Young Engineer Award: A look at the nominees

On October 7, the Offshore Energy Opening Gala Dinner and Awards show will be taking place at the Amsterdome in Amsterdam. Let’s take a closer look at the nominees for the Young Engineer Award.

The event offers not only a culinary dinner and live entertainment, but also celebrates the successes within the industry by presenting three awards. The nominees were recently announced. These are the nominees for the Young Engineer Award.

Jesper Elzinga, Van Oord

Elzinga actively strives to introduce environmental and sustainability initiatives within the offshore energy sector. Elzinga was a core member in the development of ideas for oyster rehabilitation in the North Sea which was executed at Luchterduinen and currently being developed for Borssele 5.

To protect marine fauna from the potential impacts of windfarm installation Elzinga also spends a significant amount his resources in assessing and mitigating the underwater sound produced constructing upcoming offshore wind projects. In doing so, Elzinga aims to make use of the cutting-edge models and innovate noise mitigations strategies which are developed within Van Oord/ with partners.

He was actively involved in the Luchterduinen pilot through which native flat oysters were re-introduced to the North Sea. Now involved in the upscaling of these processes for Borssele 5 in a quest to make further use of offshore wind parks as ecological rehabilitation hubs.

Elzinga was also stationed offshore to execute the first full-scale field testing of an underwater noise mitigation system which aims to better protect marine fauna. He was involved in all the different stages of the project (design, testing, implementation and up to end of execution). Elzinga now actively shares the knowledge gained throughout the offshore energy industry.

Tom Ashley, Royal IHC

Ashley was involved in the design of the first Loading Arm system, which was a complex multi-disciplinary technical challenge. He had to develop innovative engineering solutions while leading a team of varying skills and experience.

He has filled many functions at Royal IHC, from Lead Design Engineer to the primary on-site Mechanical Engineering support and the Royal IHC engineering lead.

During the J-Lay system installation and commissioning Ashley took pride in the support provided to the construction team. The time pressure had to be balanced with maintaining safety and design integrity. Ashley aims to complete any job to specification, on budget and in time and on developing his team to deliver results and grow as engineers.

Travis Anthony, Shell

Anthony played a crucial role in the development of the water intake riser (WIR) for Prelude FLNG. The WIR is a large, novel and highly complex bundle of steel pipes providing 50,000 m3/hr of cooling water to the FLNG from 150m water depth.

He developed the flexible connection between the WIR and FLNG together with Technip and Trelleborg. He pushed the engineering capacities of both contractors to the limit, and sometimes beyond.

A key achievement is when analyses became too complex, Anthony proposed to perform tests. He led these tests performed by Trelleborg and demonstrated that the connection works for Prelude. Anthony was rewarded for his excellent engineering work on the WIR and became Shell’s only representative at the construction yard in France.

His main tasks were to ensure safety and quality on site, which he performed outstanding. He raised quality issues early, intervened on safety aspects and improved the safety culture on site. A key intervention by Anthony was the observation of a weld at the wrong location having detrimental effect on the fatigue life of the structure. The mistake was corrected and the WIR was successfully delivered to Prelude FLNG, where it was safely installed ahead of schedule.