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From: Rune Allnor on 10 Mar 2010 09:57
On 10 Mar, 15:45, Vladimir Vassilevsky <nos...(a)nowhere.com> wrote:
> Rune Allnor wrote:
> > Seriously, I can't travel anywhere these days. The survey
> > season is starting up, and anyone who want to get income
> > this season better be available first time the phone rings.
>
> Aha! The last question is do you have a beard and what color is it.

Nope. As for color, I suppose it would be have been "kommunegrå",
"county [ bueraucrat / clerk ] grey", as the local expression is,
with hints of red. Have never cultivated it enough to note the color.

Rune
From: steveu on 10 Mar 2010 21:22
Hi Rune,

>Seriously, I can't travel anywhere these days. The survey
>season is starting up, and anyone who want to get income
>this season better be available first time the phone rings.
>If you can't leave for four weeks two days from now, the
>next person on the list can. And there are no prizes for
>guessing who - the guy who passed on the first opportunity,
>or the guy who went on 30 hrs notice - gets the call for
>the trip after that. And after that. And after that.
>
>Rune

Can you explain why that is the case? Apart from the occasional unexpected
incident, it seems like surveying is something that would be planned well
ahead of time.

Steve

From: Rune Allnor on 11 Mar 2010 04:14
On 11 Mar, 03:22, "steveu" <ste...(a)coppice.org> wrote:
> Hi Rune,
>
> >Seriously, I can't travel anywhere these days. The survey
> >season is starting up, and anyone who want to get income
> >this season better be available first time the phone rings.
> >If you can't leave for four weeks two days from now, the
> >next person on the list can. And there are no prizes for
> >guessing who - the guy who passed on the first opportunity,
> >or the guy who went on 30 hrs notice - gets the call for
> >the trip after that. And after that. And after that.
>
> >Rune
>
> Can you explain why that is the case? Apart from the occasional unexpected
> incident, it seems like surveying is something that would be planned well
> ahead of time.

The oil installations - mainly pipelines - that need to be
inspected on a regular basis, are owned by the oil companies
(Exxon, BP, Shell, ...) but the oil companies don't have the
capacity to survey these themselves. They hire in specialist
survey commpanies to do the actual job.

The specialist survey companies run muti-purpose working vessels,
that traditionally have been configured do just about any job.
(In recent years, though, it seems that a number of vessels have
been designated specialist survey vessels.) These particular
vessels are equipped with very generic tools and gear, including
heavy-duty work ROVs. One among many tasks these vessels can do,
is to support an ROV flying over the pipes, running a suite of
survey instruments.

This is the best image of such a vessel I could find in a hurry:

http://www.skipsrevyen.no/batomtaler/batomtaler-6-2007/1175.html

The gray patch aft low on the superstructure is the door to the
ROV hagar. I haven't seen the ROVs on this particuular vessel,
but there are usually two, maybe three, that are the size of
a small van (2m x 2m x 4m), some extra support gear easily
doubling that size:

http://www.dofsubsea.no/?page=7&show=107

There is nothing in this image to give any sense of scale,
but I would guess the whole contraption (squarish ROV +
cylindric'ish submergeable Teathering Managment System)
is between 4 and 5 meters tall.

One gets some sense of the scale of the ROV on the image
at the bottom of this page:

www.pastfoundation.org/DeepWrecks/August02.htm

Since these kinds of surveys is just one of several tasks the
vessel can do, the survey companies only maintain a core
in-house staff. The in-house staff usually takes care of the
main activities, like operating and maintaining the gear, and
the overall managerial tasks. Once the survey is up and running,
one usually needs specialist staff to do the data processing
etc. The survey companies therefore go to consultant companies
to hire in 'mercenaries' more or less on a per trip basis.

From the survey company side of things, it is hard to plan,
since any general purpose vessel can be pulled off the present
job more or less at any time, to be called in for a higher-
priority task. These vessels are expensive to operate, some
$100000 per day, with a complement of some 50-100 crew, all
in all, so you don't want to keep them idle. More often than
not, it seems that one plans work for 120-150% of available
vessel capacity, such that one guarantees that there is always
work to be done. One usually have a number of contingency plans,
depending on what might break down: If weather is bad, one often
have a sheltered area to which one can reterat and do useful stuff.
If gear breaks down, one has other tasks that require different
conficurations of the instrument suite.

And so on.

So from my point of view - I'm with one of the 'mercenary'
companies - it's hard to plan. Don't know if or when the call
comes. Don't know where in the world one might be asked to work.
Don't know for how long a contract might last.

Which is why I am writing my own processing tools.

Rune
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