industry leading technical programs and ensure competitive advantage for ExxonMobil across the oil, gas and petrochemical fields. In addition, was responsible for guiding the development of global site-based RBI / mechanical integrity programs to meet ExxonMobil and industry standards and drive continuous improvement and cost efficiency. Served as global technical materials subject matter expert, ensuring all regional and global projects (capital and operational) adhere to industry and Exxon Mobil standards, and when possible, use efficient means to reduce cost in production.

Isaac is an active participant in API and has taught intro to material course for API inspection summit, as well as co-authored presentations for annual API refining and equipment standards meeting. He has a certification in API 571 and working knowledge of API 579, 580, 581, 510, 570, 574 653, ASME code and ASTM specifications.is a member of NACE.

He received his BS in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso in El Paso, TX.

Elena Niemi graduated from Lafayette College with a degree in Engineering in 2013. Following college, she realized that her true passion lies in programming and software development. After taking classes from various local colleges to improve her programming skills, she took a position as a Software Developer at a startup company in NJ specializing in building OSGI components for Adobe Experience Manager.

In 2018, she joined Becht and has been contributing on numerous software development initiatives. Example projects she worked on include development of the new Becht Projects Page, Becht Connect, and the revamped Advisors Database (Community) using the .NET Core stack and an SQL Database backend.

Ralph C. Norton has over 45 years’ experience working for UOP assisting clients to operate their oil refinery process units efficiently and safely. His career path included 10 years in Field Operating Services doing new unit commissioning and 35 years in District Services doing point of contact service for numerous domestic and foreign refineries. He attained the grade of UOP Technical Fellow. His experience includes:

Oil refinery process unit commissioning, optimization, and support, including unit checkout, procedure preparation, engineer and operator training, unit start up, unit optimization, unit trouble shooting, catalyst loadings, catalyst regenerations, long-term mentoring, turnaround planning, and accident investigations.
- Processes worked on include crude atmospheric and vacuum distillation; saturate and unsaturated gas plants; fixed bed, cyclic, and continuous catalytic regenerated (CCR) naphtha reforming units; fluidized bed catalytic cracking (FCC) units; resid fluid cat cracking (RFCC) units; hydrotreaters processing all feeds from LPG to atmospheric residuum; hydrocrackers; isomerization units (all three catalyst types); solvent deasphalting units; HF and sulfuric acid alkylation units; mercaptan oxidation and extraction units; amine treating units; green jet and diesel producing units; and aromatic extraction units.
Coordinated the commissioning of a Green Jet unit. This is an emerging technology that converts plant and animal derived oils, fats, and greases into a green drop-in substitute for crude oil derived diesel oil and jet fuel.
Taught the technology and operations course for operators, engineers, and managers for numerous refinery technologies. These ranged from regeneration procedure training for a 1,500 BPD platformer to technology and procedure training for engineers at new 560,000 BPD crude oil distillation unit being constructed.
Did a field study of an early vintage naphtha reforming unit to determine the root cause of a failure to meet yield and cycle time expectations
Participated as a member of several accident investigation teams in FCC, HF alkylation, naphtha reforming, and hydrotreating units.
Provided field support for numerous planned and unplanned unit and refinery wide turnarounds.
Assisted a refiner after a political settlement allowed the restart of a battle-damaged refinery to determine the best path to conduct repairs, staff training, and prepare restart procedures for the refinery.

Mr. Norton holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering, with Honors from the University of California, Berkley, CA.

Nohemi is the Corporate Safety Coordinator for Becht. She is responsible for making sure that our employees gain unrestricted access to client sites through maintaining site access requirements including drug and alcohol testing, background checks, safety training, PPE, etc.

Nohemi enjoys working out, spending time with her kids outdoors, and watching TV. Some of her favorite shows are Outlander, Vikings, The Crown, Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey.

Glenn Osterwisch has 38 years of experience with Shell Oil in the refining and petrochemical business. He has worked as a unit process engineer and a major projects process engineer for a multitude of refinery processes including fluid catalytic cracking, hydrotreating, HF alkylation, catalytic reforming, crude distillation, and gas processing. Mr. Osterwisch also has experience in logistics, utilities, business development, process safety, and environmental, both regulatory and waste water treatment.

Most recently, Mr. Osterwisch has served as Principal Utility Systems Specialist with Shell Global Solutions (U.S.) Inc. In this role, he has provided utility systems technical support for Shell and for outside organizations. He has developed utility systems master plans, supported utility systems robustness reviews, and led major steam projects. He has also developed, coordinated, and taught utility systems training classes.

Mr. Osterwisch holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mr. Derrick Pease has over 15 years experience in mechanical engineering design and analysis. He is an expert in stress analysis of complex structures that include seismic, fatigue, creep, heat transfer, fluid-structure interaction, impact, and explosion responses. He is also an expert in fluid flow analysis of piping systems, root-cause failure analysis, and fitness-for-service assessments. Mr. Pease specializes in advanced finite element modeling and simulation of complex problems using Abaqus, ANSYS, LS-DYNA and CAESAR II computer programs. Additional specializations include parametric driven models, custom user subroutines and macros which extend the functionality of the standard finite element analysis software.

Mr. Pease has also provided technical training on using finite element methods to solve complex problems.

Code experience includes application of ASME B31.3, ASME Section III, ASME Section VIII, API-579 & NNSA SG-1000. After graduating from college with a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mr. Pease worked nine years for Bechtel Savannah River, Inc. before joining the Becht team in 2007. He has worked on several projects over the years including:

Nuclear process lines hydrogen explosion, seismic & pipe whip analyses.
Nuclear waste processing vessels seismic & fluid-structure interaction analyses.
Nuclear shipping containers drop accident analysis & design.
Nuclear site environmental restoration water treatment plant piping system cost saving improvements and modifications.
Verification and Validation of FEA software packages, including benchmark studies, for use in Nuclear design analysis.

Glen Phillips has over 40 years of international and domestic experience in process engineering for the “bottom of the barrel”, ranging from direct use as heavy fuel oil through full upgrading. His experience spans all aspects from R&D and process development to project screening and execution to operating unit support and troubleshooting. Glen had worldwide responsibility for ExxonMobil’s visbreaking, delayed coking, FLUID COKING^sm and FLEXICOKING^sm support.

In the area of project execution, he served as the process lead on several grass roots coking units, covering unit construction and start-up.

Because the coking technologies for residual conversion incorporates a significant amount of solids handling, the range of process engineering background is broad. For FLUID COKING^sm and FLEXICOKING^sm, this includes solids fluidization.

Mr. Phillips holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. He is an inventor on a dozen U.S. patents, many with foreign filings, in the area of residuum conversion. He is a senior member of AIChE.

Rafael Rengifo has over 30 years of engineering, reliability, maintenance, inspection and mechanical integrity experience in the Midstream and Downstream sectors. Mr. Rengifo’s Midstream experience includes the roles of Director of Engineering, Facility Integrity Manager and Tank Integrity Manager for Phillips 66 Midstream Operations. In the Downstream sector Mr. Rengifo’s experience includes inspection management roles like Refinery Chief Inspector and Refining Engineering positions in Reliability and Corrosion for Phillips 66 heritage companies and joint ventures in the US and Latin America.

Prior to his journey with Phillips 66, Mr. Rengifo owned a company that specialized in NDE, metallurgical, corrosion and materials consultant services for all Oil & Gas sectors in Venezuela.

