Furthering knowledge and safety

The IMCA is the international trade association representing more than 290 offshore, marine and underwater engineering companies in over 35 countries. It was formed from the amalgamation of the International Association of Offshore Diving Contractors (AODC), founded in 1972, and the Dynamic Positioning Vessel Owners Association (DPVOA), founded in 1990.

The association has four technical divisions, covering marine/specialist vessel operations, offshore diving, hydrographic survey and remote systems and ROVs, as well as geographic sections for the Americas Deepwater, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa and the Middle East and India regions. It also has a core focus on safety, the environment, competence and training. IMCA aims to promote its members’ common interests, to resolve industry-wide issues and to provide an authoritative voice for its members.

Core aims
IMCA seeks to:
•Strive for the highest possible standards with a balance of risk and cost in relation to: health and safety, technology, quality and efficiency, environmental awareness and protection.
•Achieve and sustain self-regulation in the industry.
•Ease the free movement of equipment and personnel globally.
•Achieve equitable contracting regimes.
•Provide the framework for training, certification, competence and recruitment to support and sustain the industry globally.
•Resolve industry issues.
•Promote cooperation across the industry.

The association encourages improvements in quality, health, safety, and environmental and technical standards through the publication of guidance and information notes, codes of practice, and by other appropriate means – including safety cards and videos (the latter with subtitles in many languages including Russian), and our major annual seminar and various subject-specific workshops and smaller seminars. Members receive regular briefing notes on technical issues, regulatory developments and news appropriate to their own activities.

The geographical spread of the CIS means that member companies could belong to three of IMCA’s four geographic sections. Those involved with marine activities in the Barents Sea are members of our Europe & Africa section; those working in the Caspian Region are members of our Middle East and India section; and those active off Sakhalin Island are members of the Asia-Pacific section – indeed, we have seen membership grow in direct correlation to these key project areas and look forward to seeing ever-increasing membership from the CIS. Whichever section they are linked to, member companies benefit from our global communication between other member organisations, the international work of our core and technical divisions, and our constant aim – that ‘Holy Grail’ of the offshore oil and gas industry – zero accidents. A great deal of IMCA’s activity is geared to ensuring the highest level of safety.

Self-regulation is vital
In common with many other contractor trade associations, self-regulation has always been an IMCA goal. Trade associations do not regulate in the way that legislators do; instead they provide guidance to members and work to update and introduce new guidelines wherever there appears to be a need. Members working to those guidelines is a way of ‘self-regulating’, rather than looking to clients or government for regulation. Self-regulation is the logical result of action by industry participants to address a number of concerns.

If an industry does not self-regulate then some other body will impose its own regulation, either in the form of governments or through client requirements. If this happens, contractors face the prospect of each client and each government stipulating its own, varying requirements. This causes considerable strain to each contractor and extra, unnecessary costs. The strain includes finding out the different requirements, tendering with allowance for them and then complying with them for each project and for contractors who often work for different clients all around the world it is a potentially repetitive, expensive and avoidable burden. As it is, contractors working in the Barents Sea can use the same IMCA Guidelines as those off Sakhalin Island or in the Caspian Sea.

Technical reports and guidance in plenty
As a trade association we have been well to the fore in producing guidelines for a wide variety of marine operations. At first these were for diving and dynamic positioning with guidance for safety, training and competence, marine, ROV and survey operations following. The development of our suite of documentation has been a huge success. In an industry that is highly regulated, because of its economic, social, environmental and political profile, IMCA has established a respected list of ‘industry guidelines’ that has become widely used and accepted.

The spread of IMCA’s guidelines becomes ever greater as more members join the association and IMCA produces more documents. In addition, the penetration of the documents increases gradually as clients require the guidelines to be used as a condition of contract. The larger clients have, in recent years, moved towards using a single approach worldwide for all their offices and projects in all regions. The approach used is often based on IMCA guidelines. In addition, as the industry moves into new geographical zones, where there are often few detailed government requirements for marine construction, IMCA guidelines have been used as an available, acceptable reflection of industry ‘good practice’ for the government or local client to use without having to ‘start all over again’ from a blank sheet of paper. Contractors like this result as they are asked to follow the same regime with which they are already familiar.

Currently, IMCA publishes some 200 guidance documents and technical reports. These are very much a definition of what IMCA stands for, including widely recognised diving and ROV codes of practice, DP documentation, marine good practice guidance, the ‘Common Marine Inspection Document’, safety recommendations, outline training syllabi and the IMCA competence scheme guidance. In addition to the range of printed guidance documents, IMCA also produces safety promotional materials, circulates information notes and safety flashes.

