Bureau Veritas Walks Industry through Walk-to-Work

Bureau Veritas has developed guidelines for walk-to-work (W2W) motion compensated Offshore Access Systems (OAS), which are used to transfer personnel to and from offshore installations.

Matthieu de Tugny, Senior Vice-President and Head of Offshore, Bureau Veritas, said: “With these new guidelines the regulatory gap into which personnel transfer between offshore support vessels and offshore installations could fall has been closed.”

Two different offshore access technologies have emerged: passive transfer gangways, which are first connected to the offshore installation and then put in free-flow mode for personnel transfer, and active transfer gangways, which remain motion compensated during personnel transfer.

Guidance Note NI629, “Certification of Offshore Access Systems”, provides an overview of the safety principles and technical requirements for the design, manufacturing and operation of reliable and dependable equipment for the safe transfer of personnel at sea.

“Getting people safely onto and off unmanned platforms and wind farm towers offshore has become a big issue. Walk-to-Work OAS can provide significant safety, operability and/or cost advantages over more traditional personnel transfer methods such as personnel basket or capsule lifts, step-over from high speed crew transfer vessels and helicopter transfers”, de Tugny said.

“We see a lot of new vessel types emerging with these motion-compensated gangways and it is imperative that the industry has a standard against which to assess their safety and to help develop safe new designs.”