Fugro performs first fully remote inspection on UK continental shelf

Fugro has completed its first fully remote inspection of an oil and gas platform in UK waters, 250 kilometres east of Scotland, using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) controlled from the company’s remote operations centre (ROC) in Aberdeen.

Fugro originally intended to trial the remote inspection provision during the campaign. However, when only one offshore inspection engineer was able to mobilise to the platform due to Covid-19, inspection engineers based at Fugro’s ROC in Aberdeen delivered the whole project remotely to stay on schedule.

The ROV was mobilised with dedicated remote systems for visual inspection, cathodic protection (CP), and flooded member detection (FMD), and all systems were base-checked to confirm communications links with the ROC.

The client and ROC personnel were able to access data acquired by the ROV in near real-time.