BW Offshore prioritises safety in all our operations and has ‘zero harm’ as an overriding objective for personnel and the environment to ensure all assets are operated in the safest manner. Safe operations and high uptime are not only requirements but obligations for BW Offshore to clients and employees.
Safety is the highest priority and we maintain relentless focus and commitment to best-in-class Health, Safety, Security, Environmental and Quality (HSSEQ) standards and asset integrity management.
The safety focus is embedded throughout the organisation, which in turn is reflected by the FPSO fleet’s commercial uptime.
BW Offshore exceeds client expectations while recognising internally that uptime must never be a priority over safe operations.
BW Offshore takes full responsibility for operating, maintaining, upgrading and/or modifying the production asset as required by the client in a lease arrangement. This ensures that production requirements are met for the total duration of the field life, including necessary funding and the availability of appropriate competencies, as well as know-how regarding the production equipment.
Taking care of the existing fleet is a key priority for the Company, and consistent focus on good communication between the offshore personnel and the onshore support functions is central to the continuous fleet modification and maintenance projects.
The level of experience and competence required to execute industry-leading assignments require BW Offshore to be an attractive employer offering global work opportunities.
We are committed to the deployment of local content in our operating countries, with substantial investments in training and development of local personnel. We focuse on increasing our local content by prioritising local candidates for open positions, training programmes for fast-track talent development and having clear goals on nationalisation within the local presence. BW Offshore’s operational performance requires highly qualified, competent and dedicated technical support and logistics service personnel.
A strong network of onshore in-country offices ensures operational support linking the FPSOs to shore, in addition to corporate offices supporting the operational teams. This fosters a strong joint culture across the company.
BW Offshore is a trusted partner for clients seeking to outsource technical competence to run and operate complex offshore assets. With our existing operational network, we offer synergies that are difficult for a client to obtain on a stand-alone basis.
Well-established infrastructure, manning pools and supply chain networks are some immediate advantages, in addition to the familiarity with regulatory requirements, technical maintenance and lifecycle cost management offered by BW Offshore.
Modifications of existing FPSOs in situ to extend production, increase capacity or redeployment can unlock significant value for clients and BW Offshore. Our project and engineering expertise makes this possible.
Working closely with client teams, we have set up internal groups specifically for this purpose, combining competent project and operations staff from across the organisation. Managing modifications and upgrades on live producing assets calls for specialised competence, as safety-related and economic risks multiply compared to projects run on site in a shipyard.
Maintaining asset integrity in situ in such scenarios represents some of the most advanced technical execution challenges in the business.
When it comes to engineering design, three factors make BW Offshore hard to match - the in-house competence with a focused core team of engineering experts, technical documentation and standards built from years of FPSO engineering experience and decades of operating experience working with FPSOs long after they have been designed and built - producing, processing, storing and offloading.
The team at BW Offshore has established optimised design criteria taking into account details such as prevailing laws and regulations, client requirements and past experience.
BW Offshore has experience in a wide range and number of challenging assignments. Our long-term commitment ensures that focus is less on meeting short-term cost objectives in the project phase and more on the cost of the asset over its entire lifecycle. A solid base of engineering standard documentation ensures a consistent and optimised approach to engineering activity while ensuring that new lessons learned from operations are constantly incorporated.
From engineering to procurement of materials and equipment, and fabrication and integration, to finally testing the facility before hand over to the Operations team, project execution is complex. It requires extreme discipline to ensure that multiple hundreds of people from BW Offshore, subcontractors and yards work together seamlessly to deliver on time and on budget.
The project execution division is responsible for ensuring a structured, methodical, disciplined, repeatable and continuously improving approach to project execution. BW Offshore has a strong in-house project execution resource pool comprising project engineers, construction superintendents and managers, safety and quality personnel, supply chain competence, project planners, estimators and cost controllers, mechanical completion, commissioning and start-up experts.
A team of discipline engineers and engineering managers with topside, hull and overall responsibility ensure that a strong link is maintained with the engineering team during project execution. This is essential to ensure that the design concept and the engineering deliveries are translated effectively to a working, well-constructed FPSO. Frontloading of engineering and procurement activities is essential in project execution to ensure sufficient time for construction teams to execute plans and build the facility. This in turn allows for a thorough and timely commissioning process where individuals who combine the best of project and operations experience test the unit adequately to ensure a smooth start-up and high regularity from the get go.
Project teams are put together in a bespoke manner - handpicking individuals with specialist knowledge and experience for each assignment and partnering with appropriate subcontractors. This allows BW Offshore to combine competence with scalability. Pulling such multi-national, multi-skilled and multi-locational teams together in a coordinated manner requires a high level of planning and organising as well as a strong corporate culture built on teamwork, communication and solution orientation.
The FPSO concept selection stage is critical and determines much of the future technical and economic lifecycle of the unit in production. Concept development begins early in the tendering process with a close collaboration between the client team and BW Offshore concept and technology experts to explore and evaluate options.
Hull selection and the new-build/conversion decision is one of the first which influences the design. Making the right choice requires a good understanding of the risks and rewards of each alternative. Weighing the benefits of a proven hull, the costs of refurbishment and the schedule implications against a new-built hull is a complex optimisation exercise that company engineers are expert at performing and providing to clients.
There are numerous other factors to be considered in the quest for an optimal solution. The weather conditions in the field need to be carefully considered as do the field, oil quality, gas solutions, water, environmental concerns and of course, the regulatory framework. In all these areas BW Offshore has amassed a substantial experience database over the years. Early engagement with the client team ensures a solid concept selection process to meet technical and financial objectives over the lifecycle of the unit.
Rapid Framework (RFW®) is BW Offshore’s purpose-designed FPSO hull concept, developed for long-life offshore developments where schedule certainty, lifecycle cost and operational performance are critical.
Building on experience from newbuild hulls and decades of FPSO operations, the design incorporates lessons learned from both project execution and long-term operation. The class-approved, standardised hull allows an early start to construction and shorter delivery timelines, while reducing inspection and maintenance requirements over the asset’s lifetime. Its modular structural layout provides flexibility to accommodate a range of topsides configurations and mooring solutions, supporting both turret- and spread-moored concepts and efficient replication across projects.
