Scantrol Delivers AHC for Hydramec’s LARS

Scantrol has supplied Active Heave Compensation (AHC) for a Launch & Recovery System for another Observation ROV. The LARS, ordered by one of the world’s leading subsea companies, is designed by the British winch manufacturer Hydramec.

The recent delivery is the start of a long-term relationship between the two companies in order to meet the increasing demand for new AHC applications from the subsea industry.

The Scantrol AHC LARS system is not the first delivered to a world-leading subsea company, but the first designed in collaboration with Hydramec. Now the two business partners are taking the technology one step further to meet the requirements from the subsea industry.

“Upon request from one of our major subsea customers it was up to Hydramec to come up with a LARS design that had ease of operation and maintenance as well as the ability to achieve the working parameters required to extend operational time for the ROV vessel”, explains Danny Church, Managing Director at Hydramec.

With this in mind Hydramec chose Scantrol as their partner in building and supplying the control system for this LARS, based on the opportunities that Scantrol could afford to Hydramec to achieve a workable and cost efficient solution for AHC on their OBS ROV LARS. This project provided the perfect opportunity to put the theory into practice.

The LARS was designed around an OBS ROV LARS design already manufactured by Hydramec with the hydraulic system being altered to suit the applications required to achieve the AHC specifications which was 5m of active heave over a 10 second period at a depth of 1200m.

Related to the delivery of the system, Hydramec and Scantrol were asked to assist with the installation of all the equipment onboard the vessel and eventually carry out live tests during sea trials off the Singapore coast line. All tests proved very successful and all parameters were achieved. The vessel then sailed for Congo, where it is due to start operations in September.

“Hydramec is very pleased with the outcome of this project and the service afforded to them by Scantrol and will be looking to further cement this relationship in upcoming projects. Hydramec sees Scantrol as the perfect partner in moving forward the supply of AHC ROV LARS systems to the industry”, says Church.

“Scantrol is proud and excited to work with Hydramec, which has established an excellent reputation in the subsea business for its products and services. Hopefully this is the start of a long-term beneficial partnership”, says managing director at Scantrol, Helge Hammersland.

Scantrol’s AHC system was originally used mainly on offshore cranes and subsea winches and mostly reserved larger projects due to acquisition costs and lack of accessible technology. However, over the past three years Scantrol has experienced an increasing demand for flexible solutions for use with other applications as well.

As subsea operations have become more challenging, the demand for AHC solutions has increased. Challenges for multipurpose vessels such as time spent mobilizing a big crane or weather-related downtime, are expensive bottle necks that can easily be remedied with AHC.

Press Release, September 17, 2014