Ulstein Launches New Shallow Water Construction Vessel Designs
Monday 12 October 2015
With the S182 design ULSTEIN introduce a new dynamically positioned multipurpose construction vessel suitable for shallow water operations. Their main design driver was to develop a very CAPEX friendly DP vessel with good capabilities to support various offshore operations, including cable lay and offshore construction.
The vessel offers an unprecedented combination of deck area, accommodation and station keeping capability for a compact vessel. This results in a very cost efficient platform capable of supporting a wide variety of operations:
- Cable laying
- Offshore construction
- Shallow water installation
- Dive support
- Rock installation
- Salvage works
The mooring and DP2 (optionally DP3) station keeping capability, in combination with the large endurance and adequate transit speed, ensure that the ULSTEIN S182 can operate autonomously in remote shallow water and offshore areas.
"Given the CAPEX target that we have set ourselves, we decided that speed will be a result of the design rather than a design driver as it is in most designs," says Edwin van Leeuwen, Managing Director at Ulstein Design & Solutions B.V. "Speed requirements often have a big impact on installed power, easily spiraling up vessel CAPEX."
More importantly, ULSTEIN has been able to develop a very versatile workhorse that is capable of shallow water DP operations (@ 4.5m draft) including beaching. She features a large and strong open work deck suitable to accommodate up to 30 m ΓΈ carousel, large cargo hold below deck and ca 10,000 DWT capacity. A main offshore crane of up to 400 t can be located in the side of the vessel, while a passage way below main deck is created between aft casings and accommodation, a safety feature avoiding people having to cross the open work deck.
"As operational areas we mainly target South East Asia, Middle East and Africa, but the vessel will of course also be capable to work in the North Sea, where we see a good market for cable lay operations." concluded Mr van Leeuwen