Automation Consultant Brock Walker

YOUR ROLE AS AN AUTOMATION CONSULTANT IS UNIQUE FROM OTHERS IN THIS ROLE BECAUSE OF YOUR FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY. CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THAT?

The focus, for me, is helping our customers understand sustainability, add objectives to achieve their goals and mitigate poor power quality that feeds their facility.

The Midwest has poor power quality. A lot of that is due to the rate of new construction for industrial growth. When customers experience power events, defined as sags or swells from incoming power, those millisecond events can be fatal for electrical equipment inside their facilities. When those devices fail, it’s costly. Downtime is costly. Replacement parts are costly. Ensuring we are getting the maximum life expectancy from our components is essential for their sustainability goals.

If we can help our customers with clean, efficient energy to their facility and in their production areas, we can help them reduce one area of their carbon footprint production.

YOU RECENTLY WENT THROUGH A PROGRAM AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. WHAT WAS THE PROGRAM AND HOW HAS IT HELPED YOU IN YOUR ROLE?

The Standford program was really eye opening for me. The greatest take away I had from the program is knowing what scope of sustainability we own and how we can influence the others.

Sustainability not only focuses on what we do as a company, but it also has criteria that encourages you to do business with companies that are also doing their due diligence for carbon reduction.

Having this full understanding really puts me in a place to have conversations with environmental, social and governance (ESG)/ sustainability managers to see where Kirby Risk can effectively help them achieve their goals, while also achieving our own. Businesses that are complying with regulations will eventually ensure the companies they are doing business with are also following their own regulations as laid out by their local agencies.

HOW DO YOU HELP INDUSTRIAL CUSTOMERS REACH THEIRSUSTAINABILITY GOALS?

Energy use is one of our main areas of focus for our customers. Like I mentioned before, if we can help them with clean and consistent power to their facility, it will reduce a vicious cycle of carbon emissions.

Poor power quality leads to less life expectancy for electrical components. Components fail, which causes down time and that could cause excess scrap material when we have loss of production. Once the customers purchase and replace the product, they not only have to reproduce the lost product, now they must ensure they are properly disposing of the failed component.

While all this is going on, there is also safety risk now associated with these interchanging components and downtime — all because of poor power quality.

If you look at electrical components like a boxer, a voltage SAG or SWELL is a punch to the semi-conductor every time. How many punches can they take before they get knocked out?

>Read Volume 3 Issue 1 of Connected magazine.