Celebrating two years of global growth and success for Bureau Veritas Solutions Marine & Offshore

Next month Bureau Veritas, a world leader in testing, inspection and certification services, will mark the second anniversary of the successful launch of its family of experts - Bureau Veritas Solutions Marine & Offshore (BV Solutions M&O) with performance figures exceeding targets each year and new contracts continuing throughout 2020.

BV Solutions M&O was established to bring together services and people from different domains within Bureau Veritas to create an international, proactive and dedicated capability, offering value to clients through technical services and solutions.

It provides technical advisory, asset management, and assurance solutions/support for clients' assets, processes, people and data management. By listening to clients and knowing their challenges in depth, BV Solutions M&O applies proven know-how to deliver tangible improvements to assets and business performance.

Bureau Veritas created BV Solutions M&O as an independent organisation from its classification and certification activities to provide additional support to clients - backed by 190 years of BV’s experience.

Drawing on Bureau Veritas’s globally strong culture and history of service and quality, BV Solutions M&O has over 400 different individual services that can be delivered worldwide – wherever the client is located. A consultative mindset with the nimbleness and agility required for today’s clients has led to international growth, commercial success and a positive contribution to supporting the marine and offshore industries in navigating changing markets around the world.

The proof is in the results

Since it was established, BV Solutions M&O has exceeded expectations. It ended 2019 almost 4% ahead of budget and with a year on year growth of almost 17%, demonstrating its value in helping clients boost performance, deal with increasing regulatory pressures, environmental obligations and complex risks. Furthermore, it has delivered meaningful and bespoke technical advisory, asset management and assurance solutions / support. And it has demonstrated its agility and speed in responding to client requirements across a range of sectors and verticals, from decommissioning to holistic energy transition programmes in the marine and offshore industries. The team is acutely positioned to assess a client’s needs and pull on established service lines that will add value and provide solutions. The BV Solutions M&O team is also able to swiftly respond to clients’ ever changing requirements globally and create consultative approaches and new deliverables that meet their needs.

The organisation was recently awarded a contract by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) to support the development of a defence seaworthiness management system (DSwMS) as part of the Navy’s development of a new ‘naval rule set’ as it builds a sovereign shipbuilding capability. Bureau Veritas will support a component of the Navy’s compliance response to DSwMS and, as a result, is to open a new liaison and support office in Adelaide.

With a long history of supporting naval seaworthiness and global ship construction, Bureau Veritas will support the strengths and capabilities of the RAN to prescribe the naval ‘materiel’ policies and the new standardised naval material rule set for Australia. This framework will provide a necessary ecosystem for the trusted design, build and commissioning of naval ships now - and into the future - for Australia.

Supporting remote operations

A key focus for BV Solutions M&O is in the provision of essential strategic and consultative support to clients in line with industry’s transition towards remote operations. An important part of the company’s commitment to remote inspection and verification is a programme to establish remote service centres at key locations around the world.

Seven remote service centres have been created so far – in Singapore, Shanghai, Miami, Rotterdam, Pireaus, Istanbul and Dubai. A centre is proposed for Aberdeen in autumn this year, with others planned to enhance the global network. Bureau Veritas aims to convert 50% of physical surveys offshore to remote surveys by the end of 2021.

Asset management – the systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading and disposing of assets cost-effectively – is a valuable component in the BV Solutions M&O offering. The organisation works with clients to define the right asset management strategy, using tools such as Bureau Veritas’s Veristar AIM3D software system, (VAIM3D) which combines a digital twin of any marine or offshore asset with smart data. VAIM3D has been successfully deployed on a range of offshore assets, from hull structures to topsides equipment. It improves visibility and understanding of the asset, allowing operators to make the right choices faster to improve efficiency, safety, integrity, performance, return on investment and carbon footprint reduction.

In decommissioning, for example, real time digital twinning of any asset has the capability to allow desktop engineering studies and work scope development. From this, standardised work practices, reporting and benchmarking can be delivered. Furthermore, such a true representation of the asset at its ‘end of life’ can be shared with everyone involved to enhance project visibility and collaboration, deliver time savings in the engineering works, provide commercial model opportunities through all stakeholders having access to the same data upfront and support the project in becoming “removal-ready” quicker.

Another area where BV Solutions M&O is able to benefit clients through its knowledge and expertise is in cyber security. Most ships and offshore assets have remotely accessible and digitally connected onboard and onshore systems. Increased levels of digitialisation are providing key benefits to owners and operations, improving operational efficiency and asset monitoring. But they can also leave assets vulnerable to cyber attacks and cyber crime.

Bureau Veritas Solutions Marine & Offshore provides the expertise to guide owners through the complete mapping of onboard systems, key risk assessments and the development of all documentation, policies and procedures required for efficient cyber risk management.

Conclusion

Bureau Veritas Solutions M&O is a holistic, consultative service for the business ahead, and while its creation required a cultural and mindset shift within Bureau Veritas, the commercial success of the concept is ample validation. Its introduction into projects at the earliest opportunity can create considerable safety, efficiency and financial benefits for clients.

Read the latest issue of the OGV Energy magazine HERE.