Smit Marine Projects B.V. ordered Amarcon’s OCTOPUS-Onboard for the floating sheerlegs Taklift 7. The relation between Amarcon and Smit goes back for some years now. In 2010 OCTOPUS-Onboard was already installed on the Taklift 4 after a lease period of several weeks.

The recent OCTOPUS-Onboard installation on the Taklift 7 provides similar functionality to the previous one on the Taklift 4. Both will be deployed in a decommissioning project. Main goals of the installation are to assist the master and the crew of the floating sheer legs during heavy lift offshore and transportations of project cargo operations. The functionality of OCTOPUS-Onboard is tailored to the specific type of vessel. For vessels involved in the heavy lift industry this functionality mainly consists out of motion monitoring, response prediction, heavy-weather decision support and weather window evaluation. OCTOPUS-Onboard the Taklift 7 and also the Taklift 4 has an interface with weather forecast providers Nowcasting and Octomar for local weather reports. This in combination with the response prediction from OCTOPUS-Onboard enables a clear indication of anticipated weather windows, resulting in higher production per day during offshore construction/lifting projects.

All the measured data from the bridge is stored enabling the Smit Operations & Tender department to monitor the motions of the project cargo afterwards and monitor the whole transportation and offshore operation with regards to the actual experienced motions and conditions.

Currently Amarcon is developing a new version of OCTOPUS-Onboard; version 6, with a wide range of new functionality which is expected to be released later this year.