Specialist guidance for offshore survey work
The recent publication of “Digital Video Offshore: A Review of current and Future Technologies” is a typical example of the work done by IMCA. This new document was the result of a workgroup established by the Offshore Survey and Remote Systems and ROV divisions, and benefits both offshore contractors and their clients. The advent of digital video brings with it a new era for the offshore oil and gas industry. Digital methods of data acquisition have now permeated most offshore survey techniques, with satellite transmissions, acoustic positioning signals and most forms of sonar being generated and recorded in digital form.

The adoption of digital encoding and recording of video data has been gathering pace in recent years, and many annual inspection campaigns now include digital video deliverables, a step dictated either by client specification or by sub-contractors seeking more efficient processing and delivery techniques than can be realised with analogue video.

The new publication, which will be regularly updated, has been written to provide an understanding of digital video technology, the potential benefits available over existing analogue technology, practical applications and issues relating to the development of standards within the survey industry. Its aim is to encourage the widespread use of digital video and to provide information on how the data is captured, synchronised with traditional survey information and compiled into digital reports for delivery to the end client.

The document is not intended to be a specification or an instruction to follow, but is published to de-mystify the subject and aimed at the three very broad categories of user defined in terms of complexity of digital video system they use – an off-the-shelf or ‘black box’ digital video system; some form of bespoke, possibly multi-channel, digital video systems with time stamp indexing; and, last of all, integration of multi-channel digital video with other forms of data – merging of video and complex data streams .

The review discusses the many factors affecting the quality of recorded digital video data, including the quality of the hardware from the camera through to the recorder, the method of data transmission, and the environment in which the camera is used. In addition, the document addresses the alternative approaches or philosophies taken by different clients to the acquisition and use of digital video, including selection of media storage options and integration with GIS systems. This is in order to provide a basis for further discussion on agreement of standards for the implementation of digital video within the offshore pipeline/structural inspection industry.

IMCA members can download the review from the members-only website, while additional hard copies are also available.

In pursuit of efficiency and incident reporting
The digital video publication is very ‘subject specific’. Much of our work is more general. Learning from our mistakes is a key part of business improvement and the pursuit of efficiency. Avoiding repeating an incident or accident saves lives, time and money – we all know it makes sense!

IMCA has been at the forefront of trying to help members help themselves in this way with two separate but connected initiatives – incident reporting; and safety flashes.

We maintain a database on DP incident reports from dynamically positioned vessels stretching back over the past 25 years. User-friendly incident reporting forms help to make the task relatively easy for our members. Each year the reports are collated and an anonymised analysis of the incidents is issued. This helps establish trends in incidents for discussion with vessel operators, equipment suppliers, training establishments and others in order to address particular issues. The results have played an important role in keeping the DP fleet operational, safe and acceptable to authorities by feeding intro improvements in designs, procedures and training.

Now we are seeking to mirror the achievements of the well-established DP system with collection of data on incidents involving lifting operations and equipment – a new project, but with the same aims of helping members help themselves.

There is, of course, nothing particularly new about safety flashes and alerts – a wide range of organisations generate, receive and circulate them. Those issued by IMCA are focused on members’ work in offshore construction, which can be vessel-related. Work on a vessel is often different from onshore because of confined spaces, multiple hazards and vessel motion. The safety flashes also cover unique equipment and operations: diving, ROVs, engine rooms, heavy duty cranes and winches and specialist survey tools. Even so, many accidents still stem from simple avoidable mistakes.

The safety flash system aims to let colleagues know about an incident or newly discovered hazard and to share experience, learning and action to try to avoid someone else repeating the same mistakes. Our published safety statistics indicate that this system has contributed to the early dramatic improvements and continued steady improvements in the annual figures – but ‘zero accidents’ is still a good way off, and we urge all in the industry to continue to work towards this goal.

As with the DP and lifting incident reporting system, any safety incident shared with IMCA is anonymised and checked with the contributor and, where relevant, organisations such as equipment suppliers, before being issued. Although this industry is huge, there are sometimes only a few suppliers of certain pieces of specialist equipment. Sharing concerns about equipment quickly with colleagues throughout the industry really helps avoid future incidents.

Another key area for concern, and action
IMCA has formed a Security Task Force to work on security related topics. These include issues such as personnel in transit, health, piracy, the implications of the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code and general security in the workplace and onboard vessels.

These are real issues of growing anxiety to our members who operate globally, some of them in politically sensitive areas. The advent of the ISPS Code, increased awareness of terrorist and piracy issues, and heightened health concerns have led them to ask us to take these issues extremely seriously and to bring all manner of maritime security issues under the banner of our newly established task force. Its establishment provides us with the opportunity to work together with our members’ clients (primarily oil and gas exploration and production companies) in various regions, share our concerns and explore the common interests of both clients and their contractors. Through our members and their clients it will also help us to encourage host governments to play a more active role. We believe that our member companies have a great deal of valuable knowledge to share – the Task Force is a useful means for helpful dialogue across the board aimed at increasing safety and security levels for everyone’s benefit.