DNV GL Sheds Light on Marine Personnel Transport Safety

June 20, 2014

Transferring personnel to offshore installations using crew boats and crane-lifted carriers is a common operation around the world, however, practices, levels of training, standards and the equipment used vary greatly.

Risk assessments currently use outdated statistics, and there is no central system for recording levels of activity and incidents.

In order to improve safety performance and raise the profile of this operation DNV GL, the leading technical adviser to the oil and gas industry, has carried out a study for the newly launched Marine Transfer Forum.

The Forum brings together offshore operators, vessel operators, lifting specialists, and transfer system manufacturers to increase industry knowledge and mitigate risk.

Founder members include Reflex Marine, Enermech, Seacore Marine and DNV GL.

By creating this forum, operators will for the first time have a system to provide (anonymous) data on personnel transfer activity which will be used to develop good quality risk data which will be made available to the industry.

To start this, DNV GL has analysed available data on global marine transfer accidents collated by Reflex Marine. This estimated that there is a one in five million chance of fatality in each transfer from vessel to installation by crane.

This compares to a one in 400,000 chance of fatality if transferred by helicopter, 11 times higher than crane transfer.

It should be noted that the crane transfer data excludes risks in transit, whereas helicopter data covers the complete journey to/from shore.

These results will be used to improve risk assessments of marine transfer.

“Each year the offshore industry makes about 5 million personnel transfers from crew boats,” said Philip Strong, CEO of Reflex Marine.

“This is not far short of the nine million annual transfers by helicopter but marine transfer attracts little attention compared to the well organised and resourced offshore helicopter industry.”

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June 20, 2014; Image: Reflex Marine