The ULTFARMS project  

ULTFARMS is an ocean multi-use project that aims to increase European capacity for low-trophic aquaculture by sharing the marine space in multi-use settings with six pilot projects based in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.  

The project brings together stakeholders from the offshore wind farms and low trophic aquaculture value chains to develop environmentally sustainable, low-carbon, and safe low trophic aquaculture products, from design to commercialisation. 

Coordinated by Deltares, ULTFARMS is funded by EU Horizon Europe R&I program and has a total budget of around €10 million. It started in January 2023 and it expected to be concluded in June 2026. 

ULTFARMS aims to move beyond the current application of Low-Trophic Aquaculture (LTA) systems with novel engineering, technical, ecological and biological processes. This will both optimise production in harsh offshore conditions, low-salinities, and their integration within Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs).  

With 25 partners from 9 different countries, ULTFARMS will encompass expertise across the entire value chain for LTA production in OWFs. Through collaboration between research and industry, the project drives the co-development and co-management of innovative designs and operations tailored specifically for offshore environments across the project’s six Low-Trophic Aquaculture Pilots (LTAPs). 

Hidromod’s involvement  

New cultivation structures, grow-out systems, and both nature restoration and eco-friendly design measures are advanced throughout this project. Utilising existing open databases and operational forecasting systems like Copernicus and SeaDataNet, and integrating them into Hidromod’s monitoring and management platform, AquaSafe, enables enhanced technical support for the effective planning and operation of LTAs. 

Hidromod’s scope of work for this project is to provide numerical modelling expertise and to define the parameters required for monitoring using AquaSafe as a platform to process the data and deliver user tailored information. 

This includes Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and provision of capabilities to make use of decision support systems that use operational or on-demand models and algorithms.  

The goal is to achieve an effective monitoring strategy for ecological, environmental, production, and safety requirements, developing the data flows from different sources and integrating them into a platform to serve the users (OWF and farmers). 

ABL Group is committed to advancing innovative solutions that enable responsible marine resource use while supporting the global transition to renewable energy.  

By contributing expertise in digital monitoring and decision support, we help create smarter, more efficient, and environmentally conscious offshore developments. Projects like ULTFARMS reflect ABL Group’s mission of driving sustainability across energy and oceans. 

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“ABL has been supporting energy and marine projects in Namibia for over a decade. Opening an official entity is the natural next step for us, and cements ABL’s commitment and local engagement to support the country in delivering on its energy objectives.”

Anne Myers, ABL’s Country Manager to South Africa and Namibia

Namibia is a significant player in African energy, with a focus on traditional oil & gas development, alongside plans to harness its extensive solar and wind energy resource. The country’s renewable energy potential is also evident in its promise as a green hydrogen hub for the African continent.

ABL Namibia will provide the company’s full technical service offering in energy and marine consulting, with a focus on marine technical due diligence, rig inspections and rig moving, marine inspections and surveys, marine warranty survey, and maritime services including ports consulting.

Via the support of its sister company the renewable energy consultancy OWC, the new entity will also provide a springboard off which to expand the company’s expertise in energy transition and green energy technical advisory, engineering and consulting.

“ABL Namibia adds to our legacy presence in the South African market, based in Cape Town. It also represents the next step in our continued expansion as the go-to energy and marine consultant to support safety and sustainability in African energy and oceans. We are very excited to see what will come next from this exciting new venture.”

Donald MacMillan, ABL’s Regional Managing Director for Middle East, North & South Africa & India

ABL Namibia complements the company’s further presence in the African continent, with offices in Egypt, Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. ABL is further supported by consultancy presence in Algeria and Morocco.

ABL Namibia is contactable at enquiries.namibia@abl-group.com.

ABL is part of Oslo-listed ABL Group ASA, an independent energy and marine consultancy group to the global oil & gas, renewables and maritime sectors.

Get in touch to discover ABL’s service offering in-country in Namibia:

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Mauricio brings a 15-year career in mechanical engineering, commissioning, operations, maintenance and reliability management roles in the chemical, petrochemical, and oil and gas industries and will head up the division from Brazil.

Throughout ABL’s established Central and South American operations in Brazil, Panama and Mexico, Mauricio will bolster our Asset Integrity Management (AIM) portfolio to bring strategic asset management, maintenance, inventory, and data optimisation solutions to our clients that drive efficiencies and increase their operational excellence. These services will enhance operations for clients across renewables, maritime and oil & gas markets. Mauricio will also support in markets where we have a growing consultancy presence, for example ABL’s sister company OWC in Colombia and Costa Rica.