Mr. Rengifo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Materials Engineering from Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela. He also holds American Petroleum Institute (API) Inspector Certifications for Tanks (API-653) and Pressure Vessels (API-510). Mr. Rengifo has been serving as Midstream Chair for the API Inspection and Engineering Summit since 2019, and has been also an active member of API committees. From his days of Corrosion Engineer he left a legacy at the Nacional Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) by writing papers and participating in committees as vice-chair. Mr. Rengifo has been also an active speaker and moderator in terminal organizations like the International Liquid Terminals Association (ILTA) and the Latin American Society of Marine Terminals and Monobuoy Operators (SLOM)

Win Robbins has over 50 years’ experience in analytical testing and organic chemistry within the petroleum refining industry. His experience includes characterization of petroleum / petroleum fractions / combustion products, separations and characterization of hydrocarbon and heteroatom classes, analytical technique development, and testing and characterization of reactive sulfur compounds and naphthenic acids. Mr. Robbins holds 13 patents and has authored or co-authored over 60 papers related to petroleum composition analyses.

Selected positions and responsibilities:

Leading development of a new model for a refinery hot oil corrosion: Simultaneous Naphthenic Acid and Sulfidation (SNAPS) incorporating terms that account for differences in mass transport between theoretical laboratory tests and refinery experience.
Serves as an independent consultant providing analytical testing and consulting expertise. Evaluated fuel pipeline corrosion and designed analytical protocol for characterization of pigging deposits. Completed a review of documentation requirements for a refiner entering jet fuel production business. Prepared a thorough review of analytical methods for S-speciation in crude oil and its fractions. Assisted in troubleshooting off-spec wet chemical jet fuel production at several refineries. Consulted with major refiners on a variety of crude-related fouling, coking and corrosion problems. Provided litigation support in evaluating Merox unit operations. Supported additive vendor with chemical mechanisms in desalting fouling, corrosion and coking. Reviewed impacts on phosphate frac fluids on Canadian jet products. Documented crude challenges & potential techniques for addressing jet fuel stability measurement. Interpreted effects of feed composition on vis-breaking fouling at a major European refinery.
Serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Behavior Technologies (ICMT) at Ohio University. Participated as expert in petroleum chemistry in semi-annual in other ICMT JIP Projects. Advised the IMCT Naphthenic Acid JIP on petroleum chemistry and corrosion mechanisms. Prepared literature reviews of SNAP corrosion testing, reactive sulfur types, and naphthenic acid analyses. Collected and distributed background literature relevant to ICMT projects.
Consulted with the Future Fuels Institute at Florida State University. Guided FSU graduate students in developing aromatic ring class separations (HPLC). Modified an Evaporative Light Scattering (ELS) to allow quantitative universal mass detection in HPLC. Co-authored posters and papers presented at several Petrophase Conferences. Collaborated with FFI staff in developing a method for Ag-based quantifying for reactive/non-reactive Sulfur and for characterization of naphthenic acids. Applied both methods in support of laboratory corrosion studies.
Retired in 2003 after 34 years at Corporate Strategic Research & Analytical and Information Division at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. Developed in-house test methods for measuring corrosion rates for heavy distillates that help sort out acid and sulfur contributions. Investigated relationships between crude source and corrosive compounds. Rationalized the role of calcium in some corrosive crudes. Created IP and competitive intelligence positions for EMRE relative to corrosive crudes. Recognized as an expert in crude composition, especially impurity characteristics in 650+ oils. Developed, patented and applied HPLC-2 technology for ring type characterization of 650+ oils. Participated in model developments based on HPLC-2; deployed 22 HPLC-2 instruments in 14 locations worldwide. Expanded EMRE capabilities for capabilities in quantifying polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PNA) using radio-tracer techniques. Extended PNA techniques to heterocyclic analogs (S-PNA, N-PNA) in petroleum, shale oil and coal liquids.

Ms. Roberts is a Refining Corrosion/Materials and Risk Based Inspection expert with 38 years’ experience in the refining industry. She has been involved in many aspects of corrosion and materials such as proper selection, damage mechanism assessment, and process compatibility. She has developed and implemented programs for Sulfidation, REAC, Atmospheric Overheads, CUI, HTHA, PMI, RBI, and the complementary IOWs via corrosion reviews refinery-wide. She has been directly involved in turnaround planning, turnaround execution, and repair development, unit inspection & corrosion reviews, fitness for service, corrosion prevention and failure analysis via RCFA.

Ms. Roberts has knowledge in the identification, repair, and remediation of many common damage mechanisms in the refining industry and has worked closely with inspection personnel to develop sustainable programs. Ms. Roberts has championed the RBI process as a partner with damage mechanism assessment and IOW evaluation. She has been involved in focused fixed equipment reliability and inspection with strong knowledge of damage mechanism and a practical experience for identifying vulnerable locations and providing appropriate repair. She has a keen eye for assessing inspection needs by process system & circuit development, identifying inspection locations, and developing a systematic approach within an inspection database. Recent experience also includes implementation of on-line corrosion monitoring.

Along with the refinery corrosion and materials reviews, Ms. Roberts is experienced in selecting materials for both large and small capital projects. This knowledge extends into not only new, but the assessment of existing for an expanded crude slate or process change.

Ms. Roberts has worked for Shell Oil, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips66 as refinery engineer and engineering lead supervisor, environmental engineer, inspection supervisor, and corrosion/materials engineer.

Ms. Roberts received her BS in Metallurgical Engineering from Columbia University in New York, NY.

Sim Romero, formerly Principal Consultant at KBC Advanced Technologies, has joined the Becht team. With over 40 years of experience in refining and technical consulting working for KBC, Valero, ExxonMobil, Bechtel, ARCO/BP, and Conoco, Sim has extensive Coking and Heavy Oil experience. His projects have touched every part of the Coker including profit improvement, cutting water, coke handling, drum thermal stress, heater fouling, incident response and restart, reaction kinetic modeling, coke morphology and more. Sim’s work has carried him around the world and comes with a well earned world class reputation for helping clients succeed.

Mr. Roundtree has over 40 years’ experience in the refining industry based on his career with ExxonMobil and Tree Line Consulting a management and engineering consulting firm he founded after his retirement from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company (EMRE).

Mr. Roundtree has extensive experience in business development including the development of licensing relationships, work processes, licensing agreement approaches and consulting on intellectual property matters in mergers and acquisitions.

Mr. Sapienza is an experienced corrosion and materials engineer within the refining industry. Through his time in the refinery, he has conducted corrosion reviews, damage mechanism assessments, asset strategy development, risk based inspection and CCD implementation for HF alkylation units, FCCs, crude units, hydrotreaters, reformers, sulfur plants, amine units, tank systems, sulfolane and aromatics units. He also led metallurgical failure analysis as well as root cause failure investigations, materials selection and life cycle analysis, IOW development and MDMT 579 evaluations.

Mr. Sapienza is the current chair of TG 358: Hydrofluoric Acid and Hydrogen Fluoride: Review of NACE Publication 5A171, leading the update of NACE 5A171 and TEG 119X: Hydrofluoric Acid: Materials for Receiving, Handling, and Storing, facilitating HF information exchange. Prior to his chair position, he served as the vice chair on both committees. He is also a contributing member in TG 510, writing and contributing edits to sections of API 751 5^th edition.

He has also been involved in writing HF corporate standards, company best practices, and engineering standards. He has conducted corporate mechanical integrity audits and participated in 751 HF alkylation audits.

Mr. Sapienza has developed inspection and mechanical integrity work scopes for multiple HF alky/FCC turnarounds, as well as hydrotreating, coker and crude unit turnarounds. He provided technical corrosion and materials support for these turnarounds. His turnaround experience also includes technical lead and execution lead assignments.

