ROV’s - The Management Contractors Requirements

Abstract

ROV’s in past years have been very much a tail-end requirement within offshore Construction Contracts, for jackets/platforms and pipeline installations. Scant regard has been given to their use and specification for application within such Contracts. Their importance to a project has been considered minimal by both the Management Contractor, Detail Design Engineer (who prepares the overall construction Invitation to Tender Scope of Work), and the Client Organisation. This situation is now changing due mainly to the ROV’s increasing offshore experience and developing sophistication. For example the use in 1984 of multiple ROV’s for positioning and installation of the CONOCO Hutton TLP in the North Sea.

This paper therefore seeks to describe how a greater emphasis can be placed on ROV installation in major offshore construction/installation contracts, what a Management Contractor needs to know, how a real contribution can be made to installation rather than just in observation and how ‘reliability’ can be proven. In addition, the paper shows how the Management Contractor can be shown that by the use of ROV’ s, offshore construction time can be reduced and subsea working safely increased. To present these requirements considerable reference will be drawn from Bechtel’s experience in EPCM (Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management) contracts in the North Sea over the past decades.