Drawing on its years of experience in the oil & gas engineering sector, ENG. CO.CZ, headquartered in the Czech Republic, offers unique engineering solutions to the energy & bulk liquid storage sector as it moves towards a global energy transition. Owner and managing director Michele Villani talks to Tank Storage Magazine’s Jasmin McDermott about how the company has evolved and plans to expand its range of services…
MV: EngCo Group’s history dates back to 2013 when a group of entrepreneurs, who already owned engineering companies, decided to use their years of real-world operational experience to
provide sensible but bespoke engineering solutions and expert consultancy to the bulk liquid storage, pipeline and energy industry.
As most of the EngCo Group team have previously worked for large multi-national oil companies, we really do understand the problems that our clients face, as we have experienced most of these problems before. For one of our key customers – Shell International Petroleum – we currently work in Europe, Canada, South Africa, where we have a legal entity ENG.CO.CZ South Africa, and several countries in the Far East.
MV: The services that we offer to our customers are different, but all interconnected to maximise synergies and create value:
Asset management
This is a service of fundamental importance to guarantee the license to operate, regulatory compliance, correct maintenance of all safety/ business critical assets, efficient operation, reduced costs and audit ready documentation. The service essentially consists of asset information alignment, P&ID/asset structure/maintenance and inspection plans as well as identifying safety critical equipment.
Design centre
This provides support to project managers to facilitate the engineering design of projects. Projects are taken from an identified concept stage, are further defined before being taken to the detail design stage. The centre also provides technical support role during execution and document close out.
Project development engineering
Our PDE’s provide project development services, working closely with the asset stakeholders and business development stakeholders. In close co-ordination with the asset owner representative, the PDE supports the development of ideas into projects by assessments of the objective, HSSE, cost and schedule. The objective is to enable our clients to consistently rank the projects based on cost, schedule and benefit.
Maintenance execution scheduling
The MES team provide services globally from remote locations across Europe. They assist with the preparation of repetitive planned maintenance routines across global assets in compliance with local regulatory requirements.
Document control best practice consultancy
Our team can demonstrate and advise on best practises for managing documents and other information.
Project Delivery and Handover Assurance (PDHA)
The aim of the PDHA team is to act as a service provider to the client team for performing all the necessary actions to ensure that projects, plant changes and maintenance are kept accurate through the asset management model. This ensures compliance with computer maintenance management system CMMS and reliability inspection requirements are kept up to date. All the services provided by EngCo Group are highly appreciated by our customers but the services that are achieving the greatest success are project development engineering and project delivery and handover assurance.
MV: The founders of EngCo Group have years of experience in the oil and gas sector, particularly in oil refining and oil terminal operation.
The most important thing to consider when building any team is to ensure it is built with quality.
We hire people with vast experience and excellent communication skills but above all they have the desire to find the best solution to every problem.
At EngCo Group we like to form a partnership with our clients. This means that we are with them on every step of the journey, and, as a result, we experience their problems first-hand and this allows us to develop truly smart and efficient solutions. For us this is a great way to do business as it exposes our entire team to real world problems.
‘New opportunities have been created for consultancy firms in the oil & gas sector to strengthen their internal teams with the required engineering resources to meet these evolving challenges’
MV: We provide bespoke services and solutions, created according to the real needs of our customers. Our mantra in everything we do is to create value for our customers and to reduce operational and safety risks.
We understand that services are a cost for our clients and therefore it is vital that they get added value in return in terms of economic savings, regulatory compliance, greater safety and greater certainty in important decisions.
MV: In recent years, the oil industry has undergone quite a significant transition in order to contribute to the energy transition, as well as to meet the increasing social expectations and legislative requirements.
The asset footprint has evolved toward consolidation in the oil sector but in the gas and power sector it is growing significantly.
The changing regulatory environment has required the whole sector to enhance effort in compliance, including more investment in the asset base in order to meet asset integrity and process safety objectives.
All of this has created new opportunities for qualified consultancy firms in then oil and gas sector to strengthen their internal teams with qualified and trusted resources to provide operators with the required engineering services to meet these evolving challenges.
MV: Our vision is to continue to provide quality services that are always highly appreciated and valued by our customers.
Our company is currently in a period of growth due to increasing demand for our services. In 2019, ENG.CO.CZ opened an office in Ireland, and this is the centre for our project design engineering expertise.
We have recently added a specialist recruitment service to our portfolio of services. Due to our background, our extensive network, and experience in the field, we can confidently source and place the best engineering, maintenance and operations candidates for our clients.
We are also offering a training and development service utilising the latest technologies, including virtual reality, to share our experience and lessons learnt from the industry.
In the second quarter of 2020 we will also be launching our 3D scanning service.
And our dedication and hard work is reflected in our clients feedback.
Manuel Ronda, D-Game Improvement Programme, Shell Italia Oil Products recently said to us: ‘We appreciate the quality of the EngCo Resources and their sense of commitment and accountability towards our company’s objectives.’
It is a very exciting time for the company, and I am proud at how it is evolving and reacting to the needs of the industry.