Mr. Sapienza is knowledgeable is ASME Sec IX/API 582 WPS/PQR development and welding methodology. He has led multidisciplinary site teams for asset strategy management, naphthenic acid corrosivity management, and crude overhead corrosion management. He is experienced in inspection plan development and CML analysis.

Mr. Sapienza has 7 years’ experience in the refining industry. He spent 5 years at the Chalmette refinery under Exxon Mobil and PBF Energy as a corrosion and materials engineer. Following this Mr. Sapienza was a special emphasis lead and corrosion and materials engineer at the Alliance refinery under Phillips 66.

Mr. Sapienza received his B.S. and M.S. from University of Florida in Materials Science and Engineering with a metallurgy specialty.

Mr. Sapienza is based in New Orleans, LA.

Vivian is the Advisor Onboarding Coordinator for Becht. She brings with her 20 years of customer service experience and is responsible for the entire sign-up process of all our potential Advisors. Vivian also supports Latin America operations (Spanish is her native language) and the Advisor Resources division as Office Assistant.

Vivian’s favorite place is the beach. She also enjoys traveling, exploring new foods and restaurants with her husband, and spending time with her family.

William ‘Bill’ E. Schrof has 28 years’ experience working for Shell, Motiva, Invista, and LyondellBasell in the refining and petrochemical business. At Shell, he was initially developed as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in the design, operation and troubleshooting of fired heat transfer equipment (refinery heaters, crackers, incinerators) and un-fired heat transfer equipment (reboilers, condensers, vacuum systems & cooling water towers). After his development as a SME,

he was assigned responsibility for developing and reviewing fired and un-fired heat transfer equipment designs for Shell’s major projects, maintaining specific company engineering standards for heat transfer equipment along with teaching new and experienced company engineers on heat transfer equipment and distillation column auxiliaries.

Later in Mr. Schrof’s career with Shell, Motiva, Invista and LyondellBasell, he accepted and held various positions as Operations, Engineering, Asset Reliability and Process Design Manager along with two assignments as Manager of Capital Projects. As Manager of Capital Projects, Mr. Schrof concentrated his efforts on project portfolio management and project front-end development with special emphasis on project objectives, a project design class concept work process and project stage-gate reviews.

Mr. Schrof holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania. In August of 2017, Mr. Schrof also earned his teaching certification in the state of Texas to teach high school Math, Physics and Chemistry.

Mr. Schulz is a recognized expert in corrosion and materials engineering for petroleum refinery process applications, and has related experience in almost all aspects of petroleum refinery fixed equipment reliability work. During his 42 year career, he has performed metallurgical failure analyses, materials selection, and corrosion engineering. His experience in the area of fixed equipment reliability engineering includes welding, design and analysis of gasketed flanged joints, fitness for service assessments, fired heater tube life assessment, coke drum life extension and repair work, identification of inspection techniques for particular equipment service, and the development of various repair techniques. Complementary refinery experience includes Process Safety Management and management of reliability engineering and inspection, and as a witness in legal proceedings.

In the area of corrosion engineering, he has worked in crude unit desalting, atmospheric crude tower corrosion, and hot oil corrosion (sulfidation/napthenic acid), including crude oil slate selection, hydrotreater reactor effluent salting and sour water corrosion, amine and SRU corrosion, and HF Alkylation corrosion. His interests include the quantitative application of process modeling software, ionic chemistry software, and heat transfer software to the analysis and development of solutions to refinery corrosion problems. He is very experienced in the leading of teams for the development of Corrosion Control Documents and Integrity Operating Windows, with particular experience in hydroprocessing and sulfur/amine technology.

One of his particular corrosion interests is HF Alkylation. In the area of HF Alkylation, he represented his employer in the group sponsored research into the effect of residual element on the corrosion of carbon steel by HF acid, and he authored an NACE paper on the corrosion rates of carbon steel in HF Alkylation service. He worked with a process modeling software licensor to develop a unit level HF Alkylation process model, with particular application for corrosion analysis. And he has participated or led many investigations into HF Alkylation corrosion and welding failures, with almost 40 years of first hand experience into what can go wrong in HF Alkylation operations.

He holds a patent for a successful ferrule and tube design to avoid film boiling failures in SRU Waste Heat Boiler Service. He has published papers on amine corrosion, HF alkylation corrosion, the application of statistics for heat exchanger reliability problems, and on SRU Waste Heat Boiler film boiling failures.

His refinery employers have included Shell, Valero, and CITGO Refining and Chemicals. He retired from the CITGO Corpus Christi Refinery in 2019 as a Senior Reliability Consultant for Corrosion and Fouling after 32 years of service.

He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Materials Engineering, both from the University of Texas. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Texas.

Bruce Scott began his professional career in with Shell Canada for 10 years, then moved to Imperial Oil for 25 years and retired in 2010. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering and is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario. His experience is broad based including pipelines, marketing facilities, crude oil supply, facilities planning , numerous refining operating assignments in maintenance, projects, reliability, technical leadership and oil sands operations. During his refinery operating assignments in both Europe and Canada, he worked to develop and implement industry best practices for equipment reliability. Since retirement, he has provided a broad scope of consulting services through Becht to the petrochemical industry in North America and the far east.

Alfonso Ramos is a Mechanical Engineer with over 10 years of experience in rotating equipment in the petrochemical industry. He has a reliability background performing tasks such as rotating equipment criticality assessments, root cause analysis investigations, Mean Time Between Repair (MTBR) improvement projects and leading multidiscipline rotating equipment bad actor teams. He has participated in numerous turnarounds as the machinery lead and QA/QC inspector for large centrifugal and reciprocating compressors and large steam turbines in olefines and polyethylene units.

Alfonso holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Houston

Mr. Lyman (Tony) Scribner is a recognized authority in Materials Engineering and Corrosion Control in the Chemical Process Industries. He has thirty-nine years of experience in failure analysis, materials selection, design of equipment to minimize corrosion, troubleshooting and process modifications to minimize corrosion.

He has led and been the Technology Steward for the Materials Engineering function for Union Carbide for more than 30 years and oversaw the development of specifications for five technology areas – Materials Engineering, Paints and Coatings, Insulation, Cathodic Protection and Internal Coating and Linings.

He has worked as a plant corrosion and materials expert, in the laboratory conducting metallurgical failure analysis and corrosion testing and in engineering helping to design chemical processes to reduce corrosion and the cost of facilities.

While with Becht Engineering, Mr. Scribner has been consulting on corrosion, metallurgical problems and failure analysis on metals, plastic and ceramics for clients such as Bayer CropScience, Dow Chemical, Invista, Celanese, Sipchem, BOC, Duke/Fluor Daniel, Reichhold and M&G Polymers. Mr. Scribner has developed and taught courses on Corrosion in the Chemical Process Industries and Metallurgical Engineering. He received the Distinguished Service Award from NACE International in 2002. Mr. Scribner is a Licensed Professional Corrosion Engineer in California. He is also a retired Associate Director of the Materials Technology Institute.

