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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Dowland-Bach: High-tech fabrication, designed and made in Alaska
Instrumentation and specialty fabricator sees promise in ANWR, will stay busy with upgrades on existing pipelines and drill sites By Petroleum News • Alaska
The brightly lit Dowland-Bach factory in Anchorage is warm, dry and lined with specialized tools for efficiently working stainless steel into a variety of products. By contrast, the finished products Dowland-Bach turns out will likely see service in harsh conditions.
The company supplies raw stainless pipe, sheet and fittings to the Alaska market. It designs and builds custom products from stainless and other alloys — and not just for the petroleum industry. Clients include government, restaurants, clinics, industrial facilities, utility and construction companies, fish-processing plants, the telecommunications industry, cruise lines, resorts and lodges and other industries.
Stainless isn’t the company’s only forte. Its custom industrial control panels are hard at work throughout the oil and gas industry, from the wellhead to the local gasoline pump. Dowland-Bach is an Underwriter’s Laboratories listed panel shop and it is qualified to build industrial control panels for use in hazardous environments. The company was founded in 1974 to meet the need for fail-safe wellhead shutdown systems at Prudhoe Bay.
These hydraulic equipment packages and their pneumatic counterparts continue to be an important part of the company’s product line today.
Location, location, location The company’s Anchorage location has positioned it well to compete against firms in larger markets outside the state, according to company co-founder and president, Lynn Johnson. Major customers such as BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. and Phillips Alaska Inc. are just minutes away from Dowland-Bach. Customers can drop by for a face-to-face meeting with Dowland-Bach engineers, or to see 3-D modeling of their designs on the company’s new AutoDesk Inventor AutoCAD system.
In the manufacturing stage it is not uncommon for the customer’s employees — who will actually install or use the equipment — to drop by the shop to view partially finished products. Slight changes suggested by these qualified personnel can result in major savings in the field through easier installation and better integration with existing systems. Often the savings are substantial, Johnson said.
“We’re familiar with North Slope specs,” said Reed Christiansen, Dowland-Bach general manager. “Operators from the slope drop by; we make changes on the spot.”
Meeting customers’ needs This front-line responsiveness to Alaskan industry — combined with Dowland-Bach’s capabilities — also has won major business for the firm, from Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., VECO Inc. and Cominco Alaska Inc. The firm’s products are located not just on the North Slope or in the Cook Inlet area, but in Kodiak, Fairbanks, Homer, Seward, Kotzebue and Nome.
Because Dowland-Bach products have served so reliably in remote and extreme environments, the company was BP-Colombia’s choice to provide gear for the steamy jungles of Colombia. In addition to heat and humidity, systems in Colombia operate remotely with power provided with solar panels.
Colombia is an ongoing source of business the company owes to its responsiveness to customers and attention to quality control, Johnson said.
The company has had some business on Sakhalin Island, Johnson said, and it is eyeing the region for future business.
Design and engineering Dowland-Bach now employs three engineers and has a specialist in AutoCAD 3-D modeling in its design department. The engineers work solely on in-house projects and do not take outside engineering work, Johnson said.
“We’ve raised the bar. We have three engineers in house; previously we had only one,” Johnson said. “We want to build a better mousetrap.”
The beefed-up engineering staff, together with investments in 3-D modeling. have accelerated the company’s pace of innovation.
“The Inventor software for 3D modeling gives us a working model without the cost and time of manufacturing one,” said Dowland-Bach engineer Mike Wise. “We can see moving parts and alignment, and we can tweak the product electronically.”
The software has been in use at Dowland-Bach for two years, Wise said. Now the company is increasing its use of the 3-D modeling process. The company’s AutoCAD specialist, Pam McNaughton, recently completed advanced training on the Inventor 3-D modeling software.
“If you had to draw this and make the amount of changes we did, it would take weeks and months,” McNaughton said as she displayed a 3-D rendering she had been working on for several hours. “Drawing parts takes seconds.”
McNaughton said the software could basically “bend” sheet metal in cyberspace and then display a rendering of the result, as well as integrating the newly formed part into the whole product rendering.
The software also helps the company design more tightly to meet the industry’s growing demand for increasingly compact components within oil and gas facilities.
“On the Slope, footprint is a big factor,” Christiansen said. What’s more, the design team can instantly view the footprint of various configurations with its AutoCAD system.
Quality each step of the way Dowland-Bach’s mission statement emphasizes its commitment to quality and customer service at every step: “To be the highest quality specialty manufacturing and alloy distribution company while providing customers with responsive solutions to unique and varied industrial control challenges.”
The company pledges to maintain its customary levels of service, even as it expands.
“We have grown into an international corporation while still providing the highest level of customer satisfaction,” the company states on its Web site. “We pride ourselves in the fact our products have been operating automatically in remote locations, providing our customers with years of trouble-free service. Even though we maintain a large diversified customer base, we have the capability to engineer and manufacture products to meet our customers’ special needs.”
Dowland-Bach uses only quality components such as Swagelok Co. valves and fittings, Sandvik seamless stainless steel tubing, Haskel pumps and pressure components, Tescom regulators and Kocsis Technologies hydraulic accumulators, Johnson said.
Johnson sees a bright future for the company because of its devotion to serve its customers’ needs.
“We’re actually a niche player, we have unique products and a UL certification,” Johnson said. “We’re vertically integrated from structural, to sheet metal, to piping, to instrumentation, to controls.”
Onward and forward Johnson said the company welcomes the possibility of further exploration in Alaska, including opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But the company also anticipates substantial work ahead on existing pipelines and drill sites.
Some of the company’s equipment has been in place for 27 years in Alaska oil fields, he said. Because of the trouble-free service of the company’s products, Johnson is confident that Dowland-Bach will be involved as customers upgrade and modernize their operations.
The company is aligning itself to take part in the trend toward truckable skids and smaller modules, according to Johnson. Dowland-Bach builds some small modules in-house. Plus it provides components to other leading module builders in the state.
“We’re all about customer service and innovation, and we’re proponents of buying and building in Alaska.” Johnson said. “We’re pioneers in that.”
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