Another Successful Chapter in the Long History of Halifax Shipyard:
The Eirik Raude

By Cheryl Rego

Need some help building one of the world’s most advanced drilling rigs? The Norwegian company Ocean Rig ASA did, and they found an apt partner in Halifax Shipyard. Halifax Shipyard has been in operation since 1918, but its high tech facilities and highly skilled workforce belies any image you may have of a historical museum-type operation.

It’s not that the shipyard has been denied its role in history. Between 1918 and 1978, no other industry in the City of Halifax contributed so greatly to the economy, both locally and provincially. Halifax Shipyard was the successor of the Halifax Graving Dock Company, which began operation in Halifax in 1889.

Eirik Raude

Heavy weather off the Glomar Grand Banks.

Steel hulled shipbuilding started in Halifax during the first Great War in 1918. Between 1970 and 1980, the Shipyard built seven semi-submersible drilling rigs. This fully established the Shipyard as providing quality products and innovative solutions to the construction of large, integrated structures. In 1994, Irving Shipbuilding bought the Shipyard and spent $40 million in renovations and upgrades.

Five years later and half a world away, Ocean Rig ASA was looking for a company that could complete the Eirik Raude semi-submersible drilling rig. The Eirik Raude is a fifth-generation semi-submersible drilling unit, designed for deepwater and harsh environment operations. The rig is capable of reducing well construction time by approximately 15 per cent compared with fourth generation drilling units. The Eirik Raude is fully winterized for year-round operations in offshore Canada and offshore northern Norway, and capable of operation in up to 3000 metre-deep water in a dynamic positioned mode.

The Halifax Shipyard is an 18-hectare facility located in the ice-free, deep-water port of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The shipyard is 40 km from an International Airport with daily service to New York, Boston, Montreal and Toronto. Materials can be delivered to the yard by sea, air, road and rail with easy access.

Experience with building the Canadian Patrol Frigate Project allowed Irving Shipbuilding Inc. to transfer technology to Halifax Shipyard. This included planning, early pre-outfitting techniques, accuracy control, quality assurance, welding engineering as well as building techniques that allow products from panel-line and sub-assemblies to be joined into units. The basis of the building method is to join, install, integrate and test ship sections up to 3,400 tonnes indoors. The mega ship components are then transferred by rail and winch from the module hall to the Launchway, where they are placed on the equivalent of a Locomotive turn-table and positioned facing down the Launchway.

The Halifax Shipyard has a group of engineers covering the various disciplines required for the marine business it operates. A variety of engineering and planning software tools are used to improve processes. Autocad 14 and three-dimensional Tribon are in use and electronic communication is carried out between clients and sub-contractors daily. Primivera software is used for the in-house planning process.

With this technology and top class facility, Halifax Shipyard’s Marketing Manager Donald Kerr said his yard was definitely up to completing the Eirik Raude project.

"We were asked to look at doing some studies on the rig for upgrades. They [Ocean Rig ASA] liked our price and approach," he said. Kerr said his colleagues at Halifax Shipyard knew the job would be challenging. To begin with, Ocean Rig ASA capitalized on the low cost of steel in China and had the hull built there. Kerr said this meant cutting into the structure to install major pieces of equipment and welding the way back out.

After the hull had been built, the rig was towed to the Gulf of Mexico for additional work, but the contracted company fell into bankruptcy. When the job came to Halifax Shipyard, Kerr said their first task was to discover what had and had not been done.

"The work scope that we got from Ocean Rig indicated to us that they knew a certain amount of the work had been done," said Kerr, "but when we got the rig up here, we did detailed surveys of pipe systems and electrical installations, and we found that there were large portions of work yet to be completed. The contract price rose based on all the different things that were found."

Kerr said the rig arrived in Halifax in 2001 and the shipyard was contracted to carry out "mechanical completion" of the rig.

Preparations for the contract began months before the rig actually arrived in Halifax. Getting skilled labour proved to be a challenge in itself.

"In order to staff up for the Eirik Raude, we needed welders--qualified welders, qualified pipe welders. We also needed steel workers, pipe fitters. Our biggest problem was recruiting electricians," said Kerr. He said that the shipyard exhausted all such labour in Nova Scotia.

"Then we went to the maritime provinces and exhausted all the labour on the electrical side. We got a contingent from Quebec, and we were still short on electrical, and were allowed to bring in 70-80 electricians from the UK for four to six months," he said.

The shipyard’s Canadian and international labour search paid off and they were able to find the skills they needed to complete the project. "The Eirik Raude was a major project. It is a unique rig as far as the work is concerned. It is like buying the latest 2003 car with all the bells and whistles," said Kerr. "The people who worked on it, they were challenged by the work but were up to the challenge and did an excellent job in executing the project. We had up to 1200 people working on the rig at one time during a three to four month period."