Tony serves on the following committees:

NACE International – The Corrosion Society Committee Member STG36 & STG39
American Institute of Chemical Engineers

Mr. Sims is a recognized authority in risk-based technologies for optimizing inspection and maintenance decisions; design and analysis of high pressure equipment, including high pressure, high temperature (HPHT) equipment for oil and gas exploration and production and he has extensive experience in mechanical integrity evaluations of existing equipment and Fitness-For-Service analyses. Mr. Sims has served as President of the ASME and member of the Board of Governors; past ASME Senior Vice President for Codes and Standards and past Chairman of the Codes and Standards Board of Directors. He is past Vice Chairman and current member of the Joint API/ASME Fitness for Service Committee that is responsible for API 579-1 / ASME FFS-1, the joint Fitness-For-Service standard that was published in 2007 and he is a member of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Subcommittee VIII on Pressure Vessels. He is an ASME Fellow and has more than 20 publications and two patents and is a frequent speaker and chairman in technical forums. He was responsible for developing the recently published ASME “Guide to Life Cycle Management of Pressure Equipment Integrity”. Mr. Sims has been recognized by his peers in the industry as a leader, having received the J. Hall Taylor Codes and Standards medal in 2004, and the Melvin R. Green Codes and Standards medal in 2006. Prior to joining Becht Engineering in 1998, he worked for more than thirty years with Exxon (now ExxonMobil), the last ten years as a pressure equipment specialist with Exxon Research and Engineering Company.

Summary of current ASME Positions:

Past President 2014-15
Board of Governors – Member
Pressure Technology Post Construction Committee – Corresponding Member
Post Construction Subcommittee on Inspection Planning (PCC) – Member
Joint ASME Fitness for Service Committee – Member
Subcommittee on Pressure Vessels (SC VIII) – Member
Subgroup on High-Pressure Vessels (SC VIII, SG HPV) – Member
BPV Project Team on Hydrogen Tanks – Member

Mr. Southerland is a licensed professional engineer with over 36 years of experience in the Oil Refining and Electrical Power Generation industries. He has a diverse career in building and managing Reliability Programs and in Project Management covering Fixed and Rotating Equipment at both large and small refineries and power stations. His focus in recent years has been on Corrosion Control Documents (CCD’s), Integrity Operating Windows (IOW’s), Risk Based Inspection (RBI), and other Fixed Equipment Integrity Programs.

For the past 2 years, Paul has been a Project Manager for Becht Engineering with a main focus of Corrosion Control Documents and Integrity Operating Windows for both large and small refineries in the US. Project work has also included Risk Based Inspection studies on several small gas plants and also as the Root Cause Analysis Facilitator on Fixed Equipment Failures.

Prior to working for Becht, Paul lead the Fixed Equipment Integrity and NDE Inspection Teams for a 55,000 bpd Refinery and Terminal Operation which included revamping the entire Piping Inspection Program, establishing IOWs, and completing the RBI analysis and Inspection Planning for all Pressure Vessels. This included fast tracking follow-up inspections and first time CML data collection ahead of an approaching Turnaround scope freeze target. Paul developed and managed many other Special Emphasis Programs including Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI), Soil to Air Interface, TLR, and Thin Pipe Management. Paul was also the Refinery’s Bolting and Gasket Specialist and helped set up their initial Quality Management (QA/QC) Program. Paul is a certified Level 1 “Fitness For Service” specialist.

Prior to being the Fixed Equipment Integrity Lead, Paul served 2 years as the Technical Lead for the Refinery’s 2013 major Turnaround event overseeing a group of 15 Engineers. This included scope development and risk ranking followed by detailed design engineering and planning for over 300 Engineering Work Packages. During the TA event, Paul lead the daily review and evaluation for all Turnaround Added Work and Field Change Notifications.

Paul’s initial career at the refinery was as the Reliability Team Lead and Reliability Programs Manager. Programs that Paul helped developed included Reliability Centered Maintenance, Root Cause Analysis, Bad Actors, Reliability Threat Identification, and many others. Paul earned his Lean Sigma Green Belt and Rotating Equipment Level 2 Vibration Certification and did a lot of work to combine Reliability and Risk Prioritization into the Routine Work Control and Engineering Projects Scheduling and Execution Programs.

Prior to joining the Refining Industry, Paul spent 10 years as a Reliability Programs Specialist for a Midwest Public Utility overseeing 3 Nuclear Stations and 5 Coal Fired Generation facilities. Prior to that, Paul spent 12 years as a Design Engineer and Project Manager rebuilding and modernizing several older coal fired generation stations.

Paul has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University, holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Case Western Reserve University, and is API-581 RBI Certified.

Howard Spencer has over 40 years of domestic and international experience in process technology support based on his extensive career with ExxonMobil and independent consulting. He is a global expert in lube oil processing technologies including Lube Oil and Wax Hydrofinishing & Hydrotreating, Solvent Extraction Processes, Solvent Dewaxing Processes, Catalytic Dewaxing Processes and Residual Oil Deasphalting. He has extensive experience and expertise in the research fundamentals, process design, operation, optimization, Hazard Analysis & Operability (HAZOP) studies and product quality control of these refinery units.

Howard has a high level of expertise in the physical separation processes which form the basis of the solvent lube refining processes. He served as the Mobil representative on the AEA Technology / Separation Service Processes research advisory panels in Liquid-Liquid Extraction, Crystallization and Solid-Liquid Separation. AEA Technology / Separation Processes Services was an international consortium of major oil and chemical companies engaged in basic chemical engineering research and was originally part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

Mr. Spencer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University. Howard has worked in 26 refineries both within and outside of North America, more than 20 of which processed lubricating oils.

Amanda is a staff accountant at Becht. She processes payroll, timesheets, expense reports, AP, and assists with other various accounting functions. Amanda received her master’s in managerial accounting from Southern New Hampshire University in June, 2020, and her Bachelor’s in Accounting from Berkeley College in 2013. Her career began in 2013 as a Junior Accountant with a lighting company. She joined the Becht team in October, 2016.

Amanda is an avid reader and spends the majority of her spare time with her nose in a book. She also enjoys traveling and spending time with her husband and family.

Mr. Stonehouse has over fifteen years of experience working in mechanical engineering design and analysis for the petroleum industry, primarily with pressure vessels and pressure vessel internals. His experience and expertise includes linear and non-linear stress analysis using the finite element method for design and fitness for service and includes a wide variety of FEA work performed involving plasticity, buckling, static, and thermal-transient analyses.

He has worked substantially with fixed equipment codes and standards such as ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section VIII, Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3; API-579 / ASME FFS-1.

Specific areas of expertise and example projects include:

Reviewing and performing pressure vessel design calculations per ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section VIII, Div. 1 and Div. 2.
Software applications used include Compress, Nozzle-PRO and in-house software packages.
Performing fitness for service evaluations per API-579/FFS-1.
Developing Project specifications in accordance with Industry and Client requirements.
Developing inter-discipline work processes for the implementation of a Modularization Program as Subject Matter Expert for the Pre-Dressing of Vessels.
Developing Technical RFQ and Purchase Packages for a large variety of pressure vessels and pressure vessel internals.
Reviewing and clarifying the technical content of fabricator bids to assist in the vendor selection and purchase of vessels and internals.
Developing and presenting training courses for fellow engineers in the areas of RFQ/Bid-Tabulation, Pressure Vessel Internals, Compress and NozzlePRO.
Coordinating Client and multi-disciplinary requirements with Supplier designs to ensure successful equipment fabrication and resolution of field installation issues
Reviewing and performing tank design calculations per API-650.

Mark received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada; and his Bachelor of Commerce Degree from Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada.

Mr. Stoops has over 11 years of experience in mechanical engineering design and analysis. He also has over 4 years experience in nuclear Quality Assurance (QA), and currently serves as Quality Assurance Manager for Becht Nuclear Services. In his role as an engineer, his fields of expertise include seismic analysis of vessels, piping, lifting beams, air filter housings, and other structures. Mr. Stoops specializes in advanced finite element modeling and simulation of complex problems using ANSYS finite element analysis (FEA) computer program.

