James Fisher Wins Rampion Pontoon Contract

James Fisher Marine Services (JFMS) has won a contract for the design, manufacture, installation and maintenance of temporary pontoons at the Newhaven Port which will be used during the construction phase of the 400MW Rampion offshore wind farm.

JFMS has worked closely with its sister company Mojo Maritime on the Rampion pontoon project. With design work completed for the first 60-metre pontoon section, Rampion has extended the contract for a further 60m section.

The floating platforms have been specially designed with a special runner system to enable the safe transfer of personnel and improve docking operations, speeding up crew transfer vessel (CTV) transfers by eliminating the need to amend mooring lines and adjust gangways to accommodate the tide.

Throughout the consultation and design process, every effort was made to minimise costs for Rampion, JFMS said.

Nigel Furneaux, Mojo’s project manager said: “We recommended moving the boarding point of the pontoon to a slightly different position on site, to minimise the routing of electrical services and this small change is expected to save quite a lot of money.”

As well as the pontoon contract extension, JFMS’s involvement in the overall Rampion project has already grown with the provision of a guard vessel for an initial short term charter of 7 weeks. JFMS mobilised a 26m vessel for the charter, which has now been extended until the summer.

Rampion is being built by E.ON, the Green Investment Bank plc and Canadian energy company Enbridge. The wind farm is situated 13km off the coast of Sussex, and is expected to be completed in 2018.