Page 7: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2021)

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EDITOR’S LETTER

The Digital Plunge ordered a shed last month from a massive corporate conglomerate, a project

I opted to take on myself given the copious amounts of time I save daily not commuting into Manhattan, and equally important, the end of the boating

I season in the Northeast. When delivery of the shed slipped past the arrival date,

I jumped online to fnd its whereabouts, only to end with zero actionable information.

Next step, I called the company’s customer service line to see if a live person might have better luck in helping me [a] track the rather large package, and [b] ascertain its new delivery date. Strike two, as the CSR was seemingly befuddled, unable to either fnd the package or give any intelligible guidance on its ETA. Strike three came the following week when the package arrived, only to see that it was battered and bent, the internal components damaged, ultimately returned for a refund. So much for global digital connectivity and clarity.

My point is not simply to regale you with tales of my domestic life, rather to point out that the promise and delivery of “Digitalization” and all that it entails still has a fairly long way to go in most industries. We talk about the digital trend throughout each of our media properties, from offshore energy to maritime to subsea to ports and logistics, and I contend that if you ask 100 people to defne “Digitalization” you’ll get 100 answers, as it tends to be highly specifc to your niche and operations.

Specifcally for this edition we are pleased to present a pair of articles, one that looks at Norwegian offshore constructor Aibel, authored by Michael Hodgson of Trimble and looking at how 3D models are at the heart of Aibel’s work designing and manufacturing oil platforms. This article starts on page 22.

The second, authored by Elaine Maslin and starting on page 26, looks at two approaches to leveraging digital solutions, the frst from FutureOn which says that digitalization can reduce up to 70% of the engineering hours in feld development, and another from Dubai-based engineering and fabrication frm Lamprell and Swiss engineering simulation company Akselos which have shown that the amount of

OEDigital.com material needed for an offshore wind jacket foundation can be reduced by 30% using 220,887 digital twin technology. monthly pageviews

Finally, on page 33 we look at how Neptune Energy is applying a data visualization platform based on 3D gaming technology to get historical and live data from its subsea wells in Norway to enhance drilling and production effciency and reduce time and costs.

OEToday eNew 53,685 5X/Week

Gregory R. Trauthwein

Editorial Director & Associate Publisher [email protected] t: +1.212.477.6700 • m: +1-516.810.7405 september/october 2021 OFFSHORE ENGINEER 7