Safety in the Frame

The problem of maintaining ageing oil platforms has been highlighted since recent events in the Gulf of Mexico. How do operators ensure the best contractors are available?

In 1995 a paper on handling the problem of the disposal of oil rigs in the North Sea suggested that 400 platforms were coming to the end of their designed life.

Today there are approaching 600 platforms in use in the North Sea, and a significant number of those – one estimate suggests up to half – are beyond their designed life, or very close to it.

This suggests the maintenance needs of a large number of rigs are becoming more urgent, and that more checks and more stringent, full-blown inspections of platform safety and working practices are required. It also suggests that over the next decade or so, more platforms may suffer unexpected operational issues, dangerous both to their workers, the environment, and their owners’ bottom line.

The British government’s energy secretary, Chris Huhne, recently announced that the number of North Sea platform safety inspections to be undertaken by his Department of Energy and Climate Change is to be doubled. Huhne also set up an industry group to report on the UK’s ability to prevent or respond to a major disaster should the worst occur.

As the British Health and Safety Executive’s head of offshore safety, Steve Walker, said in August: “The issue of ageing installations isn’t a new one. If installations are going to be used beyond their anticipated life, then operators need to anticipate inevitable consequences.”

“The safety of 28,000 workers is dependent on systems and structures being in good working order, now and in the future.”

All of this has implications for the logistics of planned and unplanned maintenance.

As a company involved in asset integrity, safety work and the refurbishment and maintenance of vital systems in all kinds of platform and refinery installations, Hydratight is all too aware of the need for advance planning.

The company’s involvement with oil industry giants worldwide presents a tangled web of projects demanding the organisation of manpower and resources on a vast scale — all with tight timing restrictions, since its work invariably follows that of another company and precedes that of a third or fourth or fifth.

You can’t pop into the workshop and gather a few tools to repair a deep seabed disaster. And in this industry, like few others, plant managers never say: “I think we’ll do our shut-down maintenance next week, if that’s okay with everyone...”

So an industry having increasingly tough safety demands placed on its ageing plant needs a better way to organise the regular maintenance and refurbishment that helps everyone to avoid major problems — and even more major disasters.

It is for this reason that frame agreements are becoming a widespread practice.

Such agreements – medium to long-term repair and maintenance contracts between clients and preferred suppliers – might sound like extended warranties, and at their most basic you could argue that is pretty much what they are.

But done properly, frame agreements allow customer and supplier to get to know each other fully and let the supplier understand the client’s business, its needs and potential weaknesses and choke points — those times when operations and maintenance both fight for priority.

With this knowledge, both parties can schedule work throughout the duration of the agreement — and can build in leeway for urgent work to receive the priority it demands. The ultimate benefit is more efficient, higher-quality working and a ready supply of skilled technicians and the right equipment.

Such agreements are good for both parties to them. Hydratight, for example, has a reputation for safety it is keen to maintain. Being able to plan precisely, in meetings with clients covering anything from one to three years of work, allows the company to reduce paperwork and gather the skilled men and equipment needed for each set window of time. This in turn allows the company to achieve the best possible results with greatest efficiency.

More than that, being involved in the planning of maintenance projects from the start helps Hydratight to help the customer schedule operations alongside the many others likely to be involved, making the customer’s task easier.

Another advantage is that when unexpected work does arise, Hydratight knows the plant, the company and exactly what will be required to complete the job.

The company’s technicians recently undertook a frame-agreement project for a major oil company — one of up to 40 it might work on at any given time. Part of regular maintenance, the work initially involved 12 men (later reduced to four) over three months’ worth of valve refurbishment and renewing, refitting and testing various joints. Planning meant everything could go smoothly.

This followed an unplanned job, but one that came under a frame agreement, meaning our assistance was guaranteed. Four men spent two weeks on a platform, boring out heavy stud bolts on a pressure vessel that was difficult to reach and even more difficult to work on, but which was crucial to continued output. The fact that the technicians knew the rig and the equipment required meant the job could progress immediately and quickly.

Hydratight is in a strong position within the industry and currently has frame agreements with many of the major operators and duty-holders in the North Sea — which, if nothing else, means team members know the demands of working offshore extremely well.

Setting up frame agreements used to be quite difficult, even though any reasonable consideration of them would reveal the advantages for both sides. Operators would be wary about committing to a longer-term contract. Could they find someone to do the job more cheaply? Why commit a lot of money up-front? What’s in it for them?

The first point is that when the right companies are chosen, the initial bottom line might be a little higher, but the lifetime cost of the work will be lower. Good work needs less follow-up, less remedial work and simply lasts longer.

As for committing money in advance, the client knows exactly how much will be spent over a certain period and can budget appropriately. Negotiations are reduced, costs are reduced and the overall cost of the agreement is almost certainly going to be lower than if the work is completed by several different companies working ad-hoc after tendering.

The trick, of course, is for a client company to choose the right partner. When companies on both sides have reputations to protect, such agreements can be extremely useful.

Hydratight is one of the most prominent companies in its field, for example, Customers know its work will be exemplary. With a frame agreement in place, the company’s commitment is guaranteed, so no lengthy tendering process is required. It is no surprise that as well as having frame agreements with most of the North Sea operators, several onshore operators now work with us in the same way, both for maintenance and for machining projects, and the number of inquiries grows each year.

Are frame agreements the way of the future, or just a passing fad?

The likelihood is that demands on service engineering companies aren’t going to diminish any time soon, thanks to the new rigour over safety in an increasingly ageing industry. Getting work done without long advance notice is otherwise going to become more and more difficult, which could mean long downtime and huge financial implications.

Longer-term agreements between companies are likely to accelerate in popularity as the years go by. For smart companies to find and gain commitments from respected suppliers is good business sense, in what is certain to become an increasingly challenging market.