Silvertech Awarded Schiehallion Contract

Silvertech, the UK ’s leading independent Main Automation Contractor (iMAC), has been awarded a contract from BP to supply a major HMI system upgrade for the Schiehallion Floating Production, Storage & Offloading vessel (FPSO).

The Schiehallion is located in the deep waters of the Shetland Trough in the NW Atlantic producing around 65,000 barrels of oil per day. Silvertech originally supplied the Schiehallion Topsides Integrated Control and Safety (C&SS) System in 1997 and has held a continuous maintenance and support contract since delivery.

The Schiehallion FPSO is one of the assets selected for BP’s ‘Field of the Future’ programme. A key requirement of this programme is BP’s plan to implement in the near future a fully integrated distributed control system that will:

• Support the robust application of advanced control
• Facilitate full transparency of and assurance around functionality from the beach
• Allow full software configuration and upgrading from the beach
• Support web based real time schematics allowing replication of screens from the beach
• Support the linkage of remote process optimizers
• Be supported by a proactive development team driving the technology to its limits.

The award was made following a careful review by BP of Silvertech’s capabilities and the selected systems' suitability to both meet BP's ‘Fields of the Future’ goals and achieve an expected asset life of 20 years. The review considered factors such as:

• Obsolescence to ensure upgrade and migration paths are available over the life time of the asset
• Capacity issues to allow for future investment in better instrumentation, machinery equipment, health monitoring etc.
• Availability of long term technical support
• The open architecture design enabling the support of emerging technologies and the ability to provide remote control and data enabling

The turnkey contract awarded to Silvertech includes the design, manufacture, testing, commissioning and site acceptance testing of the new HMI system.

Silvertech’s high quality project and service offerings, coupled with proven system design capabilities and the ability to execute the project at both the Horsham headquarters and Aberdeen office in order to meet the challenging project delivery schedule were key factors in the award criteria.