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46Maritime Reporter & Engineering News OSV reportGC Rieber Shipping, the Norway- based harsh environment shipping spe- cialist, has charged ULSTEIN with developing a high-capacity subsea vessel based on its SX121 design. This $141m million ship, ordered in June 2012,alongside an option for a sister vessel, has been commissioned in response to strongmarket desire for offshore construction support vessels (CSVs) for deep and harsh environments. Alongside state-of- the-art features, equipment and perform- ance figures, the vessel will give GC Rieber Shipping maximum operationalavailability ? a vital characteristic for both the company and those chartering the ship. Downtime will be minimised thanks to the ?operation+? feature, an evo- lution of GC Rieber Shipping?s own ?fail- to-safe? design approach. ?Operation+? allows the vessel to con- tinue to operate even if it has experienced a significant failure. Bjørn Valberg, GC Rieber Shipping?s Technical Director, ex- plains more: ?Fail-to-safe means that even if a ship encounters a failure it is rendered in a safe condition. Our objective with this ship is to take that philosophy a step fur- ther,? Valberg comments. ?In the case of this vessel a single fail- ure ? such as a failure of a generator set, a single thruster or even an entire switch- board section (operating two generators and two thrusters) ? will not threaten the redundant continuation of operations,giving charterers real peace of mind.? Valberg illustrates this with a real-life scenario involving subsea flex pipe lay- ing ? an operation the new vessel is opti- mised for ? where, if a single failure was encountered, a ?standard? ship would be forced to terminate operations as redun-dancy would be jeopardised. ?And of course,? he states, ?if you are in deep waters with a substantial length of product, such as flex pipe, hanging from the ship, abandoning that operationis, well? it?s quite obvious how difficult, time-consuming and expensive that is. ?This new vessel, thanks to ?opera- tion+? is protected against that scenario ? it could continue with its assignment.That?s a hugely important characteristic of that vessel, helping the charterer meet the demanding expectations of the mar- ket.? ULSTEIN?s design and solutions team has been working to turn this concept into reality and deliver the Holy Grail of min- imal operational downtime and maxi- mum efficiency and reliability. Geir Sivertstøl, principal engineer elec- trical systems at ULSTEIN, says the ves- sel, equipped with three main thrustersand three side thrusters (for stationkeep- ing during pipe laying), is fully optimisedfor carrying out assignments without in-terruption. He notes: ?The switchboard system,propellers and diesel motors can be con-figured in groups of two, three or four. In case of an AUTR operation (i.e. the oc- currence of a single major failure), the Cool Under Pressure in Harsh Environs Members of the technical design team in ULSTEIN in front of an SX121 tank test model displayed in ULSTEIN?s corporate exhibition, from left Per Arne Rik- sheim, Ann Katrin Barstad, Geir Sivertstøl and Terje Våge. The operational flexibilityof the SX121 design en-ables the owner to oper-ate in a wider range ofmarket segments.(Illustration: Ulstein Group) (Photo: Tony Hall) MR#11 (42-49):MR Template 11/3/2012 10:03 AM Page 46