Closing the Gap Between Inspection and Action: AI-Driven Plant Integrity at Ebert HERA

Petrochemical plants inspect more than ever, yet critical findings still get lost between a drone flight and a work order. Every turnaround and daily maintenance round at sites such as Shell Pernis, Shell Moerdijk and BP Rotterdam-Europoort generates thousands of images, LiDAR scans and inspection reports, but too much of that data sits in silos: one inspector's snapshot, no comparable history, no direct route into planning.

In this keynote, Jeroen Hanekamp and Camilo Gaviria (Aerosophia) and Rob Gulickers (Ebert HERA) present a live case: how drone- and sensor-based inspection, consolidated into a single geospatial data cube and layered with AI detection, turns raw plant imagery into scored, tracked maintenance events that feed straight into the systems Ebert HERA already runs.

The result: corrosion, insulation damage and structural anomalies are found faster and more consistently, turnaround scope is defined with fewer surprises, and every flight becomes next year's baseline. The inspector stays in control; AI shortens the distance between what's captured and what gets fixed.

A vision talk grounded in a real industrial case, on where plant inspection is heading next.

Jeroen Hanekamp – Aerosophia & Camilo Gaviria – Aerosophia & Rob Gulickers – Ebert HERA