Michael Ralston Email & Phone Number

Tulsa, Oklahoma Area

Beggs, Oklahoma, United States

Engineer, design and construct State licensed medical marijuana facility. Impleented prorietary hydroponic design, water cooled LED lighting and cultivation techniques to increase yield and potency of cannabis crops. Demonstrated 85% eduction in marginal cost of operation.

Global

Director of Sales and Applied Technology of a start-up technology company, which designs and manufactures an engineered structured catalyst for steam methane reforming. Responsible for establishing strategic global alliances for product development, testing and commercialization. Working closely with technology partners, operating facilities and academic community to value engineer a line of proprietary structured catalyst products for use in hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, direct reduction iron, and gas-to-liquids production.

Manager of Sales and Marketing, Hydrogen and Syngas Business Unit of a 350 person engineering and design office in Tulsa, OK. Responsibilities included business development, sales and marketing of hydrogen and syngas production facilities utilizing Linde proprietary technologies. Coverage included NAFTA market region. Established sales targets and developed strategies to grow market share from nil to over 30%. Project sizes ranged from $50 - $300 million. Technologies included steam methane reforming, pressure swing adsorption, CO2 recovery, acid gas removal units, and cryogenic units for hydrocarbon recovery. Responsible for developing and promoting strategic technology alliances to further promote proprietary Linde technologies. Coordinated teaming arrangement with key alliance partners to promote cost effective design and safe construction implementation.

Director Sales and Marketing of 90 person engineering and design office in Blue Bell, PA. Responsibilities included business development, sales and marketing of reforming, ethylene cracking and EDC cracking furnaces, refinery heaters, LNG vaporizers, thermal oxidation and flameless thermal oxidation product lines. Establishing sales targets, staffing consistent with sales targets, new product line development in the areas of NOx reduction, hydrogen reformers and applications for flameless oxidation technology. Developed technical and marketing alliances to promote new product lines. Directed Strategic Planning initiative to grow company from $40 million to $90 million using existing staffing levels.

Various

Deputy General Manager and Manager of Business Development of 40-person engineering and design office located in Concord, California. Responsibilities include establishing sales targets, staffing consistent with sales targets, new product line development in the areas of NOx reduction, small hydrogen plants, sulfur plants and power generation. 2000 – 2001Business Development Manager and Strategic Alliance Coordinator responsible for sales and marketing, business development, strategic planning, continuous improvement programs and new program development working with Air products and Chemicals (APCI). APCI represented largest single client for the North American Operations. Major accomplishments include:• Securing along with APCI over $500 million in hydrogen plant capital programs• Strategic Alliance awards with Equilon, SembAP, Syncrude, Suncor and Clark Refining• Established and accomplished Continuous Improvement goals to reduce capital costs while enhancing plant reliability• Development of reference plant designs resulting in reduced bid cycles by 30%, reduced bid costs by 70%, reduced total plant cost by 35% and reduced schedule by 25%.• Negotiated contracts resulting in a 5-fold increase in profitability for the Company.

Business Development Manager of strategic alliance with Brown & Root (currently KBR), for the integration of proprietary technologies in ethylene production, ammonia production and refining. Responsible for worldwide joint marketing activity. Coordinated development of reference plant designs for gas and liquid cracking furnaces for ethylene and propylene production and primary reformer for ammonia production. Accomplishments include:• Strategic alliance awards with EQUATE (Union Carbide JV in Kuwait), Oxychem, Quantum, Dow Chemical, Huntsman Chemical, Shell Chemical, ENRON, Novacor Chemical, Novosibersk (FSU) and Daqing Petrochemical Complex (China), Qatari Petrochemicals, Exxon/Mobil Petrochemicals (Venezuela), Petrokemya (Saudi). Value to Company: $220 million• Development of cost-effective cracking furnace integration resulting in 10% installed cost reduction for liquid cracking and 5% for gas cracking.• Development of cost-effective primary reformer design resulting in reduction of installed cost of 10%.• Integration of Company and Client process technology groups to streamline bid cycle to reduce costs 70% and bid cycle 30%.• Development of reference plant designs that reduced total installed plant cost by an additional 10%.

Project Manager with technical and commercial responsibility for expansion of the BP Oil Louisiana Refinery. Expansion budget was $200 million and required 200,000 direct home office man-hours. Refinery units affected included MEROX, diesel hydrotreater, benzene recovery, sulfur recovery, off-sites and tankage, and hydrogen purification. Coordinated teaming arrangement with BP to promote cost effective design and safe construction implementation. Accomplishments include:• Securing “at risk” portion of fee in every quarter of operation of the expansion project.• Actual man-hours expended 5% less than budgeted, resulting in savings to BP of roughly $800,000.• Actual schedule for each expansion unit was as good as or better than budgeted.

Various Worldwide

Project Manager assignments throughout the Company, as follows:KTI Corporation, USA 1987-1990 Management of technical and commercial resources for executing steam methane reformer projects for Husky Oil and Saudi Methanol, EDC cracking furnace project for VISTA Chemical, and ultra low NOx furnace technology projects for LUZ Energy. All projects were executed on a lump sum turnkey basis, involving engineering, design and construction, and were completed meeting all budget and schedule constraints.Evergreen Oil, USA 1983-1987 Project involved establishment of proprietary re-refining technology into the first North American production facility. Responsibility included liaison with finance authorities for the IDRBs issued for the project, coordination with licensor of technology and hiring operating staff.KTI SpA, Italy 1982-1983Technical and commercial responsibility for execution of lump sum engineering/procurement/construction contracts of steam methane reformer and associated refinery heaters for Petromin Shell refinery in Saudi Arabia. Responsibilities included expediting European and Far East equipment manufacturers, negotiating progress payments with USA, Japanese and French client consortium.KTI GmbH, Germany 1980-1982 Technical and commercial responsibility for execution of lump sum engineering/procurement/construction contracts for refinery heaters and flare product lines. Clients included ICA and Dow Chemical.KTI BV, Holland 1978-1980Internal Auditor responsible for operational audits of KTI offices worldwide. Reported to corporate Board of Directors. Provided guidelines and implementation steps to increase operating efficacy of operations audited to increase profit margin and to more adequately serve clients.

Master Of Science (Msc), Engineering/Industrial Management

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Engineering/Industrial Management

Bachelor Of Science (Bsc), Management Engineering

Education record