TESS Hose Management main instructor, Signe Dahl, has held many training courses on the mainland and on vessels at dock, but never offshore. In March all mandatory offshore training courses were completed and on the Monday the 3rd of April she left for the Troll-field on her very first offshore assignment. This is Signe Dahl’s story about doing TESS Hose Management training in the midst of the hoses on Troll A.
I was welcomed on board by the platform manager and the HSE responsible, and got a tour of the premises. According to people on Troll A, it is compact and easy to navigate. For a green head there were a lot of impressions on the first day. With ocean on all sides it’s hard to get your bearings. Even if Troll A is safely anchored to the sea bed on four massive shafts, it is anything but calm. Luckily its movement back and forth is so regular that seasickness did not become a problem!
TROLL A THE FIRST TO HAVE TESS HOSE MANAGEMENT TRAINING OFFSHORE
TESS has in cooperation with Statoil developed the course “Visual Inspection of hoses”. Since December 2015 more than 90 Statoilemployees have completed this course. The participants learn to perform visual inspections of hoses, and which hoses to approve/not approve for further use.
In September 2016 Dagfinn Kvalsund and Frank Sæle from Troll A attended this course. During the course they were briefly informed about the TESS Hose Management system and how it efficiently stores the results of the inspections digitally. Dagfinn Kvalsund liked what he heard, and wanted more information. He contacted TESS and several THM-solutions were discussed. It soon became clear that Troll A wanted to manage all the aspects of their hose maintenance themselves. It was therefore decided to send the main THM-instructor offshore to ensure correct rigging of equipment and the best possible training.
HOSES ARE DIVIDED INTO CATEGORIES
To make full use of a hose-maintenance system, all hoses needs to be categorized and/or given information about physical position. On Troll A there are two main hose-categories; Utility hoses and Hoses with fixed positions. Utility hoses are handled differently from Hoses with fixed positions when it comes to the procedure for ordering new hoses.
The Utility hoses are moved around, they are exposed to great wear and tear, and therefore need to be replaced fairly often. You cannot give information about a Utility hose’s position, but you can group them in accordance to medium/what they are used for. On Troll A the following categories were created: Utility Hydrocarbon, Utility Air, Utility Nitrogen, Utility Water and Breathing air. When a Utility hose is not approved for further use is scrapped. A new similar hose with a new ID-number is ordered.
Hoses with fixed positions are less exposed to wear and tear and thus they need to be replaced less frequently. It is also of interest to track the history of each hose position. By keeping the same ID-number throughout the lifetime of equipment the hose is attached to, we can track the hose’s history in the TESS Hose Management system. It is of high importance to give an exact position to these hoses, to make it easy to locate every hose individually.
YEARLY INSPECTION OF ALL HOSES
To fully utilize TESS Hose Management you need to set maintenance intervals. Each hose is given an inspection and replacement interval. Statoil strategy is to inspect all hoses once every year. After inspection they are marked with a cable tie with the current years color. Not approved hoses are scrapped, and new hoses are ordered. No fixed replacement interval has been set, therefore a long replacement interval (12 years) was set for all hoses.
LABELS WITH ID-NUMBERS
Every hose in the TESS Hose Management system needs to be labelled and registered with an individual ID-number. A special label printer was installed on Troll A, so now they can replace missing labels and print new labels for hoses not yet in the system. On the label you find the ID-number presented as a number and as a barcode for electronic scanning.
THM CUSTOMERWEB
THM CustomerWEB is an online portal for the THM database. CustomerWEB gives you a complete overview of all hoses with multiple search options and a list of alerts; including “Failed inspections” and “Inspections overdue”. In addition to this you can find detailed information about the hoses and their pressure test certificates.
THM WAPMAN
THM Wapman is an android smartphone that can be used offline for operational work on individual hoses. With this EX/ATEX approved unit you can perform hose inspections, report hose replacements and look up information on each hose. During the training the THM Wapman worked well for checking information and registering the results of inspections, but the scanning of barcodes with the camera did not live up to expectations. There were several reasons for this; including barcode printed to small and labels exposed to wear and tear making it impossible to scan. TESS will look into this immediately. Until this has been solved, one must type the ID-number manually or TESS can deliver RFID labelling that will eliminate this.
CONCLUSION
The label printer, THM CustomerWEB and THM Wapman worked very well. The internet accessibility on board Troll A was of a very good quality. Both of the courses participants were happy with the training and the functionality of the THM CustomerWEB and THM Mobile; with the exception of the barcode reader. THM training offshore worked well, but it is time consuming and needs to be adjusted to the participant’s daily routines. THM Instructor Signe Dahl learned just as much or more than the participants of the course, and she got a once in a lifetime experience!
