Surface protection and coatings

In a Gulf marine climate, an unprotected asset has a short service life and an expensive second half to it. Chloride-laden air attacks steel, ultraviolet degrades exposed polymers, groundwater finds every construction joint, and process chemistry attacks from the inside out.

Surface protection answers all four, but only when the system is matched to the exposure and applied under control. The failures we are called to look at are almost never material failures. They are preparation failures, thickness failures and environment failures — a coating applied over a surface that was not clean, at a film thickness nobody measured, at a dew point that should have stopped work.

The discipline is in the preparation

Every system on this page depends on the same sequence: establish the substrate condition, prepare it to the specified standard, verify the preparation, apply within the manufacturer’s stated environmental window, and measure what was applied. Where that sequence is followed the systems perform as the data sheet says. Where it is short-cut, the best material on the market fails early.

What sits under this discipline

• Protective coatings and industrial painting to ISO 12944 corrosion categories
• Industrial linings — rubber, fluoropolymer, fibreglass, brick and acid-proof tiling
• Resin flooring — epoxy, polyurethane, PU-cement, polyaspartic and ESD systems
• Waterproofing — sheet and liquid membranes, injection, waterstops and joint sealing
• Passive fire protection — intumescent coatings and spray-applied cementitious systems
• Surface preparation — abrasive blasting, mechanical cleaning and high-pressure water jetting