Engineering (& Other) Challenges with Offshore Steel Fabrication

Doug Hawkes (Principal Structural Engineer)

Abstract: Offshore steelwork fabrication presents many challenges, including the tyranny of distance, variation in country design and fabrication standards, language (both written and verbal), cultural differences, contract and legal implications and of course budget, schedule and quality outcomes. This paper explores a variety of issues that are likely to be encountered, both of a technical and non-technical nature, when steelwork fabrication is conducted in a location other than where the final product will be located for use. Infrastructure Owners and their project personnel need to develop strategies for tendering, bid/tender evaluation, procurement, quality control, transport, delivery, erection, use and maintenance of structural steel that are different from those conventionally employed when design, materials, fabrication and erection all occur in the same jurisdiction. These strategies need to address each phase of procurement and use, including the correlation between the standards used for design, fabrication and use. 

KEYWORDS: Structural, Steel, Welding, Fabrication, Offshore, Standards, Engineering

1. OVERVIEW

‘Offshore’ steelwork fabrication presents many challenges, including the tyranny of distance, variation in country design and fabrication standards, language (both written and verbal), cultural differences, contract and legal implications and of course budget, schedule and quality outcomes.

This paper explores a variety of issues that are likely to be encountered, both of a technical and non-technical nature, when steelwork fabrication is conducted in a location other than where the final product will be located for use.

The modern world of ‘free trade’ and minimising trade barriers is perceived to be made very simple by Politicians with the release of a policy, all with the best intentions of working together across a variety of borders. The reality however is somewhat different, particularly when the industries affected by these particular policies are governed by local regulations and by extensive interrelated technical requirements, also particular and possibly peculiar to the local environment.

Technical requirements are often governed by dozens of standards, all of which are potentially localised and may even be referenced as mandatory in statutory regulations. Whilst the ‘ISO’ suite of standards is an attempt by some parts of the world’s technical population to create a ‘standardised’ planet, there is by no means a set of ‘world standards’ that govern even the most simple of structures.

Infrastructure Owners and their project personnel need to develop strategies for tendering, bid/tender evaluation, procurement, quality control, transport, delivery, erection, use and maintenance of structural steel that are different from those conventionally employed when design, materials, fabrication and erection all occur in the same jurisdiction.

These strategies need to address each phase of procurement and use, including the correlation between the standards used for design, fabrication and use.

This paper will describe what many will consider obvious. However, the application of management strategies to deal with the issues identified, including their interrelationships, is generally far less obvious to see in action.

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