Commission offsite, optimise onsite

Every time we explain how we commission offsite, we get the same response. Everybody does that.

Most companies build racks and panels offsite, then sample test. That is not the same thing as a full end-to-end integration test.

The OKTO way is every system processor on the project, running on the network, with the actual running firmware, the release candidate software and the finished user interface. The whole system, live, in our facility in Lisburn. Then eight stages of testing on every integration, through to a two-week soak test where the system runs continuously and every anomaly is caught and fixed.

We stress test it. We try to break it in our lab so it cannot break live on a customer’s site. If the plant is too big to bring to OKTOLabs, we go to the manufacturer’s HQ instead. It does not matter where that is.

The industry standard is to design something to around ninety per cent completion. The remaining ten per cent — the interfaces, the integration points, the items listed as TBC — gets sorted out on site, under time pressure, with a practical completion date getting closer every week. We do it the other way round.

For the Admiralty Arch project we built an actual hotel room inside our facility. Real equipment, real interfaces, tested against the exact conditions it would face on site. When our team arrived at the building they were not there to commission. They were there to optimise. Those are very different things.

We have been refining this process for fourteen years. It is good now. It is still not perfect. It is always the part we thought would be fine that ends up causing the problem, which is exactly why we test the way we do.

You cannot win this argument in a meeting. So we stopped arguing and started inviting people to Lisburn to see their exact system running before it leaves the building. That changes the conversation completely.