Ocean Specialists, Inc. (OSI)’s Cable Operations and Maintenance Support division has announced the successful Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) for an offshore oil and gas fiber optic connection in Colombia.
This marks an important milestone for this subsea cable engineering services project, contract awarded to OSI by Aviatek in late 2019, which includes the design, installation, and commissioning of a new cable that will provide optimized communication to offshore assets owned by Aviatek’s end-customer.
The project, scheduled for completion this year, is a prime example of OSI’s end-to-end support for offshore communication systems. OSI prioritize a seamless approach to project management and have the in-house resources to deliver highly integrated solutions, according to project lead Jose Troncoso,
“Utilizing our breadth of specialties, OSI is providing services from system design, which includes a riser solution to a floating asset, to system installation support, which incorporates route development and installation methods, to commissioning and acceptance and its required procedural documentation. This sense of partnership is imperative to effective project management and allows us to mitigate against risk and, where necessary, advise the client to make certain adjustments throughout the process.”
One such adjustment came from a clearly unforeseen threat, the COVID-19 outbreak. The FAT for the submarine and terrestrial cables was originally scheduled to take place in Europe, in person, but recent travel restrictions amid the pandemic called for OSI to pivot quickly and help facilitate a safe and innovative workaround to safeguard the project timeline and delivery date. The result, as if to exemplify the increasing importance of failproof bandwidth in these uncertain times, was to orchestrate a virtual FAT between stakeholders in three separate continents—OSI in Florida, Aviatek in Colombia, and the cable supplier in Europe.
“Presenting real-time data across three continents poses obvious technical challenges no matter your industry, but a FAT for a submarine fiber optic system is a first for me. What’s more, the potential drawbacks are further accentuated by cultural distance, especially where language is concerned. Speaking in our customer’s native tongue, in this case Spanish, has allowed us to resolve important matters more swiftly and to build a closer relationship both with our client and their end client.”
The cable system is scheduled to come online in Q4, 2020.
