Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

It has taken 5 weeks of blindly stumbling along in the dark fug of unknowingness, but finally I feel like I am adding value!

P60 Bridge Access Platform

I made the trip down to Manchester last week and it was good to finally get the ball rolling on this project.  In an amusing turn of events, the senior structural engineer assigned to this project is new to Wood Group, so that makes up all of the members of the team essentially new to role and inexperienced in one way or another. In the two hour meeting I successfully bluffed my way through the kick off review and drew up a baselined plan that correlates the job responsible engineers (JRE) plan and my Project Execution Plan.

 As you can see, the PEP does not go much beyond September when I have to meet the only milestone and circulate the Decision Support Package for end of Define Gate. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that this project is unlikely to ever become more than a desktop study and in the knowledge that the scaffolding contractor currently builds the temporary scaffold and leaves it up for a year before destruct and re-build, I tend to agree.

That said, there is still money to be spent and a Basis of Design must be delivered. It is not a complicated design as you can see below, but as ever the devil will be in the detail coming up with a method of attachment that does not require welding due to the process pipelines that the bridge carries between modules and the pre-eminent fear within the industry of something being on fire that shouldn’t be.

I have an off shore survey planned for early August that, so long as it doesn’t get bumped, will give me and the lead structural engineer an opportunity to see the scaffold in situ, the bridge bearings as well as the sea water/ fire water caissons.  On the whole it is a good little project to cut my teeth with very little space to really screw things up.

Temporary scaffold currently installed on the P60 bridge to allow access to and jacking of the bridge for bearing inspections:

Dance floor scaffold beneath D end of the P60 bridge.

View from the D platform landing, the shrouded area is protecting area surrounding the bearings.

Looking from the PUQ platform back toward the D platform.

This bridge is f*****g huge!

Seawater Lift Caissons

The results of my investigation into the business drivers for replacing the Bruce seawaterlift caissons have been very interesting indeed.   The original caissons were underdesigned to reduce weight so that they could be lifted into place on the installation during the initial construction. They started to show premature wear about three years after commissioning and have been a source of problems ever since.

The original Capital Value Process for a replacement programme was instigated in 2009/2010 with the Select phase ultimately recommending a full programme to re-instate all but one of the sea water lift caissons. This was based on a series of structural surveys conducted in 2009 that showed that all of the caissons were in danger of total structural failure.  The programme has progressed in that C13, the closest to falling off, was removed in 2010, but the challenging plan to replace it has not yet come to fruition. It has been designed and is ob the verge of being fabricated, with an installation planned for summer next year. Next year is a TAR year for Bruce, a process that adds to production in real terms, whereas the caisson only adds to production in secondary ways such as a reduction in PoB for surveys, fewer emergency interventions e.t.c. While replacing all of the caissons makes excellent engineering sense, the business drivers are far less clear and the reinstallation of C13 is highly likely to be delayed until 2015. The scope of this investigation is to:

• Understand the drivers for the caissons programme: integrity concerns, operational availability of seawater and firewater pumps?

• Re-examine the key drivers to determine whether these are still valid ensuring agreement from the appropriate stakeholders

• Propose a forward caissons programme based on revised understanding of the key drivers

In light of this, I’ve spent a lot of time reading the reports of work that has been planned and completed (or not in some cases) and meeting the stakeholders to  develop a technical note assessing the importance of the key drivers and  a revised programme to deal with the issue. Buy in from all of the key stake holders; the asset (Area Engineering Support Team Leader), the structural engineers in Discipline, the asset mechanical engineer and the Life of Field team who will authorise the budget in the longer term, is fundamental to getting this programme back on some kind of track and I think the original failing may have been lack of commitment from the asset with the plan being devised in isolation. My rationale for this is that the high level plan specified in the Select Decision Support Package makes no account for the impact of TARs on the plan, which is strange considering the complexity of the project and ultimately it was this oversight that has delayed the project thus far.

The bottom line is that Cessation of Production for the Bruce field is forecast for somewhere around 2020, but the installation will still require the caissons for the decomissioning process of some 7-10 years duration.  There is added complication in the form of the Rhum oilfield which is tied back to the Bruce installation. One of the partners in the Rhum field happens to be the Iranian government and production has been on hold for about 4 years, the up shot being that if Rhum is turned back on then CoP moves out by another 4 years and more water will be required for process cooling.

I am looking forward to Tuesdays meeting as it will be my first time in the Bruce ACE (Advanced Collaboration Environment – video conference room with the platform) and a great opportunity to understand the situation from the off shore point of view.

I’m getting some good traction with this caisson work and things are looking promising for picking up some work on the Clair caissons. I’ve been complimented on how quickly I have broken down this issue and provided clarification, which is nice.

In other news…

I shall be enjoying not watching Eurovision and instead will be attending the village barbeque (in the rain). Corine has found herself a second job, this time with the Grampian Housing Assoc so we are scrambling to find childcare in the local area. Amusingly, she had a complaint from one of her french students for speaking french during a lesson this week. Apparently in his book this did not constitue a valid technique for teaching french. You just can’t make this stuff up!