Providing Innovative Technical Software Solutions for the Process Industries

Principal Consultant Work Experience

Tom Teague has over 20 years experience in managing, developing and supporting process engineering software applications, 15 years experience with data-centered approaches to process software integration and 4 years of experience in process safety and risk analysis.

Protesoft Corporation

Founder and Principal Consultant for Protesoft Corporation, which provides consulting services for technical software and process safety in the process industries.

ProcessCity.com Web Site Development, Aspen Technology, Inc. October, 1999 to February, 2000

Consulted with the startup team for the initial launch of ProcessCity.com, a new Chemical Engineering portal web site for the process industy. Developed user interface specifications for the ProcessCity Workplace. Developed a content classification specification to help users locate and filter site content by technical concepts. Assisted in developing initial set of ProcessCity.com site content.

Quantitative Risk Analysis / Fault Tree Analysis, Texas A&M University - Mary K. O'Connor Process Safety Center, October, 1999 - February, 2000 and April 2000 - present

Principal fault tree analyst on a quantitative risk assessment study for a chemical weapons destruction facility based on supercritical water oxidation technology. Developed two major fault trees -- critical personnel injury and critical system loss. These fault trees covered 8 process subsystems and 12 types of major hazardous events. The Personnel Injury fault tree had 27 major top-level hazardous events, 286 logic gates and 667 basic events. The System Loss fault tree has 12 major top-level events, 183 logic gates and 370 basic events. A second study is starting in April, 2000 to study another part of the chemical weapons destruction facility related to agent neutralization.

Electronic Data Exchange and XML, Process Data eXchange Institute (pdXi), February-November 1999

Served as pdXi's Technical Director with responsibility for technical leadership of the organization. pdXi develops object-oriented data models for process technical data and sponsors the development of ISO-10303 (STEP) process data exchange standards (AP 231). Using these data models and standards to implement practical electronic data exchange solutions will eventually achieve benefits worth millions of dollars annually to the process industry. Independently conducted a study in August-October, 1999 to show how pdXi could use eXtensible Markup Language (XML) to build cost effective process data exchange software implementations leading to potential commercial technical data exchanges in the internet environment.

Taught senior undergraduate Chemical Engineering process plant design at the following universities:
Rice University, January-May, 2000
Texas A&M University, January-May, 1999

Manager/team leader for process engineering software development, training and user support For most of his 18 years at Exxon, Teague led various teams of research engineers and programmers in all aspects of developing, maintaining, supporting and managing a comprehensive suite of production facilities engineering analysis software (20-30 programs) used by Exxon’s worldwide upstream production organization. This software spans a wide range of technical disciplines including thermodynamics and fluid properties prediction, wellbore hydraulics and artificial lift, surface flowline and pipeline system simulation, process simulation, and equipment design and rating.

Process engineering software expert/visionary Teague was recognized as Exxon's upstream process engineering software expert and as a forward-looking adopter of innovative computing technology to meet engineering needs. Teague conceived and led Exxon’s transition of its technical software from the batch mainframe technology of the the 1970's and 80’s to the object-oriented, interactive PC, Windows, and distributed LAN computing technology of the 90’s. In the file-driven, batch mainframe world of the early to mid-1980's, Teague's team successfully built interactive mainframe user interfaces from 1983-1987. Teague promoted the use of PC’s for technical software since 1983 and the early adoption of MS Windows in 1990-1991 and LAN technology in 1991-1992. Since 1984, Teague has encouraged the use of data integration technology for process engineering software to solve the labor-intensive data and paper exchange problem prevalent in the process industry. In addition to building three data-integrated software systems for Exxon, this included fostering the formation of pdXi (1989-1999) and serving as Chairman of both the Technical and the Administrative Committees. In addition to data integration, Teague promoted calculation integration by developing of reusable calculation libraries for thermodynamics and physical properties and multiphase fluid flow calculations (1984-1986 and 1992-1995). Teague encouraged the use of object-oriented software development and reusability techniques since 1994 and the use of web technology for Intranets since 1996.

