Cal Dive’s Barrow Island Project Completed

Three year long project comes to a close.

On Wednesday 11th March Cal Dive demobilised the final vessel and dive team from the Barrow Island LNG jetty project after three years and eight months supporting construction work on the challenging project.

At its height Cal Dive operated five Air/Nitrox diving spreads manned by eight diving teams delivering twenty four hour operations to the client, with over forty divers at site. Cal Dive utilised one hundred divers over the course of the project and conducted 8,715 dives with an in-water time of 14,508 hrs. This exceptional number of Air/ Nitrox dives was achieved utilising Nitrox generators producing 36 to 40% mixtures. The use of Nitrox ensured exceptional bottom times were available to the client to improve productivity and added a considerable margin of safety over air-only diving operations.

Diving was performed from client crane barges, pontoons, vessels and shore side locations. Cal Dive provided a broad range of support to the client including, welding, broco cutting, grouting, screed laying, inspection, subsea fabrication, vessel repairs, mooring installation, rigging and construction repairs. The professionalism and technical ability of the dive teams ensured that in over three and a half years of the project there was no down time due to mechanical failure of the diving equipment.

The Cal Dive diving support vessels OMAHA and UTAH II were mobilised to the project in November 2012 with OMAHA operational at site until project completion. The Landing Craft Medium proved to be an effective diving platform operating 24 hour continuous operations from 4 point moorings in close proximity to the jetty utilising inbuilt HIAB’s to support the subsea construction. The vessels were also used to support non diving operations embarking trucks and support equipment.

Although not without its challenges the divers and marine crews demonstrated an excellent safety culture throughout the course of the project, maintained their reporting ethic and delivered a top quality safety standard that has been recognised by clients and co-contractors as industry best practice.

Managed throughout by Stuart Weymouth and his project support team based in Perth the project logistics and quarantine network successfully supported what has been arguably Australia’s largest and longest inshore diving marine construction project.

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*Article supplied by Peter Evans of Cal Dive Australia.