Intertek advises and assists the development of meteorological and oceanographic metocean strategies that support ongoing and future operations in the coastal and offshore environment.
Before performing any work offshore it’s important to understand the effect the environment may have on your asset and installation campaign. The marine environment can be harsh and unpredictable which makes it difficult during front-end engineering of offshore infrastructure. Developing a better understanding of the impact of wind and waves ensures efficient installations and lifecycle extension.
Since 1983 Intertek has provided modelling and metocean information for engineering design, certification and operational planning worldwide. We have worked extensively for a range of sectors including oil, gas, water, ports and harbours , wind power, wave and tidal power, subsea power cables, telecommunications and marine aggregates. Our work ensures that offshore developments can be delivered safely, efficiently and cost-effectively.
Intertek provides comprehensive feasibility and other desktop studies during project planning. These Total Quality Assurance studies address wind, waves, current, water level, air and seawater properties, daylight and solar radiation, weather phenomena, precipitation, climate and climate change. Understanding your asset locations prior to construction and installation leads to time and cost savings throughout your asset’s lifecycle.
What are Metocean Services commonly used for?
Engineering design of structures requires extreme values with specified return periods (e.g. once in 100 years). This allows our clients’ engineers to design structures strong enough to withstand the worst potential forces of nature expected in its lifecycle.
Operational planning provides statistics that show our clients how much of the time weather conditions permit their operations to continue (e.g. work boats and divers).
Estimating likely weather delays during survey or the installation of offshore assets metocean services helps you measure the actual cost, negotiate contracts and establish better timelines.
Incident investigation and expert witness services help identify causes of weather-related incidents and resolve contractual disputes relating to weather delays. Examples include the sinking of a vessel, near-sinking of a drill ship, collapse of sea defences as well as late completions of offshore works.
Procurement of measurements and the development of strategy for clients to obtain metocean data and tender support services as well as client representation on metocean instrument deployment, servicing and recovery.
Evaluating metocean models, which generate years of synthetic data (e.g. wind, wave and current) that can be used in lieu of measured data which may not exist. We validate models by quantifying their accuracy against measured data. Intertek is familiar with models that originate from national meteorological services and from commercial enterprises.
Peripheral metaocean input to other work complements environmental studies, environmental impact assessments and environmental modelling that support offshore drilling operations and regulatory compliance.
