Tree C Bags Fall Pipe Vessel Simulator Contract from Jan De Nul

Jan De Nul Group awarded Tree C Technology B.V. a contract for the development and delivery of a Fall Pipe Vessel Simulator for its headquarters in Capellen in Luxembourg.

The simulator will be used for personnel training of the Jan De Nul Group’s fall pipe vessel Joseph Plateau and its sister vessel Simon Stevin. With a rock carrying capacity of 31,500 tonnes, these fall pipe rock dumping vessels are the largest of their kind in the world and two of the few vessels equipped for rock dumping in water depths of 2,000m.

The FPV (fall pipe vessel) simulator is designed for interactive training of FPV operators in the most realistic conditions. It provides training facilities for a wide range of operators and skills including the Fall Pipe operator, Surveyor, Operations’ superintendent and the Ship’s electrician. All the corresponding monitoring and control functions are operated from dedicated consoles equal to the ones on board. To this end Tree C will source the equipment from the same original manufacturers, Ingeteam (ES) and Seatools (NL).

The first part of the project will focus on the actual production process, i.e. control by the FP operator of the stones’ flow and control of the fall pipe and fall pipe ROV position. The second part includes the building up and breaking up processes of the fall pipe, i.e. managing the pipe storage area and inserting or removing successive pipe pieces to build up or break up the desired fall pipe assembly.

In future the facility can be further extended to a full mission simulator, including the Work Class ROV operator and DP operator tasks. They will be working and interacting within a common simulation environment that will consider and recreate all real-life interactions between the different systems that are manipulated.

“This contract highlights a year in which Tree C celebrates being 20 years in service and proves our solid reputation in the offshore equipment simulation market,” said Gerard Weder, CEO of Tree C Technology B.V., and continues: “We value Jan De Nul Group highly for their professional and detailed preparation of this high grade project which is proof of the fact that simulation, read training of their personnel, is taken very seriously.”