Offshore Codes and Standards Implemented in a Subsea Engineering Software Suite

In this paper a software suit is described which main purpose is to facilitate the engineering, design and analysis process such that consistency of input is assured and the risk of erroneous input is decreased, and such that results and documentation are automatically generated to increase quality of documentation. Current scope is a standard calculation tool covering different aspects of design in compliance with relevant offshore codes and standards. A modularization technique is used to divide the software system into multiple discrete and independent modules based on offshore codes and standards, which are capable of carrying out task(s) independently. These modules work as basic constructs for the entire software, but at same time these modules can be executed separately and independently. This modularization technique also includes other benefits, such as ease of maintenance and updates. The quality of an implementation of offshore codes and standards in software modules and their interaction among them are measured by defining the level of inter-dependability among the subsea engineering and analysis modules, and by defining the degree of intra-dependability within elements of a module. How modules interfere and interact with each other is defined by couplings. The improvements are related to the objectives of a state-of-the-art procedure of performing engineering, design and analysis by use of offshore codes and standards implemented in this software suit to assure a consistent way of working.