Drawing from his background in engineering and Information Technology (IT), Mr. Stoops uses a multidisciplinary approach to overcome difficult problems, such as:

Improving performance of computer-based analyses
“Smart” parametric and logic driven computer models
Automation through programmed macros
Streamlining software deployment and Verification & Validation (V&V)

Code experience includes application of ASCE-7, ASD, ASME AG-1, ASME B31.3, ASME BTH-1, ASME NQA-1, ASME Section VIII, and IBC. After graduating from Washington State University with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, Mr. Stoops worked 11 years for M&D Professional Services, Inc. before joining the Becht team in 2012.

Mr. Srinivasan is a globally recognized corrosion / reliability expert and modeling technology consultant with over 30 years of experience in delivering industry-leading predictive analytic modeling software and monitoring sensors for corrosion asset integrity and risk management. Mr. Srinivasan has applied his extensive knowledge to a range of problems related to corrosion, metallurgy and modeling, generating innovative engineering solutions to complex problems related to oil, gas and refinery corrosion mechanisms and unit operations. Mr. Srinivasan also functions as a Corrosion SME with deep expertise in refinery process corrosion as well as training and implementation related to industry best practices related to Integrity Operating Windows (API RP 584) and Corrosion Control Documents (API RP 970).

Over the last 21 years, functioning as the leader of Honeywell-led Joint Industry Consortia Programs (JIP), Mr. Srinivasan worked with leading, global operating companies to develop corrosion data and prediction models related to crude oil corrosivity, alkaline sour water (NH₄HS) corrosion, crude unit overhead corrosion as well for multiphase sour oil/gas production, HPHT wells and safe use limits for carbon and stainless steels. He is the solution architect for the Predict® suite of refining applications widely utilized by global operators, including models for naphthenic acid / sulfidic corrosion and rich / lean amine corrosion. His recent efforts focused on enhancing process safety through application of real time models integrated with process historians won him an international innovation award from Hydrocarbon Processing. Mr. Srinivasan has also functioned as the Program Manager for a key corrosion modeling effort for International Space Station (ISS) for Boeing/NASA, where he developed a customized phase behavior and speciation model for the ISS. As a leading industry consultant, Mr. Srinivasan has worked with a global base of customers in modeling corrosion, quantifying corrosion mechanisms as well as delivering digitalized solutions for asset and mechanical integrity.

Mr. Srinivasan’s has been active in NACE unit committees (STG08, STG 34, STG 62) as well as NPRA and AFPM. He functioned as the chair of NACE STG 62 (Corrosion Monitoring and Measurement, 2016-2020) and is currently the chair of the NACE Task Group on Smart Sensors for Corrosion Monitoring (TEG-100x). Mr. Srinivasan has also served as a member of the Board of Directors at AFPM (2016-2019). He has authored chapters in the Uhlig Handbook as well as ASM Handbook on Corrosion and Cracking. He is widely published and has 100 plus conference and journal papers, technical articles and book chapters in the areas of corrosion, modeling, material selection and predictive analytics.

Mr. Srinivasan worked for about 23 years at Honeywell International, Inc., initially leading the development of corrosion and material selection models and later as business leader for Honeywell’s Corrosion Center of Excellence (COE). He also spent eight years early in his career working for Cortest Labs, generating experimental materials / corrosion data as well as building materials and corrosion databases and models for oil/gas applications.

Mr. Srinivasan received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Houston. He has also achieved Six Sigma Green Belt Certification. Mr. Srinivasan is based in Houston, Texas.

Jeremy Lundquist is a Mechanical Engineer with 14 years of commercial nuclear experience, who has strengths in plant design change preparation and implementation, piping and support design calculations, ASME B31.1, B31.3, equipment qualification, temporary modifications, and configuration management. He is also familiar with 10CFR50.59, RIS 2005-20, operability determinations, cyber security, software quality-assurance, and project management. He has performed calculations using software ADLPipe, AutoPIPE, CAESAR II, COMPRESS and ANSYS, and is familiar with AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS for modeling. Jeremy’s experience in nuclear, combined with his leadership and information technology experience, make him a great fit for many projects.

2016 – Present, Becht Engineering, Engineering Advisor

Performed B31.3 analysis of several new above-ground piping systems at a government processing facility, considering seismic design and ASCE wind loads.
Provided buried piping inspection program guidelines for over 10 miles of various buried piping systems to a government waste processing facility using EPRI and industry practice.
Performed ADLPipe analysis of Reactor Closed Isolation Cooling (RCIC) minimum flow piping for Beyond Design Basis (BDB) conditions per ASME Section III, Subsection NC.
Performed walkdowns of facility on a nuclear waste site and evaluated system piping design modifications against a new B31-based span chart criteria guideline.

2013 – 2016, Energy Northwest, Minor Modifications Supervisor

Established training plans, development goals and day-to-day mentoring for nine direct reports. Evaluated employees based on performance objectives, giving feedback and assistance where needed to improve performance.
Provided input to Salem/Hope Creek directors as part of Technical Conscience Assessment, and Fermi II station leadership team as part of a Nuclear Safety Culture Self-Assessment.
Acted as Plant Support Engineering Manager, leading development of supporting engineering schedules, emergent plant issue resolution and communication with stakeholders.

2006 – 2013, Energy Northwest, Senior Engineer

Education: 2006, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, B.S. Mechanical Engineering

Software:

Experience with ANSYS, CAESAR II, AutoCAD, Navisworks, Pro/E Wildfire 2, SOLIDWORKS 2019, COMPRESS, ADLPipe, AutoPIPE, MasterCAM, MS Office, MS Windows 3.1-10, Photoshop, MS-DOS. Familiar with structural analysis, video editing, design of web pages and 3-D rendering software. Ability to build and configure PCs and small networks.

David Taylor is a Chemical Engineer with 15 years of project management, petroleum refining and fuels additive product research and development. His career includes process engineering support of Fluidized Catalytic Cracking, HF and Sulfuric Acid Alkylation, Naphtha Reforming and Hydro-processing technologies. In addition, David has rotations as a gasoline and distillate blender in Economics and Planning, Process Engineering Group Supervision, and Refinery Operations. Other specialties in the refining industry include process simulation background in Pro II and HYSYS. His R&D background includes aftermarket fuel additive product development and quality assurance. David has managed projects ranging from FEED studies including FEL-0 to FEL-3, Cold Eyes Reviews, Root Cause Failure Analysis, and process unit startup support.

David holds a BS degree from Louisiana Tech and an MS degree from North Carolina State University, both in Chemical Engineering.

Robert Sturgis has over 40 years of international and domestic experience as a high-performing expert in hydrocarbon refining, onshore and offshore production, and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) manufacturing with a proven track record of completing challenging grass roots and revamp projects in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific Region from initial concept through startup and verification of production and operations based on a long-term career with ExxonMobil. His experience includes project scope development, integrated project team development, performance assessment and improvement, Front-End Engineering, Engineering/ Procurement/Construction contracting, engineering and execution, project constructability, field labor productivity, safety and risk assessment, and cold eyes review at stage gates.

Mr. Sturgis holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA

Katherine ‘Katie’ Taylor is a Chemical Engineer with over 10 years of experience in the refining industry. Her career has included process engineering, reliability engineering, operations supervision, site incident investigation lead and trainer, and mechanical design and repairs. She has led dozens of TapRoot and Why-Tree high priority incident investigations, including process safety releases and serious injuries. With a human performance/high reliability organization mindset, she excels at organizing subject matter expert knowledge to solve plant challenges.

Katie holds a BS degree in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

LaKeshia Taylor is presently a Reliability Engineering Specialist at Becht and loves solving problems and offering solutions to clients.

