Company Details
Name: Amber Programmable Design Ltd
Date Founded: 1987
Sector: Engineering/Energy
Key Products/Services: Electrical Design, Control Panel Design, Software Engineering, Electrical Installation, Industrial Automation, Process Control, ATEX & Hazardous Area Design, Renewable & Smart Energy Solutions.
Website URL: www.apd.solutions and www.apd.energy
Executive Summary
In a single line, we regard ourselves as a solutions provider. What we mean by that is we will work with a client to determine the best possible solution to enable them to maximise the value of their investment in their plant, machinery, energy and engineer it as a turnkey solution.
We build trust with our clients. This is important for any business but in our case, because the nature of what we do is often very specialised and bespoke, there aren’t too many companies doing what we do. This means that many of the large multi-national brand names find themselves dealing with a relatively small company like ourselves and it is critical for us to build trust very early within that relationship, then ensure we retain it.
Innovation, an often-overused word but we genuinely use it to drive forward every decision we make for a client. The world changes fast these days in many respects. It will be many years, if ever, before we have technology to remove copper wires within our control systems, but the same is not true of the hardware and software platforms driving these systems, we have a passion to deliver tomorrow’s solutions today. Why? Because, typically, our systems will be in daily use for 20 or more years, so we must protect the client’s investment by designing the systems based on the hardware and software principles that will still be reliable in two decades time, whilst achieving a seamless integration to any existing systems today.
Global coverage but designed and built in Scotland. We are very proud of the fact that we have at least one large control panel on every continent on the planet, nearly, we still need one on Antarctica! When Australia hosted the 2000 Olympics not many would know that a small company from Scotland designed and built the control system for a large, automated laundry built in the old Paramatta Prison that stored and sorted huge volumes of clothes worn by the athletes and officials at the Games, that company was APD. Afterwards we re-purposed the systems to handle the vast quantities of laundry delivered from all the hospitals in the Sydney area providing a vastly improved and efficient way for the State Health board to reduce it’s costs.
The Challenge
In one respect we face the same challenges every business faces, finding skilled staff, keeping those staff, paying bills, transitioning to Nett Zero, the list goes on. A challenge that is more unique to us is the perception by some clients that, because we live in a world where much of it can be organised on a mobile phone, everything is ‘easy’ and can be done by a touch on a screen. What could possibly be difficult when we can just ask AI how to do it? What makes our systems different is that these touches onto AI configured screens often ends up with a huge piece of moving, rotating or power hungry equipment springing to life to overcome the challenge of that particular client.
In summary, we thrive on challenge.
The Solution
Our first line stated, we are the solution provider. Whether you are controlling sub-sea equipment located 1000’s of feet down on the seabed, to controlling helicopter winch equipment on the deck of a ship, to cranes on oil rigs, to sorting laundry, to controlling robots in car factories, to tracing every aspect of a car tyre’s production, to controlling the malting process of whisky, to implementing energy monitoring at some of the country’s most famous stadiums, to designing the control for a world-first large thermal storage system, to working with a start-up in new ways to make hydrogen, to designing the controls for one of the world’s best respected (and Scottish) Boiler manufacturers, we are their solution provider.
The Impact
It’s very difficult to put into numbers 38 years of work as previously described. We believe our impact over these years has been immense for our clients and our results prove it, as they keep coming back for more.
Future Plans
In our view the future is bright but that bright must be green. To that end we continue to grow our capabilities in providing clients with energy optimised solutions which will not only cost them less in energy terms but also assist them on their own journey to quantify and ultimately lower their carbon footprint.
This has many facets overall, but we have designed and built from scratch a system we call EnKey. We believe it provides a unique approach to any new or existing site automatically optimising energy use, it’s what is currently running the building this is being typed in.