Field trips to the North Sea
Published
Ship designers from Ulstein visited three different Ulstein designed ships operating in the North Sea during the winter of 2015. The purpose was to understand operations and to retrieve inputs from the crews, in order to further develop and improve our ship designs and solutions.
The designers visited the two platform supply vessels NAO Thunder and NAO Guardian (design type PX121), and the IMR vessel Seven Viking (design type SX148). The trips lasted for 1 day, 4 days and 6 days, respectively. All vessels operate in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
In Ulstein Group, we are designing offshore vessels, we are building the vessels, and we also have interests in ship investments. The ship designers can watch their designs being constructed outside their office windows. However, they seldom get a chance to be on board the vessels when in operation. When on board, they'll get feedback directly from crews as well as making their own experiences.
"The weather was quite bad, but the vessel coped splendidly - as did we," comments Torgrim Driveklepp, senior designer hydrodynamics, who spent six days on the 'Seven Viking'.
“I characterize us as lucky when getting the opportunity to visit the vessels in rough winterly weather. All our people who attended these trips experienced the vessels’ movements when it’s getting really choppy,” comments design manager Frode Sollid. He continues:
“The experience gained is of incredible value to us in the further development of our designs and solutions. Now is time to make our well-reputed offshore vessels even better.”
Co-partner Snorre Hjelseth from Oslo School of Architecture and Design was on board all three trips, while design manager in Ulstein Design & Solutions AS, Frode Sollid, was responsible for the planning and implementation of all three field trips.
Further field trips are also being planned.
![](/uploads/images/Field-trip-Seven-Viking-ROV-deployed.jpg)
One of the 'Seven Viking' ROVs deployed at the Gullfaks A oil rig.
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