Bibby Topaz Incident, 18th

September 2012

Dynamic Positioning (DP) Control System

Scope of Work
18 September 2012
Working 262ft underwater at the Huntington oil field(in the United
Kingdom's central North Sea area) ; on a Drilling template.
Vessel set up west of template.
Pressure testing.
Christ Lemons & Dave Yuasa were the divers involved.

Key Details
A series of alarms sounded; amber and red.
Red alarm was activated and vessel had to abandon its current position.
Divers were instructed to get back to the bell stage.
Mr. Lemons had his umbilical snagged on a transponder bucket and
eventually severed, losing air and hot water.
Mr. Lemons managed to climb onto a platform and sustained with
emergency bailout bottle.
Mr. Lemons was eventually recovered by Dave Yuasa and regained
consciousness.

Underlying Causal Factors

Based on investigations carried out, it is determined that
RBUS jammed as a result of a rare sequence of events
involving the combined effects of faults in one ormore
RBUS I/O modules in the DPC cabinet.
Faults found included;
Loose / intermittent connections of fuse in DPC cabinet.
Grounding; current was measured in the bound from the
RCU units to ground.
Inner shield on field cables not connected to instrument
earth.
DPC cabinet not earthed to ship hull structure.

Contributing Causal factors

Failed to piroritise the usage of Cjoy joystick systems when the DP System failed.
cJoy control system - It shall be possible to control the thrusters by the independent joystick in
the event of failure of the DP control system.
At 24:08 24:33 of the video, Mr. Eric Strand, the chief officer mentioned that the team had
tried to reset the DP system, they went from manual to DP control, and repeated the process
2-3times( it would take about 10mins) , and the next natural step would be to go to the
independent joystick system.
He asserted that no one would be able to confirm that the system was not affected by the
fault they got from the DP system and eventually went straight to manual control.
Therefore , the contributing factor would then be the failure in prioritising the usage of the
joystick system, and they had wasted their time restarting the DP system initially. In
addition , they could have restarted the DP system while controlling the joystick system.

Preventative Measures
The watchdog functionality self-test function allowing unit to recognise
jamming fault (and provide diagnostic coverage for other CPU faults).
Provides module isolation should any of these faults occur & is capable of
removing the unit from the network in case of similar malfunction,
ensuring that the inbuilt network redundancy can be utilised.
Drills should be planned and conducted for DP 2 run-offs while diver(s) are
outside of the bell.
All operations should be performed with ROV monitoring.
Review FMEA of the DPC.

Lesson Learnt
As a result of the incident, Bibby offshore is leading diver safety, making
sure that they had learnt from the incident.
Lowering the risk of the divers that they are exposed to.
Initiate projects to look into enhancement of diver safety using experiences
from this incident. (
http://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0238.nsf/AllWeb/6FB042654824C048C1257B2D004992B3?OpenDocument)

KONGSBERG Dynamic
Positioning (DP) simulator
in Mumbai

References
http://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0240.nsf/AllWeb/C03BD1E52C6E8B02C1256A4900282075?OpenDocument
http://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0397.nsf/f8aa365e2cee6bd2c125693f003f6ee2/f219737029dfc7d7c125723e002ce4a5/$FILE/304039C-low-res.pdf
http://www.bibbyoffshore.com/media/554/bibby_topaz_v1.pdf
https://www.scribd.com/doc/125194960/Bibby-Topaz-Incident-Case-Study
http://www.slideshare.net/arturovillazongranda/incident-summary-081012-bibby-topaz
http://cdn2.shipspotting.com/photos/middle/5/8/3/1164385.jpg
http://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0238.nsf/AllWeb/6FB042654824C048C1257B2D004992B3?OpenDocument