Abfad Limited

Review of ABB Industrial Systems Ltd, UK

Abfad Ltd will never use ABB equipment again, we w...

Abfad Ltd will never use ABB equipment again, we will never use JWF Instrumentation as a supplier for equipment as badly let down by both these companies.

Abfad Ltd bought seven ABB vacuum transducer valves and a vacuum pressure monitoring unit for leak detection monitoring of seven underground storage tanks which were installed in early 2018, this equipment was purchased from JWF Instrumentation.

The system was specified by ABB and JWF and installed by Abfad Ltd once the project was fully discussed over a period of several visits to our office and transfer of emails, however the system never worked from day one with the monitor unit constantly going into alarm. Readings from the valves to the unit were not correct and many visits to site from all company pursued, three years later the system still does not operate.

A report was written by ABB after the most recent site visit which we have never seen blaming the system failure (we have been informed) on the valves being fully submerged which has caused the seals to distort on four of the valves, we dispute this claim as the valves are located high up in the tank chambers and there is no indication that the chambers has flooded, also when first installed there was no fluid in any of the chambers, the ABB Engineer stated to our Site Supervisor on the last visit that the seals in the valves may not be fit for this environment, we believe the system specified by ABB and JWF is not fit for purpose, it has never operated without an alarm initiating within an hour of personnel leaving site.

It was agreed that to resolve this issue that new valves had to be purchased and installed with ABB Engineer overseeing installation however no warranty was being provided and no return of funds if the system then did not then operate, we could not accept these conditions after three years of failure. Future buyers beware, after spending thousands of pounds on ABB equipment the monitoring system always defaulted to alarm, the monitoring unit had to be return during one visit to site and repaired by ABB and after returned and reinstalled still did not resolve the issue with valves continuing to send out incorrect readings and unit going into alarm, it is our belief that the specification was not suitable or fit for purpose, this has been a total waste of money and an enormous amount of time especially by Abfad personnel with some input from JWF and ABB all of which failed to resolve the site issues.

In order for the client to receive a system that does operate and monitor the tanks we are changing all the equipment to another manufacturers equipment and will never use ABB equipment again, we will never use JWF Instrumentation as a supplier for equipment as badly let down by both these companies.