Removal tooling for a legacy offshore wellhead
A client decommissioning a legacy offshore wellhead installation needed accurate engineering data and specialised tooling to remove it safely.
- Industry
- Energy: offshore decommissioning
- Work
- Reverse engineering, 3D CAD, tooling design
- Stages
- 01 Specification, 02 Concept, 03 Detail & Simulation, 04 Engineering Pack
The brief
With a legacy installation, the existing records can’t be taken on trust. The geometry, the interfaces and the access around the wellhead all had to be established before any tooling could be designed.
Offshore time is expensive, so the removal tooling had to fit first time. Rework offshore was the risk to design out.
What we did
We reverse engineered the existing wellhead system, capturing its key geometry, interfaces and access constraints, and built 3D CAD models that the client’s team used for planning, technical discussion and decisions.
We then designed purpose-built removal tooling. Three tooling concepts were compared in the model before anything was manufactured, to give the best chance of a first-time fit. The engineering information also supports the client’s method statements and regulatory submissions.
Results
- More than 15 critical interface and legacy-data uncertainties resolved
- Three removal-tooling concepts compared in the model before manufacture
- Every identified critical interface captured in the engineering data pack
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