Osbit and Global Marine Group win EEEGR award for subsea plough

We’re thrilled to have been awarded the 2019 Marine Science & Technology Award, together with Global Marine Group, at the EEEGR End of Year Celebration and Awards Ceremony held at Dunston Hall in Norfolk last week.

The annual black-tie dinner celebrates the achievements of EEEGR members over the past year, with awards across seven categories, judged by a panel of industry experts. We accepted the award with our clients Global Marine Group for our collaboration on the PLP240 subsea pre-lay plough.

The plough, which was delivered in June 2019, has been designed to meet market demand to improve the efficiency of subsea cable installation, while minimising risk.

Close collaboration from the outset between Osbit and Global Marine Group was key to the success of this project. By working together from early on in their bid process and including Global Marine Group’s client Vattenfall in the discussions, the Osbit team was able to understand the problem and develop an innovative solution. The resulting plough concept directly supported Global Marine Group in attaining their contract with Vattenfall to conduct the inter-array cable installation on the 605MW Kriegers Flak offshore wind farm in Denmark.

Ian Bryan, Global Marine Group’s Managing Director of Group Business Operations said:

“Osbit is a team of engineers, but the difference is that they listen without limiting beliefs. Our customer had confidence in them, their skills and their ideas. Osbit were able to sell their ideas, in collaboration with us, and together that helped us secure the project.”

The key innovations of the pre-lay plough include its ability to conduct boulder clearing and trenching operations simultaneously within a single pass, enabling Global Marine Group to significantly reduce construction time for wind farm installation.

The vehicle is reconfigurable, and can also complete backfill operations using the segregated spoil heaps that are prepared during trenching operations. The plough’s market-leading, comprehensive control and surveillance system ensures accurate trenching.

Osbit Director Robbie Blakeman said:

“We are committed to developing globally innovative subsea trenching solutions using our proven modular technology. I firmly believe that no other company could have delivered an asset of this technical competence, to the same levels of quality, in the same time frame.

The enhanced capability we have developed is market-leading and yields significant vessel time and cost savings. As always, this is testament to the talent and motivation of our amazing team and our commitment to promoting a pioneering health & safety culture across all of our operations.

“We would like to thank Global Marine Group and Vattenfall for their genuine and enthusiastic working relationship, as well as our predominantly North East England-based supply chain for supporting us in delivering a successful end solution. This close collaboration is essential in enabling us to make more possible within the global subsea trenching market.”