ABB Wins Marine Software Deal for Nine Heavy Lift Ships

ABB has secured a series of contracts for nine heavy lift vessels transporting modules for the Tengiz oil field expansion by Tengizchevroil (TCO).

The contract includes new orders of ABB Ability™ Marine Advisory System – OCTOPUS marine software.

As explained, OCTOPUS will help enhance the safety and efficiency of the heavy-lift vessels carrying out the transportation work by indicating the optimal route based on weather and forecasted vessel motions.

As part of the delivery, ABB will also install sensors on each vessel to generate real-time roll and motion data for both the cargo and vessel. As part of the implementation, ABB will make defined data points available for the expansion project through Cloud-to-Cloud Integration, enabling TCO to monitor specific KPIs and project progress.

China’s biggest shipping company, COSCO SHIPPING, has been selected to carry out the transportation work, which will see modules weighing up to 1,800 tons moved from fabrication yards in Korea and Europe to the transshipment ports in the Black and Baltic seas. From there, the modules will be further transported to western Kazakhstan.

COSCO SHIPPING has subcontracted part of the work to its partners – NYK Group, Chung Yang Shipping, Dongbang Transport Logistics, Hanjin Transportation and CJ Korea Express.

“Together with our partners, we have been contracted to ensure the safe and timely delivery of project modules into Kazakhstan. We already have considerable experience of using ABB’s OCTOPUS software, as our own semi-submersible heavy lift fleet has used the system for a number of years. We look forward to taking this collaboration a step further and rolling out this (…) technology across the heavy lift ships in the TCO transportation and logistics contract,” Marc Beerendonk, Chief Operating Officer, COSCO SHIPPING Heavy Transport, said.