Scheduled and emergency valve maintenance

Brighouse, UK – Koso Kent Introl (KKI), based in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, is highlighting the value of supplier longevity in terms of ensuring the reliability of valve as well as associated actuators and instruments.

KKI keeps records for every valve ever produced and serviced in the factory’s 40-year history, according to Martin Broadbent, spares and service manager at KKI.

This record of the life of a valve, along with the service conditions in which it is operating, means that the team knows exactly what they are dealing with before they begin to services, said Broadbent.

At some stage in its life, a control, choke or rotary valve will need to be either repaired or replaced. Although this might be during a scheduled shutdown, there might be an occasion when a valve fails in service, and until it can be fixed.

“The failure of a single valve can result in a whole operation grinding to a halt. Our clients need to be sure that they can be up and running again as soon as possible, with no risk of the failure happening again any time soon,” said Broadbent

Broadbent, who heads up the aftercare team at KKI, says his team is ready to travel the world at a moment’s notice, to tackle the problem valve on-site and get the process running again with minimum delay.

But life within the service team isn’t all about crisis management, according to Broadbent.

“Supporting scheduled shutdown programmes is a core activity, too. In fact, recently the team supported the maintenance, repair and upgrade of over 100 valves from one of its key clients during a three-week shutdown programme,” he said.