“With ABL’s well established portfolio of services in the oil and gas, maritime and energy markets in South America, now including AIM, Mauricio is in a great position to unlock opportunities for clients with solutions that will increase operational excellence across their projects and assets. Another area of considerable expansion where we are excited to have Mauricio drive the AIM support, especially in Brazil, is renewable energy and energy transition, where ABL also has a successful existing foundation,”

comments Andreas Theophanatos, Regional Director for Brazil.

As part of the AIM expansion, Mauricio will also showcase ABL’s software suite to the South America region, including the award-winning AssetVoice, Effio, and ePAV. Effio has been used successfully on multiple oil and gas projects and clients, including supermajors, international oil companies and renewable energy facilities and AssetVoice is tracking assets and managing change across varying industries such as oil and gas rental services and the healthcare sector.

Expressing his excitement about joining ABL, Mauricio states,

“I am delighted to be a part of ABL’s AIM expansion into Central and South America. Throughout my career in maintenance and reliability management roles, I have always noticed a lack of specialised and customised asset integrity management support. ABL’s technical offering in AIM benefits from the multi-disciplined marine and engineering expertise of the wider ABL Group, a recognised reputation in driving efficiencies in marine and energy markets, a global track-record, and an expanding suite of proprietary software products.”

ABL’s AIM offering includes strategic asset management, maintenance, inventory, and data optimisation solutions that enable operations across the globe to be safe, efficient, and profitable. Expanding the AIM portfolio to the Central and South American region signals ABL’s commitment to technical and service excellence, providing innovative end-to-end solutions that allow our clients across energy and oceans to receive unparalleled support throughout the entire lifecycle of their projects.

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In his new role, Kenneth will be supporting ABL’s clients in Nigeria and the wider West Africa region in the maritime and oil and gas sectors. This will enhance our integrated offering, bringing end-to-end and throughlife technical consultancy solutions that add value to our clients’ projects. Another key focus area will be the expansion of the Asset Integrity Management (AIM) division’s portfolio of services to the Nigerian market.

With a wealth of expertise from his background with over two decades with Shell and in the upstream and midstream oil and gas sector. Kenneth comes with specialties in electrical engineering, project operations readiness and assurance, competence development and assurance, commissioning and startup, and maintenance and reliability engineering.

“We are delighted to welcome Kenneth to the company as Operations Director for Nigeria. His extensive expertise will be invaluable as we embark on key projects in the region. These include providing Technical Authority services, building Bills of Materials for major IOCs, and developing asset maintenance optimisation solutions and CMMS builds for new projects. Kenneth’s leadership will undoubtedly drive our success in these critical initiatives.”

Shai Tzucker, Managing Director for Energy Services, ABL.

Expressing his excitement about joining ABL, Kenneth states,

“I am thrilled to join ABL and contribute to our shared vision of growth and innovation. I am particularly excited about deepening our maritime services and expanding ABL’s expert AIM services, to bring value to energy and marine clients in West Africa. The opportunity to join such a dynamic technical team at our Lagos office, and make a tangible difference in our sectors of maritime, oil & gas and renewables is exciting and motivating for me”.

ABL has been delivering market-leading marine warranty survey and maritime consultancy solutions in the Nigerian market since 2011, establishing ourselves in the West African region with a long legacy and a track record of working on some of the country’s most significant energy infrastructure projects, including Egina. Kenneth’s appointment is the natural next step in ABL’s continued growth to support the energy and marine markets in West Africa and across the wider African continent.

AIM solutions complement and expand ABL’s Africa presence, supporting operational excellence initiatives in ABL’s core sectors—oil and gas, maritime, and renewables— allowing our clients across energy and oceans to receive unparalleled support throughout the entire lifecycle of their projects.

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“We have grown rapidly in the past 10 years, from our first office in Shanghai, to a team of 42 based across four offices, covering a number of China’s key commercial and marine hubs. Looking at where we have come from and now ahead, we have confidence in becoming even stronger in the next 10 years.”

Peng Yongfei, Dpt. Regional Managing Director, ABL Asia Pacific

ABL China’s 10^th anniversary was celebrated as part of the ABL Asia Pacific’s recently-held management meeting, on the 25^th and 26^th March. The meeting brought together regional management, country managers, and business line directors to discuss and align on opportunities for further business growth in Asia Pacific.

ABL’s CEO Ben Lazenby, also joined for the event and to celebrate in the continued success of the China operations.

ABL China is based across offices in Shanghai, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. It supports renewables, oil and gas and maritime industries with ABL’s full technical service offering in energy and marine consultancy.

Looking ahead, ABL China will focus on growth in dynamic positioning (DP) services and critical systems’ consulting, cables and subsea engineering and consulting, rig inspections, and through-life consultancy support for transportation & installation (T&I) operations. In addition to this, ABL China is recognised partner in maritime consulting spanning ports and harbours consulting, marine casualty management and expert witness.

