Deputy director of Boskalis Offshore Bas van Bemmelen talks to Jane Bordenave about the company’s cradle to cradle approach to projects and how it has come to be a world leader in subsea soil intervention.
Founded in 1995, Boskalis Offshore is the specialised oil and gas organisation within the Royal Boskalis Westminster Group. It is based in the Netherlands, but operates globally and has realised projects on every continent. It works to excavate trenches and provide coarse gravel cover for subsea cables and pipelines.
While Boskalis Group is a leading dredging and marine contractor, as deputy director Bas van Bemmelen explains, its oil and gas clients quickly set themselves apart in terms of what their projects required. “Around 20 years ago, it became clear that the needs of these customers were different from those of our other clients. The work that we were doing for them was smaller scale, but required greater precision, specialist techniques and brought with it, especially in the early days, even greater safety considerations. In order to service these clients fully, a dedicated division was established in the shape of Boskalis Offshore.”
Boskalis Offshore targets specifically oil and gas related projects and clients, and has globally divided its activities by region: North West Europe, Middle East, Far East, Russia, South America, North America and Africa. The boundaries of each of these areas are defined not by geographical size, but by turnover and number of projects. For each region Boskalis Offshore makes use of the local knowledge, the infrastructure and resources of the Boskalis Group’s vast network of local offices and other establishments.
While the organisation’s core business is the soil related part of a project (dredging and/or rock installation), it will carry out and oversee an entire project for the client. “What we are looking for,” says van Bemmelen, “is a good balance between our core business and other elements we would be overseeing in a managerial role.” Recently the firm worked in partnership with offshore pipelay and subsea construction company Allseas Group to complete the €180 million Magellan Strait Crossing—a 38 kilometre long, 24 inch wide pipe running from Tierra del Fuego to mainland Argentina. Boskalis carried out complete pipeline installation in the near shore areas, where the water was very shallow. It also carried out the subsea connections to the deepwater pipeline that had been installed by Allseas.
What allows the company to become involved at this level and even before a project has started is its dedicated engineering department. Responsible for undertaking feasibility studies, designing specialised vessels for the fleet and providing continuing project advice as required, this department has also helped in the organisation’s investigations of how to mitigate the environmental impact of its operations. “We are very active in participating in and leading studies into the effects of what we do. We also take practical steps to advance technology so we can reduce any impact we have,” impresses van Bemmelen.
Historically, many port areas requiring dredging works have been forced to put projects on hold due to the absence of an environmentally safe solution for the disposal or processing of contaminated sediments. However, in thepast five to ten years, Boskalis has established through its engineering department a number of measures designed to reduce the environmental impact of its actions. One example is a special valve ensuring that any sediment overflowing during the excavation process resettles in the same area, so as to avoid contaminating other potentially sensitive areas. Another example includes development of a hybrid dredging system combining precision dredging of contaminated soils with a robust, integrated system to sieve out debris. After sieving, sediments can be hydraulically transported to a processing plant or settlement lagoons. Sand separation then takes place, prior to disposal at repositories.
As a group, Boskalis has deployed its expertise in environmentally sensitive dredging activities across the globe, including at various locations in Abu Dhabi; at the Port of Gothenburg, Sweden; at the Trans Thailand Malaysia Gas Pipeline Project in Thailand; at the port of Melbourne in Australia, numerous locations in the Netherlands; at Daya Bay in Guangdong Province, China; and in Mejillones, Chile.
As well as caring for its own operations, Boskalis is a company that is willing to help when disaster strikes. When the Deepwater Horizon exploded in April this year, the firm did not hesitate to send in vessels to aid the rescue. “We had just merged with another Dutch company, SMIT, which has a large salvage operation. They were among the first crews on site fighting fire and keeping the rig afloat. In the meantime we were in active conversation with some of the main parties involved to see where we could apply our vessels to try to mitigate what was going on,” explains van Bemmelen. “The Stuyvesant, one of our US-built vessels, is currently on site working on the sand barriers that are being created.”
Boskalis has offered its Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers in combination with ‘oil sweep arms’ to the clean-up effort, along with specialists to instruct crews on US-built vessels on how to use them. Hopper Dredgers are self propelled dredging vessels with an internal hold (hopper). The hopper is used for internal storage of sand and internal pumps are used to increase the efficiency of the process.
Boskalis’s concern for the environment also extends to its involvement with EcoShape, a consortium of Dutch specialists with a history of solving coastal infrastructural challenges in the Netherlands and abroad. EcoShape holds invaluable knowledge relating to land reclamation, sea and river defences, dyke building, dredging and protecting nature—and is committed to making this knowledge available for the benefit of sustainable coastal development worldwide.
Building with Nature is EcoShape’s long-term research programme aimed at developing new design concepts for the layout and sustainable exploitation of river, coastal and delta areas. Ecology and technology are involved at all phases of a project, which includes design, assessment, selection, construction and management. The primary goal is ecologically, technically and socially sustainable development.
Safety is another key issue for Boskalis; and in July this year, it launched its new safety programme, NINA (No Injuries, No Accidents). The programme is focused on developing a value-based culture, where people are committed to safety and happy to approach one other about safety issues. NINA comprises a vision statement which is supported by five core values and five rules. Worldwide implementation is currently underway, during which time NINA will be presented through training sessions, start-up meetings and site visits. A new quality management system integrating the NINA principles will also be launched, as well as the new NINA website, to further assist all those involved.
So what does the future hold forBoskalis? “I think that one of our main objectives for the future is to become a more fully integrated construction management company,” says van Bemmelen. “If you look group-wide, we have moved from just doing the job and leaving to being able to get involved with the planning phase of a project, thanks to our engineering department. We can help find the best technical and commercial solutions and are increasingly taking a management role—finding subcontractors for the whole endeavour, not just our part in it. This is the area into which we are headed; this is how we see our company evolving.”
It is an evolution that is both natural for the organisation and that makes good business sense—and looking at the way Boskalis Offshore works, there is little doubt that it will succeed. www.boskalis.com
