We need to fabricate a high-quality offshore structure within a short period

Some time ago Hollandia was granted the ambitious project to fabricate a water treatment module for MPP (size: 15x15x15). The structure consists of 800 beams and 343 pipes for water treatment installation decks on board and is made of beams HEA100 up to HEB600 and pipes of Ø 127mm up to Ø 610mm.

Achieving high cutting quality was of crucial importance for the project. Also, due to the fact that the platform will be located offshore all the beam edges needed to have a radius. In order to focus on what they do best – fitting and welding – Hollandia decided to outsource all the cutting and edge breaking: “What we discovered in the past couple of years is that we get better quality results when we outsource than if we’ve done it ourselves. We have some of the best welding control and this is one of our strongest USP’s. More specific, two years ago we took the form decision to outsource all prefabrication of the products.” Ad Rietveld – Manager Outsourcing at Hollandia – says.

Hollandia was under great time pressure on delivering the project within the agreed deadline. Projects on such scope are subject to tight deadlines which require perfect organization and good production flow.

‘The biggest challenge of this project is the time. Besides having to deliver on time, we also have to deliver a very high quality product’
Jeroen van Merrienboer – Snr. Work Preparation Structural at Hollandia

Fabrication Glory: Accurate cuts with a bevel saved many grinding hours

In order to be on schedule with the prefabrication, Hollandia decided to outsource all the pipe cutting and beam cutting for the water treatment system to HGG. “There’s always the chance to receive the cut tubes and beams later than expected, but when outsourcing at HGG we realized that it is a reliable company from which we get the right quality results always on time.”, Ad Rietveld – Manager Outsourcing at Hollandia – explains. By outsourcing all the cutting to HGG, Hollandia can now focus on what they are best at – fitting and welding.

Besides CNC beam cutting of all the beams for the project HGG had also prepared them for further processing by applying edge rounding on the beam flanges. Making the beam edges round helped Hollandia in working towards better preserving their offshore structure from corrosion. Frits Boekee, QC Engineer at Hollandia, explains the benefits of edge rounding by rolling applied by HGG: “In the past lots of paint systems failed on sticking to sharp beam edges. That is why we have to round them now with a minimum of 2mm. You can do it by grinding or milling, but by applying edge rounding by rolling you get an equal surface and it is everywhere the same, so it’s a great advantage to do it before you get it at your shop floor by a subcontractor.”

The model was made on Tekla software and according to Hollandia was afterwards very easy to integrate with the HGG software and machinery. What appeared to be the greatest benefit from outsourcing at HGG were the accurate cuts resulting in minimised grinding: “One of the biggest advantages of HGG is that they make a bevel on the cut profiles. That saves us many grinding hours. We have a tolerance of 1 or 2mm, so there’s almost nothing left to grind and we can build very quickly. this is very good!”, Hans Peter Labee – Fitter at Hollandia, adds.

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