BigLift Shipping’s heavy transport vessel, BigLift Baffin, has departed Aibel’s yard in Thailand carrying the Dogger Bank A topside. The vessel has set course for Haugesund where the 6780.5-ton module will be outfitted with further equipment. It is also the first ever HVDC converter platform exported from Thailand.

While the previous module built at the yard in Thailand, the MSF module of Johan Sverdrup P2, was the heaviest ever moved in Thailand, the Dogger Bank A topside is the largest. In addition, everything is built outside under the open sky with the challenges it entails.

“This makes logistics extra demanding and important. Roughly speaking, only the major HVDC equipment such as the large transformers, valves and converter reactors remain to be installed in Haugesund. Therefore, the module is already equipped with a lot of sensitive equipment, which we must protect from dust and rainfall. This just makes it more impressive that the topside looks so nice and clean both on the outside and inside when we now pass it on,” explains Aibel’s construction manager in Thailand, Frode Johan Saltvedt.

The Dogger Bank A topside had a load-out weight of close to 9,000 tonnes. With its redundant ballast capacity of 12,000 cubic metres per hour, BigLift Baffin was the perfect fit for such oversized structure.

The topside is expected to arrive at the yard in Haugesund in the latter half of June, where it will be placed on the upgraded rig quay. Here, several large lifting operations with big and small floating cranes remain in order to put in place transformers, slings and lifting equipment – in addition to many lifts of Hitachi equipment with the yard’s new tower crane.

The majority of Aibel’s work on the topside will be completed by mechanical completion in November. Commissioning work then remains until the expected sailaway in early spring 2023.