The stylish new Kennedy Town community swimming pool in Hong Kong was designed and built in two similar phases between 2008 and 2017. It replaced an original pool on the site, which had to be demolished during construction of the new West Island line. Client MTR trialled the NEC3 Engineering and Construction Contract for the £64 million second phase of the pool to see how it compared with the conventionally procured first phase. This paper describes the tendering, team-building and construction performance of the second phase and shares the lessons learned on NEC contract administration and implementation.
This paper describes the design innovation adopted for the Wandoo concrete gravity substructure (CGS). The entire project process is covered, from initial concept screening and design, through to offshore hook-up and commissioning (HUC). It shows how substantial value can be created through design during the early stages of a project, and how the value can then be captured and improved in the detailed design, documentation and implementation. The specific features of dry-built concrete gravity substructures (CGSs) are identified, together with the economies which flow from this substructure concept. Key features and techniques of the concrete design are discussed. These include the benefits of simple and repetitive structural geometry, low reinforcement and prestress densities, fast-tracking the design schedule, and the approaches to construction detailing, documentation, coordination and specification. All contributed to achieving substantial overall economies to the project. The advances in outfitting design are similarly described. These encompass the oil storage / installation ballasting systems, and other major outfitting components such as deck-connections, risers, caissons and conductor frames. In conjunction with the other participants in the Wandoo Alliance, the Substructure Design Team successfully delivered a development that was substantially quicker than industry norms and under the project budget. The Wandoo Full Field Development has become one of the offshore industry's benchmarks, against which subsequent developments are now compared. Introduction Engineering design is a creative process. Few professional people would disagree that of all the many fields of engineering, offshore is one of the most challenging and consequently, for most of the time at least, one of the most enjoyable. Offshore design demands creative solutions to deal with the unpredictability of nature, whilst delivering projects that are safer, cheaper, faster, more reliable and, perhaps most importantly, that improve the way that our industry cares for the environment. The trend in all of these matters has been positive for decades and, because we all enjoy the challenge and understand our responsibilities, it will, no doubt, continue. Substructure design is no exception to these demands. The focus of this paper is on initial project Capex. Nonetheless, all the challenges of our industry had to be addressed in the design of the Wandoo CGS. Mention is made as to how this was successfully achieved. The Onshore Dry-Built CGS The onshore dry-built CGS concept was originally developed for the Ravenspurn North CGS in 1989 (Figure 1). The concept was conceived to open the market to experienced civil engineering constructors, to allow them to bring their skills to bear in a commercially competitive environment, without the specific need for prior experience in the more demanding and, to many civil constructors' view, closed environment of the offshore industry. Up until Ravenspurn the predominant perception of both the offshore oil & gas and the civil engineering industries was that CGSs were the domain of only specialised offshore companies, with experience in wet dock construction for deepwater developments. Ravenspurn demonstrated the viability of dry-built CGSs (References 1 & 2). It was further confirmed by the NAM F3/FB and Harding substructures in following years. Optimisation ideas developed from all these projects and concept designs for other developments were brought to bear, with great effect, on Wandoo.
Governments and Operators are researching the potential for the development of floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facilities as a means to monetize gas reserves and to eliminate flaring of natural gas associated with oil extraction. Floating Production Storage and Offtake (FPSO) vessel hulls may be constructed in either steel or concrete. Concrete hull structures offer a number of advantages for the support of cryogenic facilities and the storage of produced liquids.Additionally, concrete substructures may be constructed in country using a significant proportion of locally procured materials and labor.A concrete FPSO solution has been developed to support a two LNG train facility. The concrete hull may be configured to be much larger than traditional steel FPSO alternatives and need not limit the liquid storage volume or deck area. The proposed solution has sufficient deck area to allow the topside facilities to be configured with some modularization and preassembly using vendor supplied skids.Cryogenic liquid containment requirements have been reviewed for the offshore storage. It is concluded that "double" liquid containment should be adopted rather than the "partial double" containment typical of LNG carrier ships. The adoption of the double containment design criteria has implications for the alternate storage systems, membrane or prismatic self-supporting tanks.It is accepted that the membrane system can be shown to be double containment and is well suited to a concrete FPSO application. The prismatic self-supporting tankage system requires further development, but could also be used.Concrete hull vessels can be shown to be durable and stable. The proposed CFPSO arrangement has a wide beam that ensures superior stability and low motions in extreme environmental conditions.The proposed CFPSO construction could be carried out in country and has been shown to be feasible for several locations.Indicative costs are provided, which are competitive with other alternatives, especially on a life cycle evaluation. The 9MMTPA LNG production CFPSO may be completed within 43 months of EPIC contract signing.
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