Software Integration Teague was the project manager (1994-1998) for a large, object-oriented, C++ engineering software development project using MS Windows and Microsoft Foundation Class library, spanning 4 years and 2 major releases. Innovative and effective software management processes were used to build consensus across multiple company divisions for a team of people to create a user-friendly, flexible, extensible, and data-integrated software environment for thermodynamics, physical properties and other in-house engineering calculations. This project team cost-effectively produced a commercial-quality product with software reusability levels of greater than 50%. In addition to this most recent project, Teague led two other data-integrated software suite development projects at Exxon - process facilities software on the mainframe platform (1984-1987) and artificial lift software on the Windows PC platform (1990-1994).

Technical Contributer In addition to leadership assignments, Teague contributed to Exxon's technical work including researching the application of digital process control technology for the Exxon upstream (1980-1981), actively working on and supporting EPR's in-house process simulator (1981-1984), and evaluating, selecting and licensing commercial process simulation technology (1984-1986) and (1993-1994). Throughout pdXi's extensive object-oriented process engineering data model development (1991-1999), Teague has served as a key domain expert reviewer for it's object-oriented data model.

Training Teague developed course material and taught numerous courses in process design, process simulation and fluid property prediction to several hundred engineers, receiving several outstanding instructor awards.

Design Sciences, Inc., Pittsburgh, PA  (1977-1980)

Fault Tree Analysis Consultant Performed a fault-tree failure and reliability analysis for a steam boiler facility for a pharmaceutical company to ensure high reliability heat sources for pharmaceutical research laboratories. This project involved the construction of a fairly large reliability fault tree (500+ gates and 1000+ events) by reviewing plant P&ID's and operating procedures.

Consequence Analysis Modeling Consultant Researched calculation models and developed computer software to predict vapor cloud dispersion models (including dense gas spreading effects) and overpressure prediction explosion analysis software to support fault tree risk assessment studies. The models included predicting fluid leak rates from pressurized vessels and pipes, jet entrainment mixing of fluids in air, and prediction of vapor generation rates from boiling cryogenic liquids on both diked and undiked liquid spills. This software was used on several occasions with the leak rate prediction software to estimate geographic extent of vapor clouds relative to the upper and lower flammability limits of hydrocarbons and the toxicity limits for hazardous substances such as H₂S.

Training Assisted in the preparation of course materials and teaching of several sessions of a 3-day, hands-on industrial short course on fault tree analysis offered at Carnegie-Mellon and on-site for industrial clients.

Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing, St. Paul, MN  (1972-1975)

Co-op undergraduate student. Completed 7 quarters of co-op assignments that included various laboratory, pilot plant and engineering assignments. Wrote incinerator heat and material balance program for analyzing waste solvent incinerator performance.

Skills and Technical Areas

Software Project Management, Software Requirements Analysis, User Interface Design, Data Modeling, Object-Oriented Analysis/Design, UML, XML, Rational Rose, Visual C++, MFC, Visual Basic, Fortran, EXCEL, MS Project, MS Access, Visio, Hysys, Aspen Plus, Process Design, Process Simulation, Process Equipment Design, Multiphase Fluid Flow Simulation, Thermodynamics and Physical Properties, Process Control, Quantitive Risk Analysis, Fault Tree Analysis

Education

1980, PhD - Chemical Engineering, Carnegie-Mellon University, Thesis:  "A Strategy for the Design of Operating Procedures"  Advisor: Gary J. Powers

1978, MS - Chemical Engineering, Carnegie-Mellon University, Thesis: "Diagnosis Procedures from Fault Tree Analysis"  Advisor: Gary J. Powers

1976, BS - Chemical Engineering, Summa Cum Laude, University of Cincinnati

Publications

T. L. Teague and J. T. Baldwin, "The Emerging Discipline of Info Transfer," Proceedings of the Foundations of Computer Aided Process Design Conference (FOCAPD99), July, 1999

T. L. Teague, MS Thesis, "Diagnostic Procedures from Fault Tree Analysis," Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, May, 1978

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Last modified: May 06, 2000