Problem

At some stage in the project, the project team needed to clear the decks on the platform in order to make space for lots of new materials to continue with the project scope and to keep on track. So a platform supply vessel was ordered to backload the old redundant materials to shore. So far, so good.

But then, Van Bugnum recalls, during the backloading the weather forecast changed. “It became clear very quickly that the supply vessel we had in mind for the backloading, would be jeopardized due to this weather if we didn’t change it in time.”

The SNSpool vessel in action

Solution

What this meant: “We had to request for an additional vessel to be loaded in port to bring the new equipment to the location before the bad weather, as shown in the forecast, started to show up”, Van Bugnum explains.

“We requested the Southern North Sea pool (SNSpool) to plan for an additional supply vessel to be on location on Tuesday early in the morning. Everything went according to plan, we hadn’t had any delays, and we took full advantage of the accurate weather forecast we receive every day.”

The Chiswick platform

Savings

The full advantage Van Bugnum talks about, was also measurable in terms of the financial outcome. “The most important thing was that we were able to save a lot of money. A W2W vessel does not come for free. Imagine the fuel that is needed, and think of the crew and all the contractors that work on this project that call this ship their home during the length of this project.”

Van Bugnum was able to give an estimation of the costs saved: “The average cost for a W2W vessel doing nothing other than wait out the bad weather burning fuel for 7 days is  around 300.000 euro - give or take. Then there’s the costs of contractors that can’t do anything for 7 days, which would have resulted approximately 100.000 euro lost.”

“So”, Van Bugnum concludes, “by looking at Infoplaza’s weather forecast we easily saved 400.000 euro. Who would have thought saving money was that easy?”