LR: Up to 40 per cent of FPSO maintenance work ‘unnecessary’

As much as 40 per cent of maintenance work carried out by floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel operators was described as “unnecessary” by a report from UK’s classification society Lloyd’s Register (LR).

LR said on Wednesday that, by reducing these unwarranted manhours, operators could save on average almost £600,000 (around $750,000) per asset each year, equivalent to £15 million ($18.8M) over an assets’ life.

Using its asset performance maintenance software, AllAssets, LR found that on average, FPSO operators could be spending 500 manhours per specific equipment group on maintenance activity that fails to reduce the risk of failure or preserve facility uptime.

LRs’ findings identified room for improvement in the way maintenance is planned, highlighting the need for a consistent strategy across equipment groups, systems, and production units.

Relying purely on original equipment manufacturer (OEM) guidelines meant that operators were unable to qualify whether maintenance activities were essential. LR claimed that OEM guidelines don’t take into consideration the ever-changing nature of offshore operations.

As a result of this approach, there is an increased risk of failure as a backlog of maintenance is generated, increasing spend and inappropriately targeting resources.

Victor Borges, Lloyd’s Register’s expert voice on FPSO maintenance optimisation, said: “In an environment that merges both energy and marine assets, FPSO operations are hugely complex. […] operators are under more pressure than ever to manage costs and prioritise maintenance activities that reduce risk. Therefore, operators could reap significant benefits from our findings, which highlight areas for improvement in the way maintenance activities are planned.

“There is a perception that implementing the methodologies that can help optimise maintenance activities is time consuming, complex, cumbersome, and costly. This attitude, however, only drives a vicious circle of tackling small issues, instead of designing a systematic, informed and optimised maintenance strategy. This approach would see operators save significant time and money longer-term.

“[…] operators need to adopt a risk-based approach to maintenance, allowing them to cut unnecessary spend, free up resources and reduce the maintenance backlog”.