The Netherlands: Fugro Takes Delivery of Q1400 Trenching System

Fugro Salt Subsea will take delivery of the first of their two “state-of-the-art” High Performance Q1400 Trenching Systems from manufacturer Soil Machine Dynamics Ltd (SMD) in June this year. The second system is due for delivery in September 2012.

The Q1400 Trenching System will undertake comprehensive offshore acceptance trials in both jetting and chain cutting modes as part of the delivery schedule from SMD and then commence its first contract on the LINCS wind farm off the Lincolnshire coast.

The uniqueness of the Q1400 system is the Common trenching control module and separate tracked Jetting and Chain Cutting skids with a customised launch and recovery system rated to sea state 6. This coupled with a deck transfer skidding system to enable mode changes at sea safely within a 4 hours period.

This will be a milestone event for Fugro where the combination of several service lines will combine together to deliver a new integrated service to our clients in both the Oil &Gas, the renewable and power generation markets.

Fugro Salt Subsea Ltd will lead this new business utilising the core skills from Fugro Group. The new trenching business is born out of eighteen months of market evaluation and system design resulting in the Q1400 trenching system. Fugro Salt believe the Q1400 system is capable of delivering reduced trenching costs for client projects owing to its superior power and performance that will reduce the overall time required for the trenching spread to be on location.

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Offshore WIND staff, June 29, 2012; Image: fugro