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Royal IHC’s Hi-Traq, trenching machine and tooling platform, has won the award for ‘Mechanical Engineering Product of the Year’ at the British Engineering Excellence Awards (BEEA) in London last Thursday.

Hi-Traq is the first 4-tracked subsea vehicle with fully independent suspension and steering. This gives unrivalled maneuverability and ability to cope with the full range of shallow-water terrain. The vehicle was originally conceived as a dedicated trencher for cable burial in offshore wind farms but is also being developed as a multi-purpose tooling platform for a wide variety of subsea installation, IRM and decommissioning works.

Ralph Manchester, Chief Engineer for Subsea Vehicles at IHC Engineering Business (IHC EB), commented: “We are enormously proud of the Hi-Traq project, in testing our development machine has proved that the technology works and we look forward to seeing the vehicle in operation.”

The Judges for the BEEA described Hi-Traq as: “A world first turnkey project that met all customer requirements in an extremely challenging environment.”

For IHC EB, this award follows on from winning the BEEA ‘Design Team of the Year’ in 2011, for the Saipem FDS 2 J-lay system.

Related: Royal IHC’s Hi-Traq Nominated for BEEA Award

Royal IHC’s Hi-Traq subsea trencher has entered the competition for the Mechanical Product of the Year Award at the British Engineering Excellence Awards.

October 14, 2014