Available from today, a new Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) Category Selection calculator application (app), developed by Lloyd’s Register Group Ltd. (LR; London, U.K.; www.lr.org), will provide manufacturers with instant access to customized information about the E.U. directive (97/23/EC). The app also helps facilitate engineering calculations with graphical illustrations to better understand how to obtain CE marking for their products.
Pascal Coudeville, senior vice president of Lloyd’s Register’s Inspection business says “This mobile app is in line with Lloyd’s Register’s mission to provide value to society by helping ensure the safety of high-risk assets. We’re providing industry with an easy-to-understand process to meet a critical safety standard.”
With the choice of four languages — English, Dutch, Spanish and Mandarin — the app makes the EC directive information accessible to a global audience.
“Navigating the PED process can be confusing for global manufacturers,” highlights Coudeville. “Now they have a user-friendly tool that helps sort through technical requirements and points out where they need the aid of a notified body for certification, such as Lloyd’s Register.”
Designed with busy engineers and surveyors in mind, the new app is an extension of Lloyd’s Register’s popular desktop PED category selection calculator that has been downloaded thousands of times since it was introduced in 2004.
“At Lloyd’s Register we have an on-going commitment to make the availability of information and guidance around directives easier, faster and more interactive,” says Robin Pickup, vice president of Industry for Lloyd’s Register. “This new PED app gives manufacturers real-time flexibility to assess which part of the directive is applicable to their equipment and what they need to do by pressing a few virtual buttons on their smartphones or tablet.”
The Lloyd’s Register PED app also includes images and illustrations making sure users see more of what they need to know and less of what they don’t.
Jason Knights, Global Communications Manager at Lloyd’s Register comments: “Why are companies willing to risk their reputation, money and time using outdated methods to find information? The data from the PED calculator is far too important to leave it on Excel or Word documents stored in a filing cabinet somewhere. Companies want answers fast and the data accessible right away — eliminating guesswork.”
Knights highlights: “Regulatory authorities want to see that companies are well organized and using the right tools when it comes to designing and manufacturing equipment and assemblies in one part of the world which are destined for use in other parts of the world. Our new PED app is a solution for manufacturers wanting to manufacture pressure equipment for use in the European market.”
The app has been produced to support the Lloyd’s Register brand’s technical innovation. It coincides with the company’s recent launch of a new software innovation for operators in the oil and gas sector, where work with leading drilling and operating companies in the Gulf of Mexico led to improving methods of modelling performance and assessing the risks related to the industry’s most safety-critical piece of equipment, the Blowout Preventer (BOP).
Lloyd’s Register plans to add more languages to the PED app over the coming months and is already planning the launch of a series of new apps later this year and in 2014, designed to help companies and their employees operating in the energy sector with guidance and real-time tools.
The Lloyd’s Register PED app is free to download and use, and is available for Apple devices as well as Android smartphones and tablets in the Apple App Store and Google Play. It is for use in the US, Asia and across Europe.