Digital technologies have made impressive inroads in recent years in offshore inspection, allowing a growing number of tasks that once required in-person attendance to be done remotely.

Service providers and operators were emphasising the safety advantages of remote inspections well before the Covid-19 pandemic limited access to assets and the movement of people.

Vessel surveys have traditionally required inspectors from a classification society to visit an offshore vessel or installation, or for work to be done in port. But the societies have been gradually increasing the type of surveys that can be done remotely.

Lloyd's Register in 2018 issued guidance covering the circumstances in which marine operators could request remote surveys and last March updated its guidelines in line with the growing threat of the coronavirus.

Also in March, Norway's DNV-GL expanded the range of inspections that could be done by remote surveys using video, images, documentation and input provided by crew to be sent via an online connection or video link to remote surveyors onshore.

The pandemic has complicated created and accelerated countless operational challenges for the offshore oil and gas industry.

Harvey Gulf International Marine of the US is one of many vessel owners who have taken advantage of remote inspections during the pandemic, including scheduling a survey for one of its supply vessels without having to pause operations.

The company needed to maintain its commitment to a client that chartered the Harvey Sub-Sea multi-purpose supply vessel for an offshore operation.

Charter demands of the vessel, along with the logistical challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, made it difficult to arrange for a surveyor to board and carry out inspections.

Harvey Gulf selected US classification provider ABS to perform a remote survey of the vessel, ensuring that the company could meet the demands of both its charter and its annual inspection requirements.

Mitigating exposure risk

According to ABS, its remote survey programme augments traditional survey through the transfer of digital documentation such as reports, photos and videos for non-attendance verification of select surveys.

“A significant business driver with the surveys that need to occur has been executing them in a way that's maintaining the safety of the crew and the safety of the surveyors,” says Matt Tremblay, senior vice president for offshore at ABS.

“One way that we can mitigate that exposure risk is by performing remote surveys.”

Acceptance of the process is growing, according to Tremblay, with the organisation seeing a 300% increase in the number of surveys performed remotely in 2020.

“ABS over the last eight months has really expanded the scope of the surveys that are available to be performed remotely,” he says, adding that “procedurally, we have the ability to execute a full-class annual survey remotely offshore".

Tremblay adds: “A survey that may take a couple days offshore, we’re now able to execute many portions of that survey remotely, with the ship’s crew performing most of the initial legwork and streaming the data they collect back to the surveyor.”

Survey particulars

For the Harvey Gulf vessel, there was a limited amount of time it could spend dockside before the delays would begin to affect operations, according to Arinjit Roy, vice president of North America for ABS.

“This particular vessel is fairly modern. It would’ve taken the better part of a day for the survey if performed dockside to check out the DP and the other equipment onboard,” he says.

“We were able to spread the survey out over a two-week period and did it in bits and pieces. It was aligned with the operational needs of the vessel.”

According to Harvey Gulf, the ability to collect the information as required and pass it back to the surveyor onshore digitally saved significant time off-charter for the vessel provider and did not impact operations for its client.

“This solution meant we were able to go about our day-to-day operations, and not have to be interrupted by travelling shoreside,” says Harvey Gulf vice president Chad Verret.

“We would’ve had to travel about 36 hours to the location, spend a full day quayside doing the operation, then transit back 36 hours.

"When you look at it holistically, that’s four days of off chartered time that we avoided. But it goes bigger than that because the vessel is very specific to the job and the client couldn’t find a replacement vessel," he says.

"So, it would have really impacted them.”

Rigs And Vessels

Remote vessel surveys gain traction amid Covid restrictions