Industrial commissioning automation
I turned the commissioning paperwork of a large industrial project into software.
As the data specialist on a large minerals-processing expansion in its commissioning and handover phase, my day was repetitive, high-stakes data work: pulling records, validating them, formatting reports, signing off readiness packages. So I built a toolkit of automations to do it.
Large minerals-processing expansion · commissioning & handover
1,300+
subsystems on the project
14,000
equipment tags
13,000+
checksheets
An AI assistant that runs the whole toolkit
The automations above started as discrete scripts. The layer that turns them into one system is an AI assistant I built on top of them.
It delegates work to background agents, runs the tools on command, and keeps a versioned memory that travels across machines. Instead of remembering which script to run and how, I talk to one assistant and it orchestrates the rest.
- Delegates bigger jobs to background agents and merges the results.
- Runs the discrete automations as a single, callable toolkit.
- Keeps a version-controlled memory shared across machines.
The named pieces
Each of these is its own project. Two have a full case study; the rest are described here.
NoE Toolkit
Three desktop tools behind one launcher: generate the energization documents, batch-repaint the drawings in Visio, and find which drawing a subsystem or tag lives on. The biggest single time-saver in the whole toolkit.
Co-developed with a colleague
PIMS & RFCC Automation
Readiness reports generated straight from the data-platform API, and an unattended sign-off flow that imports the readiness list, pulls the handover documents, uploads files and metadata, and signs the certificates.
Power BI progress dashboard
One command pulls the data exports, drives the browser export of the document register, syncs the readiness sheet, and refreshes the Power BI model. Daily commissioning progress stopped depending on anyone being at a desk.
WP Splitter
Takes a scanned work pack, one PDF of hundreds of pages, OCRs every page, splits it into one PDF per checksheet, and attaches each file to the matching row in the commissioning database. A browser review step lets the engineer drag pages between checksheets and correct a misread code before anything uploads.
BIC custody highlighter
Resolves every equipment tag to its subsystem and its readiness state, then shades the boundary document by custody: grey for commissioning, red for construction. Ships as a one-click desktop app as well as a script.
Project report generator
Pulls the completed task-board cards for any date range and writes them up as formatted Word reports, so the daily write-up is generated rather than typed.
The smaller automations underneath
Less visible than the pieces above, and the reason the day runs without me.
Overnight unattended orchestration
Runs the whole morning pipeline headless overnight and leaves the draft outputs ready for review.
Energization (NoE) linker
Bulk-links energized subsystems' tags to their commissioning numbers, hundreds of associations per run.
Checksheet field sync
Diffs an update file and syncs only the changed rows across 13,000+ checksheets.
Live readiness data pipeline
Pulls subsystem readiness from a shared sheet so there is one source of truth for custody.
Document-register (HOP) exporter
A browser bot filters the construction handover register and exports it to Excel.
Timesheet auto-fill
Reads the generated reports and fills the timesheet web app, hours and descriptions per day.
Task-board triage
Audits the board for missing labels, wrong lists, and overdue cards, and fixes them on confirmation.
Real field work, taken off my hands by code.
The code stays private. The capability is the point. See the rest of what Lucas builds.