Commissioning of LARS Equipment

Commissioning job

I attended as hydraulic troubleshooter in Bergen Port Norway on ROV vessel for commissioning of LARS equipment.  I sailed with vessel almost 4 weeks up to Las Palmas.

The story of this service job is like any other one. Just go there, follow and do commissioning. Short job description just I knew that one of my colleague was on board and I had to replace him and he will hand over the status of the installation.

I knew a little bit about the equipment. I just delivered from assembly workshop 1 piece. First equipment deliver by this company let say more and less a prototype. So this first equipment deliver was install on this ROV vessel.

On board most of the people were upset about the LARS equipment. Of course lot of difficulties occurred during the commissioning which is normal. No clear procedures, no synchronization between hydraulic and automation, leaking in the hydraulic system, brake of the umbilical winch was not adjust properly. The work was moving slow.

Spooling the wire

It was supposes to spool the wire rope onto the drum of umbilical winch.  An issue occur on the spooling device which was involve a hydraulic cylinder. Because of the load – wire rope load the cylinder was not retract. The operation valve block was not set while hydraulic cylinder was under load. It was hydraulic valve block from Eaton.

The operation stops and people were looking to me very annoyed. I was surprised because I knew it was tested before in workshop but at moment I didn’t figure out the cylinder is under load. Anyway in the workshop was tested but without load. Again as mentioned before lot people are involved in such work and one of them caught my attention. When under load it needs force means more pressure in system. I additionally adjusted the operational valve by increasing the pressure and cylinder retracted and continued the spooling wire rope operation.

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