We just returned from an excellent event at the Valve World America 2017 conference and exhibition in Houston last week. A larger than before number of instrumentation and automation professionals joined valve manufacturers and suppliers both on the floor and at the presentations that covered a variety of topics.

There were two workshops, the one on Control Valve Reliability Prediction (CVRP) based on technologies introduced by CONVAL^® and the Emergency Shut Down Valves (ESDV) reliability prediction workshop, discussing thoughts and ideas for future technologies to be built into CONVAL^®.

In addition a full day seminar on the combined Automated Valve Reliability Prediction (AVRP) took place on June 22'nd at the Puffer Sweiven offices in Houston with participation of almost 40 people representing operating companies, EPC, valve and actuator vendors as well as several leaders of the ISA committees.

Proceeds of the seminar are available upon request and a follow up activities are planned with the next meeting of the self-organized special interest group in January.