Newsletter

The replacement of all four cylinders on the port side
crane on Mærsk Deliverer was a complex task. Each
cylinder weighing up to 13 tons. On the picture, one
of the rigging teams has just removed the
last cylinder pin, and they are now
preparing to lower down the
cylinder to deck.
Learning from the
AIRLINES
How to shorten the most expensive yard stays as much as possible?
Perhaps the airline industry can provide part of the answer.
By Nicolai Ostergaard
In the quest for fewer and more efficient
yard stays, Maersk Drilling
is looking to the airline industry
for inspiration.
“Pushed back by fierce competition,
the legacy carriers had to rethink
their maintenance programs quite
radically. They’ve achieved some
spectacular results, and they’ve managed
to do so without compromising
safety. I think we can learn a lot from
what they’ve done,” says Head of Fleet
Maintenance Mangement, Deep & Mid
Water, Morten Moller Pedersen.
In the deep-water segment, he is
aiming for a future that features a
much-reduced need for yard stays
even for the most sophisticated floaters.
And the current model, which
involves comprehensive five-yearly
overhauls, is definitely on its way out
and into the history books.
Instead, the department will
establish a rolling maintenance
schedule for the Deep & Mid Water
fleet. In short: there will be a smooth
flow of maintenance work during the
year, some of which will involve some
limited but planned interruptions in
operations.
Go Away!
Program manager Preben Bostrom is
in charge of the project. He is trying
to figure out the options for reducing
the most comprehensive and most
expensive yard stays as much as possible
without compromising safety
performance and uptime. With that in
mind, it should be easy to guess what
the name of the project – Project Go-
Away! – refers to.
“In the wake of falling oil prices, we
simply cannot afford the usual way
of doing things. To be blunt, we want
those yard stays to go away.”
Traditionally, a rig is taken out of
service every five years for a major
overhaul. Such an overhaul can involve
a workforce of up to 800 people
who actually disassemble the entire
rig, replace a huge number of parts,
and then put the complete structure
together again.
“Naturally, this costs a lot of
money, and the rig sits idle for several
months. We want to do away with
this approach,” says Morten Moller
Pedersen.
But what have the airline companies
actually achieved?
In the old days, an aircraft was
routinely taken out of service for several
months for a complete overhaul.
It doesn’t work that way any more.
Today, an aircraft typically follows
a so-called rolling maintenance programme
in which recurring overhauls
and the ongoing replacement of key
components happen in lesser chunks.
Typically, the job is done at night, and
the aircraft is ready for takeoff the
next morning.
“The rolling maintenance programme
ensures the best possible use
of the equipment, and we’re aiming
for the same process here at Maersk
Drilling. Both the airline industry and
the drilling industry are asset-heavy
industries that are characterised by
fierce competition,” says Morten.
6 Maersk Drilling Newsletter 02·2015