Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

It has been a busy two weeks, but I have seen some real progress at BP. I have two jobs regarding the Bruce platform, both of which have potential to go off-shore next year which means I would see them through to close out, possibly.

The Bruce platform lies about 175 miles North East of Aberdeen and is composed of three platforms as shown above. Processing, Utilities and Quarters (PUQ), Drilling (D) and Compression Reception (CR). It is, as most in the North Sea are, an old platform having been built in the 90s for a ~30 year life of field. The general currency of projects on these installations is Persons on Board (PoB) and as a result, long lead planning with the client (the Asset i.e. platform) and early buy in is critical to the progression of any project as can be seen in my two concerns. Bruce has flexibility to surge around 20 personnel on board over and above the basic off shore staff at any one time and as I am finding out, these precious spaces are always filled months in advance as per the Assets priorities.

P60 Bridge Access Platform – Between PUQ and D.

The P60 bridge is a 47m long bridge with a loading of around 183 tonnes in storm conditions. It has had a long history of bearing issues as they have consistently failed to achieve their design life. This can be put down to lack of design data on how the platforms move during annual weather patterns and it is a common failing on platforms built post Piper Alpha  where bridges are used to link platforms and effectively isolate the more volatile on-board processes from the living quarters and bridge.

The photo on the left shows slight elongation to the piston plates at the PUQ bridge bearing, while the photo on the right shows damage to the stainless steel runner plate. The manufacturers estimated field life for the bearing pad is 20km aggregated travel and this was not expected to be exceeded with the life of field of the installation. Recent estimates have put the actual aggregate travel of one bearing at 3km in a single month of bad weather! As a result of the manufacturers generous estimates, no method for jacking the bridge up to perform regular maintenance was built into the design and so every quarter an over the side scaffold must be built to allow inspection and maintenance to take place. This is costly, but most importantly ties up bed spaces on board on a regular basis. There is a lot of work going on on this old platform and so simply reducing the PoB burden is quite a significant win for the asset.

I have ~£80k to take this project through the Define stage to gate 3, the beginning of the on-shore Execute. This would see the basis of design complete and much of the risk identified prior to the detailed design. This is the BP practice of Front End Loading to ensure that as little time is spent in the On and Off Shore Execute. From what I can see, this is driven by the desire to achieve effective long lead planning rather that simply moving milestones to avoid missing them (which seems to be relatively common at the moment).  A project that is effectively Front Loaded is on the 8Q plan (8 quarter) early, PoB are allocated to the project well in advance and once Execute is reached all of the risks are controlled/mitigated in such a way as to allow the project to progress through to closure efficiently. This is the goal.

The original Kick Off for Define took place in February, but seeing as neither I nor my Job Responsible Engineer (JRE) were actually at that meeting, it seemed sensible to run a Kick Off Review to ensure that all parties in the Define were clear on the time-line, scope and deliverable of this phase. So I will be off to Runcorn on Wednesday for this very reason. My plan has the Define finished in about 3 months, although I am not fully clear myself on the deliverables required and so I will be clarifying this with the Programme Lead, Kerry Scott, before I head south.

Seawater Lift Caissons

I have been asked to review the business case for the ongoing programme to replace the Seawater lift caissons on the Bruce Platform and write a recommendation on its continuing validity by 15 May for presentation to the programme stakeholders. The programme is ~£2 million through a £26 million spend and, while being quite complex in execution, presents no serious issues for BP on-shore. The problem comes back to the Assets priorities and for 2014 this is focussed on the Turn Around (TAR) which will see a major development in the existing delivery infrastructure and an increase in production. No firm decision has been made, but it is likely that the TAR is going to steal the best (forecast) weather window for the first phase of the Caissons programme. This review will look to inform the client of the risk they will be taking on running phase 1 during potential bad weather (think delays and increased PoB thus delays to other work) and the assosciated risk with pushing the programme back a year to de-conflict with the TAR.

Caissons on oil rigs are not much more than fancy service conduits and are used to protect equipment from the effect of the North Sea. They are commonly used to bring risers off the sea bed onto the installation and in this case they are used to protect large seawater lift pumps that bring fluid on board to cool various elements of the production process.  They are called upon to withstand the corrosive effect of seawater and air, attack from marine life such as barnacles and algae and of course the constant buffeting by the waves. These Caissons are critical to the installations’ Safety Case as they also provide back up to the fire water lift caissons. They are around 1-1.5 m in diameter, 75m long and made from carbon steel. They are typically under designed to reduce the dead weight when lifted into place during the original construction. Caisson failures have occurred on a regular basis in recent years and the HSE is particularly interested in this programme. One of the first things I intend to do is examine how many caisson interventions have been required since the initiation of this programme as it may be a good indication of how many PoB have been squandered by not pushing this project forward fast enough. As it is the programme is a year behind where it is supposed to and I have yet to ascertain exactly why. I am keen on the programme not sliding to the right as at present I could be around to see the off-shore execute next year.

The diagram above shows just how close the caissons lie to the jackets (the legs the platform stands on) and many of the supporting struts, the small red circles being the SWL Caissons. Each caisson weighs in the region of 40 tonnes and presents a very real risk to the integrity of the platform, not in the least regarding potential damage to sub-sea piping if they were to come loose and fall to the sea bed.

All in all I am hoping that this is a lead-in to taking on some aspect of the caisson replacement programme as the lead engineer appears to be quite snowed under. The Asset Lead is also under resourced so I think there is a good chance that I will be able to get more work on this and other related platforms in  the future.

On Another Note

Hugo has fully recovered from his Bronchiolitis, but unfortunately Corine is now getting over her bout of Sinusitis. Luckily the Scottish summer has finally arrived and so I intend to make the best use of it, who knows how long it will be around for!