Press release

Bureau Veritas marks remote survey first with Kongsberg Maritime in Bourbon’s ‘Smart Ship’ project

Mar. 21 2019
  • Bureau Veritas has successfully completed the first remote inspection and audit survey using Kongsberg’s DP Digital Survey solution on ‘Bourbon 508’, an OSV stationed off Angola
  • MAC, a Bureau Veritas company, specialized in DP (dynamic positioning) systems, was deployed to help Bourbon and Kongsberg Maritime to help ensure the functionality, availability, and reliability of the survey system, providing user-friendly insight for remotely located surveyors

Paris-La Défense, France, March 21, 2019: MAC, a Bureau Veritas (BV) company and Kongsberg Maritime have successfully tested a new solution for DP system performance and redundancy audits deployed on a Bourbon vessel.

The ability to remotely survey the data output from the Kongsberg Maritime solution is a first for the industry and a further step on the road to ever smarter ships.

“DP Digital Survey” is a solution developed by Kongsberg Maritime, in close collaboration with Bourbon and Bureau Veritas DP experts. It is a digital tool running on an industrial data management system that ensures unprecedented data consistency to verify onboard systems. DP Digital Survey acquires the information directly from the ships’ control systems and delivers it to the auditors via a secure cloud infrastructure, thus representing a real improvement in terms of quality of services.

The new application stands out from alternatives, providing real data of test completion evidence, not just photographs and video recordings.

The anticipated next steps as the DP Digital Survey tool evolves will include: increased automation of the survey process; improvements in the survey process; and the ability to establish a continuous DP survey framework allowing detailed, and continual, remote monitoring.

Laurent Leblanc, Vice-President, Marine Operations, Bureau Veritas commenting said: “The key for us is to receive reliable performance and failure data – not just photos and pictures. We first check the data is of sufficient quality: data quality management is a key factor along with cyber-security for data transfer. Our expertise is then used to review and assess the data. This provides access to a higher level and depth of ‘onshore’ engineering expertise to make judgements on results.”

Eivind Alling, Vice-President of Digital Performance at Kongsberg Maritime, added: “This collaboration allows us to strengthen our core products by offering our customers tools that will reduce their OPEX and streamline their operations. Kongsberg strives for innovation and we are creating new applications that will give our end customers more control of their data to support their operations.”

Commenting on the project and partnerships, Frederic Moulin, One Bourbon Operations Director, said: “This project greatly contributes to our Smart shipping program ambition; to capitalize on the digital revolution in order to stand out through a connected fleet and to reduce our operational costs. With our partners, we are ready to extend this “Digital DP Survey” to sister-ships in the next months and plan for further deployment later.”

Matthieu de Tugny, President, Marine & Offshore, Bureau Veritas concluded: “Bureau Veritas is proud to be a part of these projects bringing increasing sophistication to surveying capability. We have been investing a great deal in digital capability and it is good to see practical results in the field providing real, measurable benefits to our clients – to help improve performance and safety while potentially reducing OPEX.”