Case Studies | Remote Situational Awareness
DOF Subsea
OVERVIEW
Harvest has enabled remote situational awareness for DOF Subsea during its three-year contract with Esso Australia, decommissioning ExxonMobil’s extensive oil and gas structure in Australia’s Bass Strait. A global offshore and marine support services provider, DOF Subsea supplies vessels, project management and teams for inspection, maintenance, and repair (IMR) operations.
For this project, the client, Esso Australia required the use of Harvest’s technology onboard DOF Subsea’s Multi-Purpose Supply Vessel, ‘Skandi Darwin’ to enable situational awareness of operations. Harvest has been working with Esso since 2019, delivering a technology solution to stream live video from vessels via satellite using ultra-low bandwidth.
PROBLEM
Decommissioning offshore facilities involves highly hazardous tasks for people, assets, and the environment and requires various technical and engineering experts to manage the process safely. DOF Subsea aimed to work smarter and more efficiently by improving situational awareness of its vessels. They previously relied on manual communications or management personnel and client representatives onboard vessels to understand operations. However, manual reporting does not always provide a comprehensive view of vessel operations. Additionally, Esso Australia wanted real-time access to DOF Subsea’s project work.
Having all decision-making personnel available onboard a vessel is expensive in cost, time, HSE risk, and environmental impact. To address these challenges, DOF Subsea sought real-time situational awareness of its vessel operations using technology. The goal was to have project-specific personnel based onshore able to remotely view any situation onboard, ensuring the right person was always available to make informed decisions and provide technical support, as well as allowing for appropriate guidance if onboard project work was out of scope. The main challenge to achieving this situational awareness was the vessel’s limited satellite bandwidth.
SOLUTION
Harvest provided a remote livestreaming solution to enable DOF Subsea to monitor its vessel through a reliable and secure video stream from onboard CCTV and subsea ROV cameras, allowing enhanced operational awareness and the ability to make immediate informed decisions.
The AVR2 secure streaming system offers plug-and-play usability, utilising ultra-low bandwidth on unreliable or congested networks. AVR2 is a self-contained streaming solution that allows 4-channels of video to be streamed from a remote location and viewed via the AVRLive web viewer in real-time by multiple users. DOF Subsea’s onshore project team, management and end-clients, Esso Australia can log into AVRLive from their own device from anywhere in the world at any time.
AVR2 provides SD video streaming for situational awareness over bandwidth as low as 60kbps. Our customer’s video stream is secured using Harvest’s Nodestream™ proprietary protocol with 384-bit encryption, ensuring the customer’s authorised users are the only ones with access to the video stream.
RESULT
As a result, DOF Subsea and Esso Australia gained reliable situational awareness of the vessel operations without having to travel to the vessel and remain onboard for the duration of operations or rely on manual reporting or communications to understand what was happening.
The customisability of the AVR2 system allows bandwidth to be adjusted on-the-fly according to the specific use case. This solution enabled DOF Subsea to work smarter and safer, making decisions based on real-time information while enhancing surveillance of its operations. By leveraging technology, DOF Subsea reduced the number of personnel required onboard the vessel, resulting in cost savings, decreased HSE exposure, further reducing unplanned downtime and minimising environmental impact.