We started work on a special project in the North Sea to create a complex set of scaffolding to enable the painting campaign on TOTAL E&P Netherland's K6CC platform to proceed.
TOTAL E&P Netherland is involved in prospecting for and extracting natural gas. TOTAL produces around 10% of all the natural gas Dutch households use from its 22 offshore platforms and four (subsea) production installations in the Dutch segment of the North Sea.
The whole project had to be completed in just 150 days. Extra work was carried out in preparation for a planned shutdown of the platform.
We brought in around 300 t of scaffolding into the project, including equipment for two large suspended scaffolding structures under the islands, suspended scaffolding under the bridge and scaffolding on the helideck; and, of course, the various production locations on the island. As space was limited, we put up a number of secondary structures to store materials.
Safety first
The platform is manned by eight to ten people at all times, but there could be up to 90 people a day working on the platform during the painting campaign project. With TOTAL we took a number of steps to ensure everyone knew what had to be done and what the safety aspects involved were: TOTAL issued new job permits for all work activities each day, and toolbox meetings were held on site each morning, using our LMRA (Last Minute Risk Analysis) chart to a large extent.
