This post highlights some of the exciting marine, offshore and subsea engineering currently going on in the North East…….
Over the weekend I met up with a good friend of mine, Tom, who also graduated from Newcastle as a naval architect and now heads up technical sales for IHC Engineering Business. He has a pretty diverse job – ranging from concept ship design leading to contract through to marketing the Hi-Traq subsea plough to customers around the world (he is flying off to Rio de Janeiro today!).
IHC have been expanding their assembly yard in Port of Blyth, and Tom pointed me to an excellent video up on youtube which highlights some of the goings-on in the port. There’s not much commentary so I scribbled down a few extra nuggets of information which I thought were well worth sharing. The video is embedded at the bottom of this post.
0:06: this is the south harbour – spot Royal Northumberland Yacht Club and a busy quayside. As the camera pans past you can spot the marine propulsion lab building (its the building that looks a bit like an upturned keel).
0:28: The ship is the Maersk Connector, built by Damen in the Netherlands and currently chartered by DeepOcean – who operate 14 vessels for subsea support. They have a big presence in Blyth port and also work alongside several other companies including IHC EB (as you will see later on). Currently Maersk Connector is regularly sailing past our lab windows!
0:43: This shot shows battleship wharf and the up-river part of the port. Most of the larger buildings are the Offshore Renewable Catapult (ORE) – which is the UK test facility for wind/tide/wave devices (at least 3 graduates from our school now work there).
0:49: Up-river there is still plenty of space for more industry – and more is coming!
0:52: A shot of the marine propulsion lab building. Its great to be right in the middle of the industry. The warehouse just behind is full of DeepOcean’s equipment including ROVs, trenchers and other big bits of equipment.
0:54: This section of the video focuses on IHC. The white framed device is a subsea plough.
1:01: The huge grey structure is IHCs J-Lay tower. I’ve added another youtube link at the bottom showing the load-out of the tower onto a barge. The tower is now sticking up out of Blyth like a giant finger. The principal engineer for the J-Lay project is a naval architect from Newcastle university who graduated in 2005. I can count 7 graduates from marine technology currently working at IHC – there are probably more I’ve missed.
1:04: The renewables sector is key for Blyth. The latest round of offshore wind developments in the north sea needs massive shore based engineering support. Exciting times!
1:09: A shot of the IHC workshop. The A-frame in the centre is on bogies ready for load-out onto the Maersk Connector.
1:25: The A-frame is installed at the stern for deployment of the plough shown at 0:54. The system is commonly known as a LARS (Launch and Recovery System). The model ROV in our hydrodynamics labs was used to better predict the loads experienced by a LARS system such as this – although that research was for SMD based in North Tyneside.
1:48: The port also functions for conventional cargo ships including coaster container ships and bulk carriers.
2:09: Spot the Princess Royal research vessel, which is moored just next to the marine propulsion lab along with a purpose built shore station for research and teaching.
2:16: The large circular framework in the midship area of the deck is known as a carousel and you can probably guess what it is used for!
Here is the complete video on youtube:
And here is a video to give you an idea just how huge the J-Lay tower is:
Relevant engineering firms and organisations with a base in Port of Blyth include:
- OSBIT
- IHC Engineering Business
- DeepOcean
- Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult
- Global Marine
- EDF Energy
- TSG Marine
- Pharos Offshore Group
- Transped
- Port Training Services
- Northumberland College
- Blyth Tall Ships
- RNLI
- Blyth Workspace
- ARCH
- Newcastle University