IVS 2021, the new Advisory Board of the fair takes office

The organizers of IVS, Confindustria Bergamo and Promoberg, have chosen together with Valve Campus the team of experts who will constitute the Advisory Board for the conference part of the 2021 edition of the fair, which will be held on the next 26 and May 27. The body brings together, at an international level, nineteen key figures representing the major stakeholders in the supply chain. Specifically, these are end users, engineering companies, manufacturers, the panorama of universities, professional associations and certification bodies. The Committee will be chaired by Maurizio Brancaleoni, president of Valve Campus.

The Advisory Board will examine and select the technical-scientific papers that will be presented during the cycles of conferences and workshops that will be held during the dates of the fair, and will choose the documents with the most innovative and technological content among the papers that will be sent to IVS by 15 December 2020, the date on which the Call for Papers for the fourth edition of the summit will close. The scientific committee applies specific criteria to choose the best technical and scientific memories: these will be selected according to the the quality of the contents, the real applications, the attention to the implications on a practical level and the consistency with the macro themes indicated.

Maurizio Brancaleoni, president of Valve Campus, who has been the reference technical-scientific partner of IVS since its foundation, says: "The summit has never linited to be a global exhibition offer but it wants to propose to the world as a place for exchange of knowledge, innovation and skills for all those involved in the development and innovation of the sector. This development has been promoted by the Advisory Board, which plays a fundamental role in involving the players that represent the international panorama of industrial valves, identifying issues and trends and examining strategic developments in the sector."

The 2021 edition will provide a further opportunity for growth for the summit. IVS organizers will create an extra pavilion, bringing the exhibition area of the fair from 13,000 to 18,000 square meters. A development necessary to accompany the strong growth of the fair, witnessed by the rise in the number of visitors, exhibitors and traffic on communication channels. The third edition of the summit attracted more than 250 companies and almost 11,000 visitors to the Orobic capital, numbers 36% higher than the 8,000 attendances recorded in the 2017 edition and tripled compared to the 3,500 admissions registered in 2015. In addition, the number of visitors has quadrupled. access to the fair's website in the months preceding the exhibition, and went from 70,000 registered in 2017 to 300,000 last year.

Paolo Piantoni, General Manager of Confindustria Bergamo, states that IVS is establishing itself as an opportunity of meeting between producers in the Italian and European sector of industrial valves and the main international players in the Oil & Gas sector. Moreover for the next edition we are investing in the scientific and educational part of the fair, with the specific aim of making it become an always stronger reference point for technicians and operators in the sector. Confindustria Bergamo regards this as a good opportunity to support a complex and strategic supply chain for the territory. In addition to valves, our companies cover the entire Oil & Gas supply chain: heat exchangers, piping, pumps, machinery, instrumentation, boilers and more.

The market is strongly linked to the price of oil, which has undergone a drastic reduction due to the collapse in consumption. As a consequence there was a sharp slowdown in investments. This situation makes IVS a central moment to understand the evolution of the sector and stimulate its development, thanks to the adoption of new materials, to the digital transformation, to the application of green energy, additive manufacturing and much more. In our vision, IVS 2021 therefore represents an important moment in the restart of the sector and in particular of the economy of the Bergamo area.

The Advisory Board is made up of 19 experts:

Bader Al-Jarallah, Saudi, is Saudi Aramco valve engineering specialist, part of the Company’s central engineering. He served as the chairman of valve engineering standards committee as well as the member of several engineering standards committees. In the recent years he has achieved a series of international certificates related to valve technologies. He is the author of several international publications and he’s a speaker in courses and workshops.

Rob Bartlett, from the UK, is Director and Chief Executive Officer of BVAA, the association representing the valves and actuators supply chain in the UK. He is the editor of Valve User magazine and plays a leading role in information and dissemination of scientific literature in the sector. For forty years he was an engineer specialized in the field of valves and flow control.

Courtney Rau, from the US, is global product manager for valves and pipelines at Chevron, Company where she has been working for 14 years and in which she has acquired a cross-cutting professional experience. She was a business analyst for the supply chain and she has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility in midstream and upstream supply chain in Houston.  

Carlo De Bernardi joined ConocoPhillips in 2012 as Corporate Valve SME supporting the company’s projects and operations globally. He is also leading several innovation Projects ranging from online valve condition monitoring systems to validation and use of additive manufacturing processes in Oil & Gas applications in collaboration with other major oil companies and manufacturers.

