n February 2010, USOS was contracted by Heerema to design their new deepwater construction vessel, for which an LOI was signed between Heerema and DSME mid July 2010. On 24 August the LOI was turned into a building contract with DSME for the design, construction, testing, commisioning and delivery of this impressive vessel, a record breaking time for development and award of such a vessel.
“Designs for deepwater construction vessels are an important focus area for Ulstein Group, and we are very pleased that Heerema selected us for designing this state-of-the-art vessel”, says Tore Ulstein, deputy CEO of Ulstein Group.
The self propelled DP3 Deepwater Construction Vessel is a customised version of the Ulstein SOC 5000 vessel design. The Heerema vessel features a revolving heavy lift capability of 4,000 tonnes, deepwater lowering equipment up to 3,500 metres and a pipelay tower for J-lay and Reel-lay operations via a moonpool. The hull configuration is specially designed for fast transit speeds and optimum motion characteristics in operation. The vessel is DP3-class equipped with 2 x 6500 kW and 4 x 3200 kW thrusters allowing for a transit speed of 12-14 knots.
“Heerema´s choice of design proves that our inhouse developed SOC 5000 design is a solid base to meet clients project requirements”, says Bob Rietveldt, managing director at USOS, and continues:
“The success of the project comes for account of our project team, managed by Edwin van Leeuwen, which was able to provide the design in the record time frame required by Heerema to start tendering for the construction of the vessel.”
Following the contract award to DSME by Heerema, USOS signed a contract with DSME on 13 September for further vessel engineering and integration of the mission equipment designed by Huisman. “The work will be executed by a dedicated project office in Vlaardingen where engineers from DSME and Ulstein Sea of Solutions work closely together. The central location of the Ulstein Sea of Solutions office, close to Heerema and Huisman, is important to have good communication and flow of information required to shorten the timeline in the early phase of the construction of such a vessel,” says Van Leeuwen.
Main dimensions of the vessel are:
Loa: 211.5 m
Lpp: 197.6 m
Beam (moulded): 46.2 m
Depth (moulded): 16.1 m
Operating draught: 11.0 m
Service speed: 12-14 kn
Installed power: 6 x 7,370 kW
Complement: 305 persons
More information could be found here!