My Name is Jamie Welch, I am 40yrs of age and have 19yrs experience in various planning roles within the petro-chemical industry. I served a mechanical apprenticeship and shortly after completing that moved to the planning arena. My first few years were spent in the maintenance scheduling group as a contractor and having responsibility for the planning and co-ordination of Single Unit Turnarounds, during this time my main tools were Microsoft Project and Suretrak. I then worked in the scheduling dept for a few yrs using JMS/Intplan (with Kvarner Oil and Gas) before moving onto SAP. In 1997 I joined the staff at Conocophillips Humber Refinery after having proved myself as a good planner/scheduler whilst working as a contractor. Immediately I moved into the Projects group being the planner on a £200MM clean fuels project which included new build units and revamp. Throughout my career in Projects I have used Primavera and class myself as whilst not being an expert in all fields being a very competant user. My role now is as Lead Project planner supervising and providing knowledge to a group of 3. We typically run with a capital budget of £50-75MM made up up of circa 150 live projects ranging in cost from £10k to £10MM. 

I have worked at the Refinery all my career which could be seen as a hinderence but my belief is that planning principles don't really change wherever you work but mearly adapt to the situation.