Every year National Fluid Power Centre (NFPC) Training Engineers, travel thousands of miles delivering bespoke full cost courses and this year is no exception with David O’Loughlin Technical Manager travelling to Japan. The NFPC has a world class team of engineers and is now working continuously in the global market.
The NFPC have recently completed a series of specialist training courses for Mantle Quest Japan (MQJ) – the Japanese Government agency which heads up their global earthquake research project. MQJ operate the billion dollar deep sea drilling vessel (D/V) Chikyu with an international crew of 50 scientists and 100 engineers. Although the 58,000 Tonne ship was built in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Engineering, most of the drilling equipment and the four massive deck cranes are from the international consortium National Oilwell Varco (NOV) and their Norwegian lifting equipment subsidiary company Hydralift.
Our first contact with MQJ was through two of their senior engineering staff who came to the NFPC on a industrial hydraulics training course, they were so pleased with the training they subsequently signed up for an advanced course in proportional hydraulics. By coincidence MQJ were currently in the process of asking NOV for equipment specific training courses and decided that the NFPC could deliver a much more focussed course that better suited the needs of their crew.Drawing on his first hand experience of working in the fields of: marine engineering, offshore drilling, electro-hydraulic control and explosive atmospheres, David was able to quickly develop a bespoke training course to be delivered to the ship’s hydraulic engineers, mechanics, electricians and data-technicians.
The trainee’s feedback from the training course was excellent, with many of the ex-pat engineers finally receiving answers to questions that had “bugged” them for years. Towards the end of the course, even the Japanese crew members started to overcome their cultural reticence and found themselves asking additional technical questions – anyone who has worked with Japanese students will appreciate what a breakthrough this was.
So what’s next? The Chief Mechanical Engineers on D/V Chikyu are now having discussions with the MQJ training department about commissioning the NFPC to deliver another specialist course to cover the 380 Tonne Blow-out Preventer (the device that prevents the drill string being blown out of the top of the derrick if they break into an underground pocket of pressurised fluid) and the heave compensation systems (equipment which allows the ship to ride up and down on the waves whilst drilling into the seabed).
The NFPC is pleased to be able to contribute to such a prestigious project and we are looking forward to working with MQJ for a long time to come.
NFPC Update by John R Savage, Director