She has been a Mechanical Engineer for the last 15 years, working in the Petrochemical industry. Her experience is in Reliability and Maintenance Engineering, Project Engineering and Mechanical Integrity & Quality Assurance. LaKeshia is very proficient in trend analysis, classification algorithms, optimization, and mathematical simulation software tools, as well as SAP BW, Business Objects, Spotfire, and statistical packages including S+, R, and MatLab.

LaKeshia attended Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, LA. She earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering and holds a number of industry certifications. She has also completed graduate course work in Business Administration at the E.J. Ourso college of Business at Louisiana State University.

Amin Terouhid, Ph.D., PE is a recognized expert in the areas of project management, project scheduling, construction claims, schedule delay analysis, loss of productivity, and construction defect claims. He has extensive experience working on several large and mega projects internationally and throughout the United States.

In 2018, Dr. Terouhid received the Technical Excellence Award from the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE International). He is also the co-author of a number of AACE International Recommended Practices (RPs), including 91R-16 schedule development, 89R-16 management summary schedule, 92R-17 analyzing near-critical paths, and PS-19 linear scheduling method. His other areas of expertise include value engineering, project risk management, and construction simulation.

Dr. Terouhid has been examined and certified by Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors (TBPELS) as a Professional Engineer (P.E.), by Project Management Institute (PMI) as a Project Management Professional (PMP), and by the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE International) as a Planning and Scheduling Professional (PSP) and a Decision and Risk Management Professional (DRMP). He is a member of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)’s exam committee and the Director of Education/Knowledge Platform with the Metro New York chapter of The Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE International).

He earned B.Sc. and M.Sc. in industrial engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), and M.S. in civil engineering and Ph.D. in construction management from the University of Florida (UF).

Nataly is the Nominations & Specialty Services Coordinator for Becht. She searches and contacts candidates for potential assignments. She also serves as Project Coordinator for the Machinery and I&C divisions.

Nataly enjoys hanging out with family, reading, and playing sports.

Steve Tiek has over 30 years of experience in refinery construction, maintenance, and turnarounds, based on his long-term career with Motiva. His experience includes project management, plant engineering, business development and refinery maintenance with an emphasis on areas of turnaround planning, management, and field execution. Since joining Becht, Steve has helped one client manage an eight-unit turnaround, set up a Turnaround Services Division for the company to better coordinate the diverse services Becht Engineering provides related to turnarounds and is helping clients facilitate turnaround readiness reviews, scope optimizations, peer reviews, and critical path reviews.

While Turnaround Manager at Motiva, Steve managed turnarounds from $5 MM to $150 MM, with responsibilities from scope development through field execution, as well as developing unit-specific safety plans for each turnaround. As a member of Motiva’s corporate team, he was responsible for setting direction, targets, and goals to improve chemical plant and refinery turnaround performance in the US.

As Motiva’s Quality Systems and Processes Manager, Steve implemented new work processes in cooperation with site work process leaders and served as a member of the corporate team responsible for setting direction and priority for implementation of new work processes at sites across the US. His experience at Motiva also includes work as both a Maintenance Manager and Major Projects Manager, with extensive experience in managing routine maintenance and implementing cost controls for both routine and turnaround maintenance activities.

Mr. Tiek holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre-Haute, IN.

Kenny Carroll has worked in the Mechanical Integrity space for over 20 years, focusing primarily on inspection programs and Risk-Based Inspection for petrochemical and chemical manufacturing facilities. Over the past decade, he has used his skillsets to lead mechanical integrity programs, including RBI implementations and reassessments.

Kenny has worked in all areas of mechanical integrity, including Turnarounds, Routine and Non-routine Maintenance Inspections, Capital Projects, as a Kentucky State Certified Boiler Inspector, and as a Mechanical Integrity Specialist. He currently holds four (4) API certifications and the STI SP001 certification.

Charles Maier has a broad background focused on plant operations, maintenance, reliability and cost containment. His expertise is analyzing situations, identifying opportunities and implementing strategic solutions that deliver bottom line results. He has spent the last 20 years working for a major oil company with previous experience in the pulp and paper industry as well as serving as a nuclear officer in the United States Navy. He is a key member of the Becht team delivering site improvement programs focused on maintenance and reliability.

While working for a major oil company, Charles led multiple site business improvement efforts in downstream and upstream sites. Key sustainable results include a reduction of contractor workforce by 10%, a reduction of pitstop durations by 30% and a reduction of total maintenance cost by 20%. He also implemented a site reliability program which captured over a $1 Billion dollars through the establishment of a reliability department and associated processes including RCA, RCM and bad actor programs.

Charles was the lead author for the maintenance work process of a major oil company and has helped develop company-wide tools and programs to deliver improved maintenance and reliability performance. He has also facilitated multiple company technical networks in the area of maintenance.

Mr. Maier received his Bachelor of Science in Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture from Webb Institute and his Masters of Science in Engineering Management from Southern Methodist University.

Steven Treese began his professional career with Union Oil Company of California in 1973 as a Research Engineer with a BS in Chemical Engineering from Washington State University. He remained with essentially the same company through several “heritages” before retiring from Phillips 66 in 2013 after over 40 years in industry. He continues to provide process consulting services by request. His range of experience includes operations, hydroprocessing, hydrogen plants, catalyst development, design, process safety, utilities, sulfur recovery, geothermal, shale oil, nitrogen fertilizers, procurement, and process licensing.

Steve has a handful of publications and was on the 1994 NPRA Q&A Panel. He has been an inventor on patents in diverse areas, including vessel internals, enhanced oil recovery, and hydroprocessing. He was lead editor for the “Handbook of Petroleum Processing, 2nd Edition” (Springer, 2015) and is the author of an upcoming book on measurement history.

Steve is a licensed Professional Engineer, a senior member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and a mentor for FIRST Robotics Team 3049 from Bremerton, WA.

Mr. Vahlsing served in refinery tech service, central engineering, corporate headquarters and R&D during his career with Sunoco. During this period he developed and managed engineering and research for a wide range of new and revamped refining and petrochemical processes. He also marketed Sunoco engineering and research services when Sunoco sold man hours outside of the corporation. Dave’s role at the Philadelphia office is to match the needs of Becht clients with our staff skills, to prepare clear and mutually acceptable scopes of work and to monitor the progress of our projects to assure complete customer satisfaction.

He is a graduate of MIT, past chairman of the Chemical Consultants Network, past president of the Philadelphia Squash Racquets Association, past president of the Cynwyd Club of Bala Cynwyd, PA and continues to be involved with a variety of civic organizations. Dave is a cofounder of Hydrocarbon Engineering Associates, an engineering services company that was merged into Becht Engineering. He is licensed as a professional engineer in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Torney Van Acker has over 35 years of domestic and international experience with ExxonMobil planning and developing large complex control system replacement projects in the petroleum refining and chemical industry as well as developing the instrumentation, control and safety systems scope for large Upstream production projects at a number of onshore and offshore locations.

His experience includes project scope development, business case justification, cost and schedule estimating, resource planning, competitive bid process, and contracting strategies. Mr. Van Acker was the lead I&CS start-up engineer on multiple refining projects in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. He chaired the Instrumentation Network, which included instrumentation specialists from each of ExxonMobil’s refineries and was responsible for the maintaining and development of ExxonMobil I&C engineering standards and best practices. Mr. Van Acker was project development manager for ten control and safety systems replacement projects in ExxonMobil downstream and chemical affiliates, all of which came in under budget and within schedule. He has also led the program development for defining 39 TDC2000 control system replacement projects and been a key advisor for the development of a corporate-wide strategy for aging TDC3000 control systems.

