Environmental Monitoring

A client deploying a large offshore drilling platform needed a total monitoring solution. Offshore platforms are massive and incredibly complex self contained worlds. They are isolated from outside support and quite vulnerable to both outside dangers and internal problems or failures. To mitigate these risks the client needed a monitoring solution that could provide constant, real time, information about hundreds of different variables. One of the key aspects of this monitoring is environmental data, specifically of the meteorological variety.

Weir-Jones Engineering designed and built a total monitoring solution for the platform implementation started with the first stages of construction when structural monitoring sensors were placed inside the massive concrete foundation as it was poured. External forces are of particular concern to offshore platform operators and so a part of the system was dedicated to monitoring those variables. This meant the inclusion of a suite of sensors dedicated to environmental variables. The sensor types include temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity, barometric pressure, and even wave height. Through the use of proprietary data acquisition technology and remote satellite link this data is not only provided to the platform operators in real time, but can also be monitored remotely from anywhere in the world there is internet access.

The platform has been successfully monitored continuously for over 25 years. The client now has a traceable record of the structural integrity of the total platform for its entire operational life. Ongoing environmental monitoring has directly contributed to the safety and productivity of daily activity, and production operations. This is a continuing contract that will last for the life span of the offshore platform.