Bibby Athena Winch Control System Upgraded

M/V Bibby Athena recently had its ROV winch upgraded with Scantrol Active Heave Compensation (AHC) control system. In order to fulfill its contractual obligations, the vessel remained in operation while the control system was delivered and tested over a three-week timeframe this summer, and the vessel is now running AHC operations up to 24 hours a day.

In June, Christopher Rogers, ROV Engineer on M/V Bibby Athena, received his vessel’s new Scantrol AHC system, and in order to perform continuous mapping of the seabed and cables while they are still operational, Bibby HydroMap needed to heave compensate its d’ROP Survey ROV winch.

The winch, made by Lawson Engineers in the U.K., was already installed onboard the vessel, whereby the Director of the company, Robert Lawson, recommended Scantrol to supply the controls for Active Heave Compensation. Scantrol assembled the system after receiving hydraulics analysis from its British hydraulic expert, Derek Walker. The system was shipped to the vessel and Steven McKay, Scantrol’s U.K. service engineer commissioned and tested the system together with Scantrol’s own engineers. The testing and fine-tuning was done both on board the vessel and via remote support while the M/V Bibby Athena was in operation.

“As an ROV-operator I like that the system is intuitive and accurate. The user interface is easy on the eye,” Rogers sad. He is also satisfied with the iSYM Online function, a remote support tool connecting the AHC system to Scantrol’s service engineers via the ship’s internet connection whenever needed.

“If Scantrol AHC fails, the job stops. That is why the iSYM online is an absolutely essential security measure,” Rogers said.

“As the offshore markets slow down due to lower oil prices, we experience that more ship owners are looking at the opportunity to upgrade their existing deck equipment with AHC instead of buying new. Retrofitting of existing equipment to AHC is often a very cost effective way to putting the vessel in a better position in order to get the limited number of new subsea operation contracts in the market,” said Helge Hammersland, managing director of Scantrol.

Scantrol is currently analyzing several existing winches in order to determine their AHC potential.

“Often, an acceptable heave compensation capacity can be achieved by just replacing the control system with an AHC control system,” Hammersland said, finding himself confident that this market trend is going to contribute to reduce the costs in the offshore industry.