Business Booming for Pressure Welding Specialist

A Sydney company is in the midst of the largest pressure vessel fabrication project it has tackled since it was established 25 years ago. L & A Pressure Welding Pty Ltd is fabricating 32 pressure vessels from XLERPLATE® steel for a fifth Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) processing train on the Burrup Peninsula near Karratha in Western Australia.

The Woodside operated North West Shelf Venture is adding LNG processing capacity at Karratha to meet growing demand from China, Japan and elsewhere.
The new facility, which will have a production capacity of more than 4.4 million tonnes of LNG a year, is expected to ship its first cargoes of LNG by the fourth quarter of 2008.

Louis Chouaifaity refers to the fabrication company which he and his wife, Anne, founded in 1981, as their "baby", but one look at the company's customer list reveals that this "baby" has some very high profile godparents.

L & A Pressure Welding's customers are a who's who of Australia's petro-chemical industry. Names such as Shell, Esso, Woodside, Qenos and Orica appear as repeat customers on the company's books. While much of the ISO 9001 accredited pressure vessel specialist's output has gone to Australian projects, there's also been a steady stream of export work heading for China, Malaysia, Singapore, Portugal and Vietnam.

Loyalty may take a back seat to quality, delivery performance and cost in business decisions, but Louis Chouaifaity is convinced that loyalty still provides a winning advantage if the other elements are in place. Many customers have returned with successive orders and a high proportion of the company's highly skilled staff fall into the "welded on" category. L & A Pressure Welding has also prospered by placing a high value on its human resources.

"I have a significant number of people who have been with me for 25 years," Louis says with justifiable pride. "They have been loyal to me and I've returned that loyalty. There are a lot of factors which influence the quality of the work which you produce, but unless you have a dedicated workforce with the necessary skills you won't succeed."

Louis began his own career as a boilermaker and welder, taking every opportunity to improve his skills. He has an international diploma in welding and his welding supervisor's credentials mean that he can keep an expert eye on workshop activity.

He has a strong involvement with TAFE and a commitment to the training of apprentices. The company's workforce of 60 includes five apprentices, all of them doing important work and learning new skills. "They are young and keen to learn and we are certainly giving them the opportunity to do that," Louis said.

At the other end of the experience curve, the L & A Pressure Welding workforce also employs a 78 year veteran boilermaker. Consistency and quality are central to everything which the company touches.

"We've always manufactured pressure vessels, heat exchangers, boilers, pressure piping and related structural components such as platforms, ladders and handrails for oil, gas and petrochemical companies," Louis said. "And we've always used steel from BlueScope Steel which we source through their distributors Southern Steel and OneSteel."

"Sometimes customers have suggested that we use European steel for certain pressure vessels, but in every instance we have been able to convince them to switch to Australian steel from BlueScope Steel. The quality has never been a problem and there are numerous advantages in dealing with a local supplier with direct lines of communication to the steelworks. Over the years we have accumulated a lot of experience because of our specialisation, but we have also been able to rely on outstanding technical assistance from BlueScope Steel."

"With their distributors they have been able to suggest solutions which have saved us weeks on several projects. The pressure vessels for the current Woodside project are a good example of that. The initial specification called for normalised plate, but BlueScope Steel suggested 7-490T XLERPLATE®."

"They supported their recommendation with impact and charpy testing and the customer was convinced. That change of specification allowed us to plan on delivery times of 4 to 6 weeks instead of 16 to 18 weeks delivery with normalised plate."

L & A Pressure Welding has undergone four expansions of its premises, including the establishment of a second workshop at Bankstown, New South Wales, not far from its Revesby head office. On each occasion the development has been driven Louis Chouaifaity's determination to provide his customers with the highest quality work in the shortest possible time.

In particular, the Bankstown workshop was established to ensure that one major project, such as the current Woodside pressure vessels, does not relegate all other jobs to the end of a long queue.

"Everything we do here is designed to save time without decreasing quality," Louis said. "We carry out in-house mechanical and thermal design and drawings of pressure vessels and heat exchangers using the latest software. Heat treatment, drilling by CNC machine and rolling for up to 50mm thick plates is done in-house. Our approved suppliers carry out rolling up to 160mm, non-destructive testing, mechanical testing and painting."

"Over the years we've added to our skills and equipment as we've needed to and we've formed strong relationships with specialist groups when it made sense to outsource. Steel supply is one of those areas where we are able to obtain the best possible results. Because of our relationship with BlueScope Steel through its distributors we have always been able to schedule steel deliveries to arrive as we need them."

"On a major project such as the current Woodside pressure vessel job you just couldn't meet the customer's deadlines without a reliable supplier. By the time we've finished this project we will have fabricated and tested 32 pressure vessels weighing from five tonnes to 120 tonnes. We have nearly 5,000 square metres of workshop area, but we don't have the room to store huge amounts of plate, so coordination of supply through Southern Steel and OneSteel is essential and that's what we have achieved."