Page 48 - Danish Offshore Industry 2016

SAFE HANDLING OF PIPES Managing Director Søren Hvorslev and Technical Manager Kenneth Hagelskjær. Global Gravity’s TubeLock-system may eliminate se- rious work accidents and boost savings by ensuring safety all the way from handling at the quayside to stacking at the offshore well. Safety First. The Golden Rule of offshore, where acci- “Based on an accident resulting in a broken foot during dents can turn fatal and down-time is costly. Focus is pipe handling, which I witnessed myself, I told him that constantly on avoiding unwanted incidents, but Global we should take a look at the procedures. As the offshore Gravity has spotted a challenge which is not suffciently industry is so bent on focusing on safety we could not addressed. Transport of pipes involves many dangerous understand what was happening, so we wanted to fnd phases which could be overcome by the TubeLock System a safer way of handling pipes. Suddenly Kenneth came developed by an Esbjerg-company. The system is based up with a solution, and the prototype he made was very on know-how from the Technical Manager Kenneth close to looking like the one we are offering today. Till Hagelskjær and Managing Director Søren Hvorslev who, now nobody had considered a solution as easy to take themselves, have experienced the problems frst-hand apart as this one, but it was important to us to provide when working on a drilling rig and on board a supply something that could be directly integrated into the vessel, respectively. drilling process and possibly into any fully automatic pro- cess of the future. The dream scenario was that nobody “Quite a number of accidents take place when handling had to manually handle the pipes on a rig.” pipes and mostly they are quite serious. Each time they call for broken bones, as accidents during such opera- CHALLENGING THE STANDARDS tions cannot help being severe. We have seen it for many For the latest four years the relatively simple TubeLock years when the two of us were a mate of a supply vessel System has been used by fve different drilling compa- and a roustabout on a rig, respectively, and we were nies, but generally one of the major hurdles was to get a surprised that the handling methods were not being chance to convince our future customers. changed. It is OK to stress procedures to a crew, but when accidents start piling up it is time to do something “Our system is challenging the standards, so it was diff- about them,” states Søren Hvorslev, who challenged his cult to be allowed to run the frst operation on a rig to now business partner. convince the operators. It is easy to shoot down ideas, 46 / SAFE HANDLING OF PIPES