The controls seat most plants leave empty
Service agreements quietly auto-renew. Obsolescence creeps in. Capital budgets get built from vendor quotes nobody checked. Most plants run too lean to carry an automation manager who owns all of that, and the vendor on the account has a sales agenda. A fractional manager fills the seat for a set block of days each month: someone who knows how these systems are scoped, priced, and serviced, because he spent 25+ years on the vendor side doing it.
Independent and vendor neutral. No product to push and no rip-and-replace pitch. My lane is scope, bill of materials, pricing, service programs, and project management, not the config and code, so my read on scope and price is unconflicted. Month to month, and every engagement begins with a mutual NDA.
What your fractional manager owns
Service & lifecycle agreements
Track vendor SLAs and coverage, benchmark cost, and prepare every renewal with leverage instead of letting it auto-renew.
Obsolescence, spares & installed base
A living register of your DCS, PLC, SIS, and SCADA assets, with end-of-life dates, firmware, and critical spares, and a roadmap kept current.
Capital planning & budget estimates
A 5-year automation capital plan with budget-quality estimates, so funding requests rest on independent numbers, not a vendor's first quote.
Owner's project management
Your representative on migrations and upgrades: scope, schedule, change orders, and vendor or EPC performance, from kickoff through FAT and SAT.
Turnaround controls scope
Plan the controls work for outages and turnarounds: scope, bill of materials, spares staging, and vendor resourcing, locked in early.
Quote, scope & change review
An independent read on vendor quotes, scopes, MOCs, and change orders before you sign.
Vendor performance scorecards
Track the KPIs you negotiated, year over year, so the value holds up long after the contract is signed.
Alarm performance
Monitor ISA-18.2 metrics, catch drift, and keep nuisance alarms down so operators see what matters.
Knowledge capture & succession
Document what your experienced techs know before they retire, and get new staff and contractors productive faster.
OT cyber-resilience
Periodic exposure checks and practical, mostly low-cost procedure and configuration fixes, coordinated with your IT team.
Add-on and project engagements
Add any of these to a retainer, or engage them on their own as a fixed-scope project.
Interim controls manager & hiring support
Cover a vacant or on-leave automation manager seat, then help you define the role, interview candidates, and choose the permanent hire.
Service agreement RFP management
Run a competitive bid between the OEM and qualified third-party service providers, from scope and bid package to evaluation and award.
Controls due diligence for acquisitions
For buyers of plants and midstream assets: installed-base condition, obsolescence liability, and inherited service contracts, in a fixed-fee report.
SIS lifecycle administration
Proof-test scheduling, bypass and override tracking, and safety documentation control, with formal functional safety assessments by a certified partner.
Integrator panel management
Prequalify integrators, maintain your approved list and rate cards, and bid-level their proposals so every project starts on fair terms.
Funding packages for water utilities
Budget-quality estimates and the written justification that state revolving fund and grant applications need for SCADA upgrades.
Audit & insurance readiness
Get instrumentation and safety system records ready for process safety audits and insurer risk surveys. Documentation work, not engineering.
Legacy spares sourcing
A plan for discontinued parts: secondary-market sources, refurbishment vendors, and last-time buys, tied to your obsolescence roadmap.
How it works
- A block of days each quarter, used when you need them. Heavy around turnarounds, capital projects, and budget season, light when things are quiet. Remote first, on site when it matters.
- A regular report. What changed, what needs attention, and what to do next, in plain language for your team and your leadership.
- Direct access between visits. A quick call or email when a question comes up, not a new statement of work every time.
- Quarter to quarter. Mutual NDA first. Engagements run from about a week and a half a quarter to an embedded partner during major work.
A manager, not a break-fix call. Problems caught early are cheap to fix, and contracts reviewed early are cheaper to renew. A fractional manager already knows your plant, your history, and your vendors, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire.
Independent, vendor neutral, quarter to quarterWho it is for
Lean plants without an automation manager
Refining, LNG, petrochemical, specialty chemical, midstream, power, and water sites that carry DCS, PLC, SIS, and SCADA risk but have no one in-house who owns the lifecycle.
Overloaded controls teams
Your engineers are buried in projects and daily support. Contracts, obsolescence, and the capital plan still need an owner between projects.
Sites whose capital work goes to an EPC
The big project has a home. The day-to-day lifecycle, vendor contracts, and an independent check on scope and price still need one.
Multi-site and investor-owned operators
One consistent lifecycle and vendor program across several plants, without hiring a corporate automation lead.
Related: Service Agreements · Obsolescence & Reliability · Alarm Management · OT Cyber-Resilience