Operations Services
Maximize your operations. Increase your margins.
PLG Consulting brings decades of unique, specific expertise and experience in rail, truck, marine, bulk terminal, warehouse, and plant site operations. Your bottom line depends on safe, dependable, and cost-efficient operations, and PLG Consulting will help you improve performance, control costs, and mitigate risk.
How we help
The most important aspect of any operation or investment is safety. Best-in-class companies recognize that safety is a prerequisite for maximizing operational performance and margins. PLG Consulting works with you to ensure your operational practices protect against injury and prevent accidents, spills, product loss, environmental damage, and security threats.
PLG Consulting provides a range of services to ensure your health, environmental, safety, and security (HESS) policies fully support your business objectives and promote the highest standards of performance and compliance, including:
- Safety and compliance audits
- Training
- Standards/procedures/policies development
- Accident investigation
- Preventative maintenance inspection and program management
Our capabilities extend across all transportation modes to ensure you meet all obligations from OSHA, FRA, DOT, Coast Guard, Transport Canada, EPA, and other regulatory bodies.
Our services include the following areas of focus:
In-plant rail operations assessment and improvement
- Switching optimization
- Locomotive/car mover asset optimization
- Yard management technology
- Serving carrier/interchange operations planning
- Rail design and engineering
- Fleet asset sizing, specification, and optimization
Bulk material handling loading/unloading
- Transloading procedures and equipment
- Dry and liquid bulk commodities
- Material handling and conveyance systems
- Silo/tank/warehouse storage
- Transfer/chain-of-custody procedures and documentation
- Inventory management systems technology
Ports and terminals
- Dock safety and operations
- US Coast Guard regulatory compliance
- Barge and vessel shifting/fleeting
- Stevedore operations
- Scheduling and asset optimization
Through comprehensive modeling of how the facility design will operate, including analyzing required assets and integration with surrounding infrastructure, we provide practical solutions to help you reduce inefficiencies and improve operations.
Rail: PLG Consulting brings deep operational expertise in rail for clients who own or invest in common carrier railroads, and for those shippers who have significant private rail operations. We can help you develop operating plans, provide operational due diligence on railroad investments, specify equipment, and implement technology.
Truck: Whether common carrier or private fleet, PLG Consulting will help you develop operating plans that maximize efficiency and control costs. We can help you develop dispatching plans and protocols, implement technology, optimize nodes and lanes, develop driver recruitment and retention strategies, and specify equipment.
Marine: PLG Consulting helps ensure your bluewater and brownwater assets enjoy safe and productive operations across any commodity or trade lane. Let us assist you with optimizing port and terminal operations, sizing and specifying equipment, and developing service plans for your common carrier and private assets.
Engineering Services
connect business strategy to infrastructure
PLG Consulting provides clients with best-in-class logistics infrastructure design and engineering services. These services include rail design and engineering, material handling and storage, marine docks, pipelines, and warehouse & distribution centers.
Our unique 3-step approach
1. Great design – Our team’s decades of specific expertise and experience in this area mean we deliver designs for high performance and reliability.
2. Operating plans – Through comprehensive modeling of how the facility design will operate, including analyzing required assets and integration with surrounding infrastructure, we provide practical solutions to help you reduce inefficiencies and improve operations.
3. Commercial and economic viability – By starting with the business case, we ensure projects fit within capex constraints, operate economically, With our technology-agnostic approach, our experts leverage the right tools to work with your available data and resources and develop a customized optimization plan that fully supports your business
Our services span business case development and validation, conceptual designs, 30/80/100 engineering, construction management, final inspection and commissioning, and operating requirements (equipment, plans, training, and documentation).
Expert Witness Services
for cases requiring logistics and supply chain expertise
On a selective basis, PLG Consulting provides litigants with the right expert witness services for the task. These services include case validation, expert witness reports, deposition, and trial testimony delivered by our highly credentialed experts and objective expertise related to logistics, transportation, and supply chain matters.
Early-stage case guidance: PLG experts can consult with you during the early-stage guidance process including case validation and deposition preparation.
Expert witness report development: PLG will assemble the right team of experts to research, write and deliver reports in compliance with litigation timelines.
Expert witness testimony: PLG experts will testify as objective expert witnesses to present in court report findings and summaries under oath.
For more information, please contact us.
You can count on PLG Consulting's support for the full project lifecycle.
Email us to start the conversation
Project Examples
Largest North American wind farm development maximizes the use of rail for materials and component deliveries
A major North American wind farm operator was in final permitting stages for the largest wind farm in North America. The project entailed a 3 gigawatt wind farm that would require approximately 1000 turbines in a...
International specialty chemical manufacturer gets new rail yard
Client is a chemical manufacturer with a large fleet and multiple third-party tenants. One client facility was experiencing sustained growth, and rail yards were trending towards over-capacity. Client requested assistance with intraplant site selection for a...
Global chemical manufacturer improves operational efficiencies through rail expansion
Client is a land-locked chemical manufacturer with dynamic and increasing shift-to-shift requirements for intra-site railcar switching to/from multiple loading facilities. PLG performed rail operations and infrastructure assessments to support the options analysis and subsequent funding processes...
Large chemical manufacturer seeks to take advantage of the U.S. shale gas transformation
Client is a large chemical manufacturer designing new operating units to take advantage of the U.S. shale gas transformation. Client requested PLG Consulting assist with site selection as well as lead the design and engineering of...
Business process mapping & technology enhancements boost crude gathering operations
With nearly 200 trucks in the field connecting well sites with client’s nearby refinery, PLG Consulting was called upon to develop the right processes and tools to streamline the operation and improve reliability. PLG revamped dispatching...
Chemical plant reduces car touches by 14% while improving safety and supporting growth
This global polyolefins leader sought to expand capacity at its flagship production site and needed a rail design and operating plan. PLG’s rail traffic flow operating strategy and infrastructure design reduced car touches by 14%, improved...
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