Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

MC 1 is now predicted for some point tomorrow. Luckily it isn’t just the Coolers project holding this up, but we are probably the higher profile due to the nature of the issue. We are much closer to having a valve in place, but as ever the last few steps are the hardest.

Option 1 :  At about 8 this morning I was informed that the valve would have had a serial number heat printed onto the body. This would allow the identification of the specific valve so the Mill certs could be acquired.  A body was duly despatched to sand of the paint from the valve body to discover this magic serial number.

This is what was found:

If it wasn’t for first hand knowledge of the searches that take place when you fly off-shore I would be convinced that somebody out there had been smoking crack. Un-tagged valve my arse. One of the issue with having a couple of hundred miles of water between the site and site office is that you can’t guarantee that the right idiot is giving you the right information. Having that photo would have saved about half a day of effort.

The deviation request is due to be release to me imminently although the review team (Engineering Tech Authorities) that I have had queued up all day have pretty much all gone home. It turns out that even civvies can have REMFs. So another unnecessary 12 hour delay to this solution, but this time I have all of the pieces and I have the chessboard, so long as I can steer the issue through the TA’s then the ball is well and truly rolling.

Option 2: The original list of 50 valves has been whittled down to 6 of which one is a ringer, but for the fact that it has the same requirement for a deviation and so the hoop remains. 

Option 3: Buying a new one, this one was never really viable due to the lead time. 

Option 4: The possibility of blanking of the valve location was looked at, but as this valve is the entry point for the system leak test, it is not an option. The possibility of finding a similar valve elsewhere on the asset that could be cross decked is being investigated, but I really don’t see that one flying at this point. It would still require a significant amount of paperwork to organise so Option 1 is still looking good.

Point of interest…

Since the coolers project is on the radar some bright spark decided to set the cat amongst the pigeons by pointing out that the pipes were only tested to 199 bar vs. the piping spec of 230 bar. This has set minds racing across the TAR and Asset teams although the explanation is quite simple. The new piping is specified for 230 bar by fabrication but it is only tested to 1.5X design pressure. It doesn’t really make any sense to test to specification as this would be tantamount to testing to destruction as far as I can see. I am awaiting a comment from the piping engineers to confirm my view before answering the growing panic, but at this point it is the last thing needed.