i-Tech 7, Subsea 7’s Life of Field business unit, has successfully completed an underwater inspection in lieu of dry-docking (UWILD) project for Borr Drilling in the North Sea.

Borr Drilling required a hull inspection for its Paragon MSS-1 mid-water semi-submersible, to meet ABS intermediate survey certification requirements. In place of conventional methods using divers, i-Tech 7 presented a solution using an ROV to reduce cost, risk, and allow drilling operations to continue without interruption.

i-Tech 7 mobilized an observation class ROV and supporting UWILD equipment to be installed on the Paragon MSS-1, along with two ROV personnel and one inspector to complete the operations.

i-Tech 7’s innovative portfolio of vessel based UWILD solutions can carry out inspections on mobile drilling units (MODUs) and floating production, storage and offloading units (FPSOs), using cutting-edge ROV machine-vision technology combined with fast acquisition, processing and reporting of data.

Robin Mawhinney, i-Tech 7’s regional director for Europe, Africa and Canada, said: “This is another great project example that showcases the strength and depth of our UWILD service offering.

“Our success lies in our repair expertise combined with our advanced automated analysis and data reporting capability. It is further strengthened with our extensive ROV fleet, large pool of inspection personnel and dedicated in-house support.

“We remain committed to building our track record in the delivery of reliable, cost-effective and safe inspection solutions that exceed our clients’ expectations.”

Bjoern Ritter, rig manager at Borr Drilling, said: “i-Tech 7 presented a service at an attractive cost, with less risk and minimal disruption to operations.

“We were thoroughly impressed by the i-Tech 7 team who completed the hull survey in less than two weeks, despite some very testing weather conditions.”