Having people working 24 hours presented more challenges. "People worked round the clock to get the rig ready for the owner. That presented challenging construction plans--our planning had to be right on the ball. Project management had to be very well executed. Our people had to be motivated and most of all our skills had to be right on. Our ideal was to do the job right the first time and not go back to do rework. We also believed in doing work smarter, and not harder," explained Kerr.

Aside from logistical procedures, Kerr said that the Shipyard’s project management experience played a big part in the project’s success. He said there was an "open book" policy for the rig owners so that they were comfortable with the work and the processes.

"The owners had the capability of opening the books and checking for accuracy. It was a cooperative effort," said Kerr. "They brought a project manager who was very experienced. With his help and cooperative effort, we were able to get through some fairly substantial problems."

Kerr said one of the technical challenges with the Eirik Raude was the installation of thrusters. He said the engineers were later asked to deliver a paper at a conference in Houston on the process they used to install them. Kerr said it is components like the thrusters that make the Eirik Raude an incredible rig.

"We had to install the huge thrusters to enable dynamic positioning of the rig. The thrusters are based on satellite tracking to keep them right on position for drilling. The rig shoots a message to the satellite and the satellite tells the rig where to go. When you have a large rig of this sort, and you hit a major ocean storm, depending on the sophistication of the rig, you have to stop. This fifth generation rig can keep on longer because of the stability and capability of staying on position," he said.

The Eirik Raude presented many welding challenges to the team. Ron Noel, who worked on the project, is a welding technologist for Irving Shipbuilding.

"There were locations where the work was very challenging because of the preheat requirements. The temperatures were very high, and in some cases the welders had to use a breathing apparatus while working," he explained. Noel also said that in some areas welders were limited in the amount of time they could spend inside the vessel, so they had to work in rotating teams.

While some welding teams were fighting high temperatures, others had to contend with the cold temperatures that come with most offshore construction projects. "In most cases when dealing with offshore construction, the requirements include low-temperature service. For instance, Charpy V-notch impact requirements involve temperatures around —40 to —50ºC," said Noel.

To work at these temperatures, specific welding processes have to be used. Noel said these include SMAW (shielded metal arc welding), SCAW (shielded flexible arc welding), and SAW (submerged arc welding). He said that of these, SCAW has evolved fastest and has become one of the main processes used in offshore construction. This is because it can be used in any position and can deposit between two to two-and-a-half times more metal than SMAW can deposit within the same time slot. Noel also said that SCAW produces a better quality weld and therefore higher productivity.

Noel said that the type of equipment used during the Eirik Raude project was also important. The team used inverter power sources as much as possible, as they are small, light and energy efficient. They also used portable wire feeders, which enabled the movement of equipment into areas that would normally be prohibitive for conventional welding equipment.

"This meant we could use semi-automatic welding in remote areas, allowing us to increase our productivity and flexibility," Noel said.

The Halifax Shipyard’s success with the Eirik Raude has set Kerr and his colleagues in good stead. They are currently updating the Glomar Grand Banks rig, a rig the shipyard originally built in the 1980s. As well, they have been awarded the platform for South Venture, a rig used by Exxon Mobil.

The Eirik Raude project took the Halifax Shipyard from being an operation capable of offshore construction to a company that excels in rig projects. In mid-December 2001, Irving Shipbuilding bought Banc Metals, where the Eirik Raude was tied up, as an Offshore Fabrication Facility. This is on the Atlantic Ocean side of the MacDonald Bridge in Halifax and is deep draft to facilitate the largest offshore rig. The new company is called Woodside Industries and has 11,000 sq. m. of covered fabrication and storage space, 1250 sq. m. of office accommodation and service facilities, modern equipment and overhead craneage, CNC machine tools and cutting, forming, rolling and welding equipment. "We bought the offshore facility in Woodside about two years ago to accommodate rigs. A drilling rig with the large tower could not go under the MacDonald Bridge without disassembling the drilling derrick; with Woodside, we have clear passage to and from the Atlantic Ocean," said Kerr.

Completing the Eirik Raude was significant for the Halifax Shipyard, but it was also important for Nova Scotia. Aside from those directly working for the shipyard, there was also a chain of qualified contractors that supported the project. Kerr said that working on the Eirik Raude has given these approximately 150 sub-contractors experience with the offshore construction industry, and has set the province on course in a lucrative field.

"There is a pool of highly skilled people in Nova Scotia and the Atlantic provinces. In addition, companies like Halifax Shipyard, together with community colleges and local unions, have all been putting an emphasis into training and qualifications. The workforce in the Atlantic provinces will be ready to take on almost any challenge that comes up in the next few years," said Noel.

"Both the procedures and the benefits of the personnel training from the Eirik Raude will always benefit us," he continued. "In addition, it has made us far more capable of meeting the stringent requirements of the offshore industry. As we continue to work for the offshore industry, we will continue to develop procedures and skills, which at the end of the day helps us to build an expertise in this part of the country."