Carlo Mapelli is member of the board of director of Finarvedi and Siderweb and he’s the former president of the Italian Association for Metallurgy. He’s professor at the Department of Mechanics of the Milan Polytechnic. In 2014 he intervened as an expert in the Industry Commission of the Senate of the Italian Republic. The Federation of European Material Society awarded him the title of FEMS Lecturer Award for Excellence in Material 2010 based on the results of the research and teaching activity.

David Edwin-Scott, British, has been the technical director of the European Sealing Association since 2011 and has forty years of experience in the sealing industry. He was head of technical activities of James Walker Group's including research and development, technical support, product and material design and process engineering. He published several technical studies and scientific texts and was a member of the British Committee for Technical Standards.

Brian Lade, Canadian, is Syncrude's Senior Technical Specialist in process plants. He has acquired forty years of experience in the Canadian company, one of the largest producers of synthetic crude oil from oil sands, in which he is part of the technical quality assurance team, project development. He was a member of the Alberta pressure equipment council and he is still part of the Canadian technical council for boilers, pressure vessels and pressure piping code.

Ron Merrick, from the United States, he is recently retired as a Senior fellow and director of piping material engineering at Fluor Enterprises in Sugar Land, Texas, with responsibility for Fluor’s corporate master piping material catalog. He is the author of the book “Valve Selection and Specification Guide” and has been the chairman of the PVF Roundtable, an organization focused on the piping, valve and jointing industry, as well as the chairman of committees representing the US valve manufacturing industry.

Terje Moe from Norway is a senior valve specialist at Equinor and has forty years of engineering and sales experience. Project manager for numerous offshore projects, he has a wide experience in leading companies in the sector of industrial valves and gaskets. Since 2014 he has also been leading the Project Valve Group for valve orders in open field projects and brownfield sites, on behalf of Equinor.

Umberto Navarra is a discipline coordinator at TechnipFMC Italy, where he is leading the Valve Team at the automation and instrumentation department. He has participated during his career to more than fifty projects for Oil and Gas sector. He is a contributor of the Italian Instrumental Association, where he seats in the Board of Rome section.

Ugo Ormezzano is member of the board of Italian section of SPE, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, as well as vice president of the Business Development sector at the American company Tetra Technologies. For thirty six years he worked into the product development and application of valves and actuators. He is the founder of the Italian branch of the Ledeen actuator company.

Christian Reynes, French, represents Total E&P's exploration and production department, where he is responsible for valve and actuator applications to offshore platforms. He was part of working groups for drafting and revision of technical standards for actuators, pipes, connectors, industrial valves and extraction systems. He was Total's representative for the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers in subsea valves and actuators sector.

Domenico Sartiano is piping materials and piping classes group leader for Maire Tecnimont. He has thirty years of experience in EPC companies and in the past he was also a pipeline specialist for Snamprogetti.

Emmanuel Sauger, from France, has been working in Cetim, the French technical center for the mechanical industry, for twenty years and he is specialized in sealing technologies. He is an engineer in materials science at the French National Institute of Applied Sciences and has distinguished himself for studies on fugitive emissions, elastomer seals, rapid decompression of gases and characteristics of sealing coatings.

Pietro Scalvini has more than thirty years of experience in the Oil and Gas sector and today he is the manager of Saipem’s instrumentation, automation and telecommunication department, in the on-shore engineering&construction division. He led the Oil and Gas Engineering center for Snamprogetti in Romania.

Trace C. Scrivner, American, is a Senior Mechanical Engineer with Exxon-Mobil research and engineering. Over the last twenty two years he has supported ExxonMobil’s downstream refining and chemicals operations in the U.S., Europe, and Canada.  Although his work activities have included design, analysis, and fitness for service, his current role is Piping & Valves technology owner. He is a member of committees and task forces for the drafting and revision of technical and design standards.

Ivan Ter-Mateosyants, Russian, is the executive director of NPAA, the scientific and industrial association of Russian valve manufacturers, of which he has been a member since 2000. He participates in various working groups for legislative and executive bodies of the Russian Federation, including the Commission of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce for the classification of industrial products in the engineering sector of Oil and Gas. In 2020 he was appointed Honorary Mechanical Engineer by the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Valeria Tirelli is CEO of Aidro Hydraulics & 3D Printing, an Italian company specialized in the design and production of valves, manifolds and fluid systems. Tirelli promotes the adoption of additive manufacturing in the valve sector and hydraulic disciplines, and also takes part in international groups for the definition of guidelines and standards for the oil and gas sector.

Wojciech Zmudzinski is a valve engineer for BP America with 26 years of experience in valve design and manufacturing, in new technology qualification and in failure analysis. Graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto, he represents BP in valve and actuator committees at the American Petroleum Institute, in the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers and in the International Society of Automation.

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