Siemens opens turbine centre in Lincoln

Company invests “tens of millions” to improve servicing

Siemens has officially opened its gas turbine service centre at Teal Park in Lincoln, consolidating servicing operations from several sites in the region to a single purpose-built facility.

Around 600 technicians, engineers and back office staff are based at the new centre, which the company says cost “tens of millions of pounds” to build.

Siemens’ service business in Lincoln maintains a fleet of around 1800 gas turbines installed around the world in the oil and gas and power sectors. The new Teal Park centre handles the complete overhaul of turbines as well as short call breakdowns and is designed to handle up to 250 turbines a year.

The company aims to reduce the time it takes to overhaul an engine from 30 to 60 days to under 10 through improvements to the engine stripping and rebuild process at the new centre.

Steve Middleborough, director of Service Engineering at Siemens in Lincoln, said: “The idea is to achieve these efficiency improvements through just in time manufacturing and leaning the process as much as possible. The space we have here means we can run a pulse line and increase the size of the inventory we can hold.”

The 85,000 sq ft workshop features a new temperature controlled machining area for the precise measurement and renovation of components such as turbine blades and a Shenk high speed balancer capable of handling turbines of up to 25MW.

Siemens has many turbines installed in the North Sea on oil rigs and refineries with clients such as BP, Shell, Total and Talisman. The life expectancy of a Siemens industrial gas turbine is between 18 and 20 years. However, it is not uncommon to see much older engines from the 1970’s, especially from the North Sea, where oil companies have sought to reinvigorate old equipment which up until recently had been planned for decommissioning, said Middleborough.

Siemens employs 1,600 people in its gas turbine manufacturing and service businesses in Lincoln. The new service centre was opened by the daughters of the late Robert Feilden, after whom the building is named. Fielden was part of the Frank Whittle team that developed the first jet engine and subsequently worked at Ruston and Hornsby in Lincoln where he developed the first industrial gas turbines.

A gallery of photographs of Fielden House can be found here.