Mr. Van Acker earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester and is a member of the International Society of Automation. He is fluent in French and Italian and is conversational in German.

Dr. John S. Wang is a technical specialist in the areas of noise control, engineering acoustics and flares. During his 30-years with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company he had resolved numerous plant noise and flare problems for ExxonMobil worldwide refining, chemical, and production facilities.After retiring from ExxonMobil, he has been retained as a consultant to continue working in these technical areas. He has resolved plant noise problems for various refining, chemical, and production facilities at ExxonMobil and other oil companies.

As the ExxonMobil lead specialist, he had been involved in numerous trouble shooting activities for flare related problems such as community noise and flare combustion efficiency. During his work for capital projects, he assisted in selecting suitable flare tips. In addition, he was a member of a task force for an EPA sponsored five–year flare combustion research program.

Dr. Wang received his BS, MS, and Ph.D degrees in mechanical engineering. He has published ten technical papers in engineering noise control. Furthermore, he had been involved in committee work for ASHRAE, ISA and INCE.

Libby joined Becht in 2016 following a career predominately as an attorney for small boutique firms handling Real Estate Law, Family Law and Contractual Law. With Becht, she is on the front end of the Client contracts and business relationships. In addition, she provides legal guidance for a variety of areas of the Business and coordination of outside legal counsel and business establishments internationally.

Libby holds a BS from the University of Denver and a JD from George Mason University and is licensed to practice Law in the State of New Jersey.

Mr. White is a recognized industry expert in Fixed Equipment Mechanical Integrity (FEMI). During his years 36 years of experience, he has been involved with all aspects of FEMI in various roles from both owner/user site position and Corporate roles and consulting on Inspection, Equipment Engineering, Fitness-For-Service, Failure Analysis, Corrosion & Materials and Welding. While the majority of his experience is with Refining, Clay has also been responsible for MI groups in three different Chemicals facilities.

Until his retirement in 2019, Mr. White was the former Corporate Director for Mechanical Integrity for Phillips66 Global Refining. This position was responsible for the development, implementation and oversight of all mechanical integrity programs for 12 refineries worldwide. In addition, Clay was directly responsible for a corporate staff of Senior Corrosion / Materials, Fixed Equipment Engineers and Inspection Specialist with dotted line responsibility over all Inspection Department Groups located at the refineries.

During his time at Phillips 66 as the MI Director, the corporation was able to cut their leaks in half and significantly reduce the company’s risk profile through the implementation of key programs like MI Training and Awareness for all incoming Engineers, detailed unit based training for Inspectors, implementation of IOW programs and standard templates on process parameters, standardizing of IDMS programs and creation of program “health checks”, standardized equipment record management, Turnaround Scope Reviews, MI Audits, standardizing on Inspection Department Staffing and creating a Chief Inspector “Bench” with training and experience requirements. In addition, numerous required standards were implemented on critical inspection programs around key high risk equipment items and damage mechanisms (including identification of minimum inspection and testing requirements, development and maintenance of standards and best practices, and code compliance guidelines).

Over his career Mr. White has been very active in API, AFPM / NPRA, NACE and MTI. He represented Phillips 66 on the API Committee on Refining Equipment (CRE) and was the past Chair for the Subcommittee on Inspection and Mechanical Integrity (SCIMI). He is also the current Chair of API 584 on Integrity Operating Windows, Chair for API 580 on Risk Based Inspection, Co-Chair on the Inspection Summit Planning Committee and has held leadership roles for multiple other Standards / committees over the past 20+ years.

Mrs. Wing has 13 years of experience in the refining industry. She began her career at the FHR Corpus Christi refinery as a Plant Engineer managing projects and supporting the mechanical engineering needs of several operating units. She then spent 3.5 years working as the Corrosion and Materials Engineer at the same facility. As the Corrosion and Materials engineer, she developed and managed programs for assessing environmental cracking risks, naphthenic acid and sulfidic corrosion, and high- temperature hydrogen attack. Mrs. Wing also assisted with the RBI program, TA planning, failure analysis, and metallurgical selection for new projects.

While serving as the Corrosion and Materials Engineer at FHR Corpus Christi, Mrs. Wing was an active NACE member and served as the Vice Chair for TG 176 – Sulfidic Corrosion Prediction Tools.

After her time at FHR Corpus Christi, Mrs. Wing spent 5 years as a Quality Assurance Engineer at Codeware, Inc., assuring the accuracy and code compliance of COMPRESS and INSPECT software. Mrs. Wing contributed to the implementation and maintenance of the API 510, 570, and 653 inspection features, as well as API 579 Parts 3, 4, 5, 6, and 12 fitness-for-service assessments. She also worked on the addition of the ASME B31.3, ASME B31.4, and API 650 document types, and the interface for INSPECT to send and receive thickness surveys from ultrasonic thickness gages.

As a Group Head & CCD and RBI Project manage at Becht, Mrs. Wing oversees the work of a group of Project Managers while continuing to manage CCD and RBI projects. Mrs. Wing has helped develop CCDs for various Amine Treating units, Caustic Treating units, Crude and Vacuum units, Cokers, FGRUs, Flare units, FCC’s, GBRs, Hydroprocessing (DDS, DU, HDC, HDS, NHT) units, Isomerization units, NaHS units, Polymerization units, Saturated and Unsaturated Gas Plants, SRUs, SWSs, and TGUs.

Mrs. Wing also performs High Temperature Hydrogen Attack (HTHA) analyses, Hot Oil Sulfur and Tan analyses, and Root Cause Failure Analyses (RCFAs).

Mrs. Wing earned her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA

Paul Wittenbach has over 41 years domestic and international welding and metallurgical engineering experience in the petroleum industry (downstream, upstream, chemicals, midstream, transportation) including design, construction, operations, and maintenance. His experience includes:

Provided metallurgical and welding engineering consultation services for a major Oil Company to all operating groups, including E&P, refining, chemicals, pipeline and overseas locations, plus licensing and licensees worldwide. Services included welding and metallurgical engineering consultation, selecting and specifying metals for diverse components, failure analysis, welding procedure reviews, welding procedure development and revision, trouble shooting, in-service welding (including hot taps) evaluations, inspection and fitness for service evaluations. Develop, qualify and maintain Company welding procedures.
Provided metallurgical and welding consultation to a major Oil Company and subsidiary companies. This included metallurgical failure analysis, welding procedure selection and optimization, vendor and fabricator welding procedure reviews
Performed on-site and/or office-based problem solving to facilitate maintenance and new pressure containing equipment procurement for piping, pipelines, petroleum production and processing, refining, chemical plants. Also provided these services for structural work including offshore structures in deep water.
Wrote fabrication specifications, performed failure analysis, applied fracture mechanics/fitness-for-service principles to extend structure and equipment life, and provided materials consultation for replacement and new equipment. Supported procurement, onshore fabrication and offshore construction from Stavanger office and on-site.
Participated in ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Committee work from 2008 to 2017 including terms as Secretary of both ASME II, Ferrous Materials and ASME VIII, Materials Subgroup (VIII-SGM) and Vice Chairman of VIII-SGM.

Mr. Wittenbach holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Welding Engineering from LeTourneau College, Longview, TX, and a Master of Materials Engineering degree from Auburn University, Auburn, AL. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in OK, and a Certified Welding Inspector (CWI).

Mr. Wittenbach is based in Bartlesville, OK.

Jon Yutzy has over 20 years’ experience in IT supporting the Power Generation sector. Responsibilities have included architecture, design, development and support of software products.

He has a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science from Ashland University.

