The 2026 API Inspection and Mechanical Integrity Summit runs July 20 to 23 at the Henry B.Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, under this year's theme, "Maintaining AssetIntegrity in the Evolving Energy Industry."
Artem Kuchukov and Simon Espinosa from Kewazo will be at Booth 621 for the full event. On Tuesday, July 21 at 11:45 am, Artem will present "Battery-Powered Lifting Robots for Aging Refining and Petrochemical Assets" as part of the Emerging & New Technology Showcase.
Why this conference fits Kewazo
Scaffold installation alone can account for 20% of direct field labor on a major turnaround, and crews still handle access work almost entirely with cranes and manual labor. On older assets the constraint gets tighter: as inspection scope shifts to elevated vessels, columns, and stacks, those structures restrict tie-ins and point loads, narrowing the viable lift options right as corrosion-under-insulation programs keep pulling the same jackets on and off for inspection.
LIFTBOT, Kewazo's battery-powered lifting robot, is built for that constraint. The rail it runs on is self-supporting, so deployment adds no point load and needs no tie-in to the host structure. Two workers assemble a standard configuration in about 20 minutes, and the system lifts in sustained winds up to 45 mph, well past the 25 to 30 mph range that typically grounds a crane.
What the talk covers
For turnaround planners and mechanical integrity engineers working aging refining and petrochemical assets, these access problems come up on nearly every project. Artem walks through deployment case studies from turnaround, maintenance, and capital projects at LyondellBasell, Flint Hills Resources, PBF Energy, and Chevron sites, drawing on LIFTBOT deployments across North America and Europe. The session includes crew-size comparisons against crane baselines, schedule impact, and how LIFTBOT performs on the wind-restricted days that ground cranes.
ONSITE, Kewazo's analytics platform, logs every lift automatically, capturing load, cycle time, operator, and conditions. Over a campaign, this builds a structured dataset on access work, the part of most integrity programs that has otherwise run on assumptions rather than measured data.
Meet the Kewazo team at the conference
If you manage inspection or mechanical integrity work on aging refining or petrochemical assets and want to see how a robotic lift performs on tie-in-restricted structures, catch Artem's talk on July 21 or stop by Booth 621 for the deployment data. If you cannot make it to San Antonio, the contact page is the fastest way to reach out.
