Offshore Structural Integrity Trends

The Industry has had an extremely good record in the design, construction and operation of offshore structures. This has primarily been achieved through the development and application of design and construction standards and through in-service inspection and maintenance. The existing track record has largely been established in the large population of fixed steel platforms. These have proved to be very robust and some have performed with minimal intervention over 30 plus years. As the Industry moves forward an increasing proportion of the platforms will be in deepwater and will be floating systems. There is also a substantial expansion in the fleet of drilling equipment. The floating systems have more complex behaviour and failure modes and require active management on a day to day basis to maintain structural integrity. Non structural components such as valves and control systems can have a fundamental effect on structural safety. The floating systems are being built in yards very remote from their final location and require long ocean tows or dry transport. The substantial increase in the drilling fleet will require the recruitment and training of a large number of new staff. The paper will discuss the changes that are occurring, the implications to potential future operations and what will be needed to maintain our good structural integrity record