Chris Zielewski retired recently from ExxonMobil where he last worked as a Machinery Section Group Leader. He has over 35 years machinery engineering experience with pumps, compressors, turbines and other petrochemical equipment.

Chris served on the Texas A&M Turbomachinery Advisory Panel, and currently is an executive committee member of the Gulf South Rotating Machinery Symposium. His specialty areas include machinery reliability improvements and incident investigations.

Chris holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

All
Advisor Resources
Becht Canada
Business Administration
Business Development
Business Strategy
Capital Projects
Corrosion Materials
Due Diligence
Fired Heaters
Heavy Lift
Inst/Elec Controls
Leadership
Machinery
Maintenance & Turnarounds
Mechanical Eng
Mechanical Integrity
Nuclear
Piping
Process Eng
Reliability
Training

Charles (Chuck) Becht IV, PhD, PE

Chief Executive Officer - Becht

Charles (Chuck) Becht V, PE

President - Becht

Mr. Becht is a mechanical and nuclear engineer with expertise in FEA and thermo-hydraulics modeling and analysis. His experience ranges from developing new designs meeting code requirements, failure investigation and repair, and FFS assessments. In the hydraulic area, his work includes the study of NRC issues related to entrapped gases in liquid lines, for which […]

Matthew Wizeman, CPA

Vice President – Administration

Matthew Wizeman, CPA Vice President – Administration Matthew Wizeman is a Certified Public Accountant with over 25 years of experience in accounting and finance. He received his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Florida and his BBA in accounting from Niagara University, where he graduated with honors. Matthew began his career in public […]

Mariano Bertaina

Director - Latin American Operations

Andy Saunders-Tack

Director – Asia Pacific Operations

Chris van der Beek

Director – European Operations

Bobby Wright, PE

Director - Refinery & Plant Services

David Troha

Corporate Safety Officer

David Troha has over 25 years of experience. David directs, develops, and oversees the general health, safety and environmental policies and procedures of Becht ensuring compliance with international and domestic governmental, and industry specific regulations. David joined the Becht team supporting the ExxonMobil Campus Project in the Woodlands, Texas, as a SSHE lead and data […]

Tim Shepperd

Subject Matter Expert - HF Alkylation

George Antaki, PE

Chief Engineer - Nuclear Services Division

Joe Collins

Division Manager -Heavy Lift

John Conway

Division Manager - Turnaround Inspection Planning

Dave Dewees, PE

Division Manager - Mechanical Engineering, Creep, HTHA and Weld Residual Stress

Dave Dewees has worked in the refining, petrochemical, and power generation industries over the last 19 years. Dave’s specialties include: Coke drum reliability, data analysis and fatigue High temperature hydrogen attack (HTHA) modeling and assessment Material property data analysis and allowable stress development Advanced material behavior modeling Creep and relaxation Cyclic plasticity Damage mechanics Creep-fatigue […]

Frank Fronek

Division Manager - High Energy Power Plant Piping Engineering

Grant Jacobson

Division Manager - Fired Heater Services

Grant is a Chemical Engineer with expertise in process engineering and operations management and he is a member of API SCHTE (subcommittee on Heat Transfer Equipment) Grant has experience in design, operation, optimization of process equipment and operations management of cross-functional teams. Prior to joining Becht, he was at Valero Energy, where he led multiple […]

Gerrit Buchheim, PE

Division Manager, Pono - Refining, Metallurgical and Corrosion Engineering

Abby O. King

Director - Plant Services

Fred Lea, Jr., PE

Division Manager - Machinery/Rotating Equipment

Robert Ohmes

Division Manager – Strategic Business Planning

Jeannie Lewis

Division Manager – Engineering Standards

Trevor Seipp, PEng

Division Manager - Becht Canada

Clayton Smith

Manager, Turnaround Services

Gordon Swett

Division Manager - Performance Group

With over 25 years of experience in manufacturing, production, maintenance, training, and strategic consulting, Mr. Swett leverages engineering principles to provide real business solutions for a diverse set of clients. Mr. Swett began his career with Dow as a Process Engineer contributing to unit optimization, reliability and training. Since then, he has honed his refining […]

Bonnie Winkler

Director - Advisor Resources

Eric Ye

Manager - Process Engineering and Process Safety

Matthew Caserta, PE

Assistant Division Manager - Mechanical Integrity

John Hackett

Manager - Human Resources

Dan Giuliani PMP

Manager - Capital Projects

Rick Hoffman, PE, CMRP

Manager - Litigation and Due Diligence Services

Melvin G. Larson

Manager – Strategic Consulting

Jean-Gaël Le Floc’h

Manager - EMEA Operations

Jean-Gaël has 25 years’ experience in the hydrocarbon (mainly downstream) industry, as a multi-disciplinary expert capable of business opportunity identification, complex client needs framing, holistic solution proposal development, sales negotiation, team management and project delivery. He has worked in more than 40 countries world-wide, with extensive knowledge of the European, Middle East and African refining […]

Jeremy Staats, PE

Assistant Division Manager - Refining Metallurgical and Corrosion Engineer

Jesudha Sithersingh

Financial Controller

Kathy Lipski

Marketing Manager

Kristen Becht

Manager - BechtCONNECT

Kristen Becht is a chemical engineer with expertise in process optimization and planning and economics working for Valero and most recently as an LP Forecaster for Marathon. Her expertise in process engineering is around process optimization, troubleshooting, and debottlenecking with a focus on online, low-capital intensive improvements. Her experience in process engineering includes FCC, HF […]

Eric Smith

Account Manager -Business Development

Ida Soto, M.S.

Project Manager - Performance Group

Jered Watt

Corporate Account Manager

Mr. Watt has 20 years of experience in corporate account management in the downstream, midstream and upstream industries where he has fostered relationships across operational, technical, and management structures both corporately and at the site level. During his 20 years refining / petrochemical / midstream / upstream experience, he has been involved in multiple aspects […]

Darren York

Manager – Value Chain Optimization

Greg Zoll, PE

Division Manager - Electrical, Instrumentation and Controls Division

Mike Annon, PMP

David C. Anthony III, PE

Dana Baham

Refining and Petrochemical Engineer and Chief Inspector

Blagoje Baljozovic

Richard Basile

FCC Mechanical and ASME Code

Richard Basile has over 38 years domestic and international experience in the mechanical design, analysis, troubleshooting and technology development of process equipment in the petroleum refining industry, based on his long-term career with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. Mr. Basile’s experience includes pressure vessels, piping, fluid solids systems, and advanced mathematical analysis of vessels and […]

Gordon Lawrence

Regional Manager - Turnaround & Project Assurance

Steve Bolinger

Refining and Petrochemical Mechanical Integrity Expert

Benjamin Brandt

NDE and Inspection Specialist

Allen Hamilton PMP CCE

Subject Matter Expert - Cost Management

Mark Fronek

Manager - Information Technology

Marga Briggs

Division Manager - Advisor Resources

Timothy Scholand

Assistant Division Manager - Fired Heater Services

David J Keen

Ammonia and Downstream Plant Reliability SME

Victoria Araiza

Coordinator - Cost Tracking

Keith Austin

Senior Advisor

Francie Bridgewater

CCD Project Manager and Analyst

Haley Bechtle

Billing Manager

Haley received her Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Felician University in 2014. She joined Becht in 2016 as a Junior Accountant and is currently the Senior Billing Specialist. She enjoys spending time with her family and traveling with her friends.

Meredith Bell

Nominations Coordinator

Michael (Mike) Bober

Senior Training Advisor

Robert ‘Bob’ Brown, PE

Fatigue, Fracture and FFS

Vernon L. Maddox, Jr., PE

The Becht Team