Why We're Lowering Our Rates - and Why Now?

The post-pandemic recovery for our industry has been rather bumpy and sluggish. Organizations in our industry have seen lost profits, closures, and bankruptcies. Many past, present, and future clients of ours seem to be struggling. It has not simply been the COVID pandemic that has affected all us, but ongoing international conflict and political changes have also impacted our industry in many ways.

Having been in the industry for many years, and being early pioneers in using risk management to optimize maintenance and inspection planning, we understand how it becomes even more critical to manage your equipment intelligently and efficiently.

At Asset Optimization Consultants, we have always believed that delivering true value means more than providing expert consulting: It is about ensuring our solutions remain accessible and impactful for the clients we serve.

That is why we are making a change: Effective immediately, we are lowering our rates.

Why now?

• Challenging economic conditions:

  We know our clients and other organizations are under pressure to do more with less. Ever since the COVID pandemic, our industry has changed. Higher feed stock costs have been driven by the initial demand recovery in 2021 for crude as well as supply constraints driven by increased regulations and permitting. West Texas Intermediate prices prior to 2021 were steady at a maximum of 60 $/bbl. Then in 2022 we had a sharp increase to a maximum of 100+ $/bbl. Under current economic pressure, effective and efficient planning and implementation become even more critical. Inspections cost money and the cost is not just inspection labor, particularly during turnarounds. It can also involve lost production and additional maintenance costs. A 2007 case study by the EIA estimated, for a large refiner, that losses could be as much as $3 million for each day a turnaround goes beyond it's planned time. Making use of an experienced consultant such as AOC that is well versed in the optimization of maintenance planning can go a long way to staying on schedule. By adjusting our pricing, we aim to ease the pressure you may be feeling without compromising the quality of our work.

• Commitment to long-term partnerships:

  Since AOC has been in business, we have been successful at maintaining our client relationships. We are dedicated to forming long-term partnerships with owner/user companies by ensuring ongoing compliance with OSHA Process Safety Management (PSM), EPA RMP, and API standards (510, 570, 653, 581). Our commitment is to support your facilities in maintaining safe, reliable, and cost-effective operations through disciplined inspection programs, risk-based methodologies, and timely execution of corrective actions. Therefore, lowering rates is not just a short-term adjustment, it is an investment in building sustainable, trusted relationships with our clients.

• Efficiency gains:

  The COVID pandemic taught us a lot. Up to that time we were seen by our clients in their facilities for the majority of each project. That all changed during the lockdowns and we could not engage with clients as previously stated. The big change for us was the reworking of our RBI work process to be more efficient. Data collection is the most arduous step in implementing an MI/RBI program. Through the development of some proprietary tooling, AOC is now able to extract and review RBI data very efficiently in a spreadsheet. Once this spreadsheet has been reviewed and accepted, MiGratum™, AOC's proprietary data migration tool allows us to format that data and load it into any MI software application on the market. Therefore we have refined our processes and leveraged new technologies to work smarter and we are passing those savings directly back to our clients.

Our mission has always been to help clients unlock greater performance, reliability, and profitability. This rate change reflects that mission in action.

To inquire about our new rates and learn more about how AOC can support your asset optimization goals, please contact us. Or reach out directly to Scott Jones (President) or myself, Mike Hurley (VP, Technology).

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