• Streamlined project management enables faster yard turnaround and vessel reactivation.
• Precise and accurate monitoring provides visibility to minimize the risk of cost overruns.

Tidewater has estimated time savings of as much as 60% by using UniSea’s Maindeck application to manage the dry-docking of its platform supply vessel Highland Prestige, accelerating yard turnaround and reactivation of the vessel for work in the UK North Sea.

“This is a revolutionary application that facilitates greatly enhanced planning, coordination and execution of a dry-docking project compared with traditional practice, yielding significant benefits in terms of reduced time and improved cost-efficiency for us as the vessel operator,” said Tidewater’s Assistant Operations Superintendent Chris Tundogan.

He was speaking during the yard stay earlier this year at Dales Marine Services in Aberdeen where Highland Prestige underwent an intermediate survey for inspection and maintenance that entailed assessment of the hull, anodes, propellers, engines and other equipment to ensure the vessel meets class requirements.

Keeping track of maintenance tasks

The 2007-built PSV is supporting decommissioning work on TAQA Bratani-operated oil and gas fields in the northern part of the UK North Sea, making several trips each week to and from the supply base in Aberdeen.

Such a dry-docking requires hundreds of maintenance tasks to be performed on the vessel by many operatives simultaneously, posing project management challenges in terms of co-ordination, communication and costs tracking. Some jobs may take longer than expected or additional work may need to be carried out, making it difficult to stay on top of the project.

Typically, a project is managed through manual inputting on spreadsheets, with the superintendent dependent on information about any work variations that may occur being communicated by phone, messaging or email to ensure the project status remains updated.

Furthermore, daily reports must be compiled at the end of each day to provide an overview of work status and costs for management, which is a laborious and time-consuming process that can also be prone to errors if some of the information is incorrect.

Interactive platform for collaboration

“By consolidating reporting and tracking into one system, the Maindeck app has reduced time-consuming administrative tasks and provided a much more efficient way to manage the workflow of multiple jobs and overall progress,” Tundogan explained, citing estimated time savings of around 60% through use of the application.

Maindeck is a centralized interactive platform – accessible via phone, tablet or PC – that allows all stakeholders from work crew to top management to gain instant access to accurate real-time updates, enabling them to easily determine the status of maintenance tasks, precisely monitor costs progression and make quick decisions to keep the project on track.

“Task management is greatly simplified through improved communication, collaboration and transparency as all team members have access to the same project information, providing a single source of truth for more efficient decision-making based on the latest data,” Tundogan said.

Responsive project management

“This allows faster and more responsive project management so that resources can be allocated most effectively to execute the project more efficiently,” he added.

Much of the reporting burden for the superintendent is removed as daily reports can be automatically generated with a single click, based on data inputted by the various users, for sharing with relevant parties.

Tundogan said Maindeck provides ongoing visibility on costs relative to the budget to give the vessel operator greater control over expenses and thereby minimise the risk of potential cost overruns.

“This significantly streamlines project management with a dry-docking, allowing vessels to be reactivated and returned to revenue-generating operations more quickly – directly benefiting the operator’s bottom line,” he concluded.