“We were delighted to celebrate with all our regional colleagues and our ABL CEO, Ben Lazenby, our 10-year anniversary in supporting Chinese energy and oceans. This is a great milestone for us, and we are excited to look ahead to the next 10 years with the support of our colleagues across the continent. We will continue to consolidate our market-leading position in core service competencies such as maritime and marine warranty survey, whilst developing our engineering and consultancy offering in renewable energy and energy transition to support in China’s net-zero strategy”

Lyu Liwei, Country Manager ABL China

Discuss ABL China’s energy and marine consultancy support for your project and asset in renewables, maritime and oil & gas, by contacting our team:

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“Asia Pacific is ABL’s 2nd largest region after Europe, and one with significant activity across energy and oceans. Appetite for renewables and energy transition technology is ever-expanding, maritime remains busy with new challenges as demand increases on marine supply chains and ports, and development of offshore oil & gas infrastructure continues at pace. We continue to grow in the region to ensure that our global technical offering is available in the markets where it is needed, via local market expertise.”

Simon Healy, Regional MD for ABL Asia Pacific

The meeting was held on the 25^th and 26^th March and brought together regional management, country managers, and business line directors. The focus of the two days was to discuss and align on opportunities and plans for further business growth in Asia Pacific.

Topics covered included energy transition, marine warranty survey (MWS) for offshore operations, oil & gas transportation & installation (T&I), and renewable energy projects, dynamic positioning (DP) and critical systems consultancy, maritime services, asset integrity management, rig operations, rig inspections, and independent engineering.

“ABL offers a vast range of multi-disciplined expertise and a recognised track-record in maritime and offshore energy sectors across China, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. This kind of meeting is a great way to consolidate our growth opportunities as well as key for team building and professional development.”

Emek Ersin Takmaz, Operations Director for ABL Asia Pacific

Recent expansion of regional operations includes the growth of ABL’s Indonesia operations to a second office in the strategic offshore and marine hub of Batam.

The region has also seen a number of significant hires to drive forward growth in its core service offering to maritime sectors. Hires include Jason Zamparutti as Snr Marine Consultant with ABL in Singapore, Yuichi Nakayama as Principal Surveyor at ABL Japan, and Alessio Lombardi as Regional Dynamic Positioning & Critical Systems Manager. ABL Asia Pacific has also brought on David Heavy, as Regional Director for Asset Integrity Management (AIM), to drive the growth of ABL’s service offering across energy, marine and manufacturing industries in the continent.

Find out more about how ABL can support your projects, asset or operations across energy and oceans, from early engineering and planning, to transportation and installation (T&I), operations and decommissioning:

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What does your day look like at ABL?

In my day-to-day, I work in a variety of engineering consultancy projects for offshore renewables, mainly offshore wind, and maritime. In some cases, I perform the technical work, in others I manage the projects, having the main interface with our clients. I also, currently, have a business development and strategy coordination role for North America, through which I collaborate regularly with country and business line managers to support our business growth in the region, with a focus on energy transition.

What inspired you to join your industry?

I am a passionate sailor, having done a lot of competitive sailing on dinghies, and I have always loved the sea. That, together with my interest in engineering, made me study naval architecture and join the maritime industry. I am inspired by the opportunity to help solving complex engineering challenges within this industry, which have a considerable footprint on our global society. I then transitioned also to the offshore renewables industry, which motivates me due to the fast technology advancements and its importance to tackle a global challenge.

Can you tell us about something exciting you are working on right now?

In some recent projects I am supporting our clients with cost engineering services for offshore wind. What I like about this type of projects, is that they allow me to have a holistic view of the project and to see how all activities, technical assumptions and engineering packages are combined together to determine the bid price for the offshore wind lease auctions and the overall financial viability of the projects.

What does the future look like in energy and oceans in the USA?

In maritime, among the key trends, we are seeing an increasing amount of new ship design and construction projects for Jones Act-compliant offshore vessels here in the US. In addition, there is an overall drive for decarbonization of the industry, with developments on alternative fuels, improved efficiencies, new technologies, electric and hybrid vessels, and many others.

On the offshore renewables side, offshore wind is picking up again its momentum after a more “turbulent” end of 2023, and other marine renewable technologies are currently receiving funding in support of their implementation and potential co-location with other offshore energy projects.

What do you enjoy most about working as part of the ABL Group team in the USA?

I enjoy that the team is dynamic and so it is possible to collaborate regularly with many colleagues throughout the different projects. The work environment at the office is great, with some fun post-work social activities in New York City, some highlights from the last years being playing indoor golf, watching national hockey and basketball games at the stadiums, playing an escape room game and playing tennis with colleagues.

More about Umberto

Position: Offshore & Renewable Energy Engineer / North America BD & Strategy Coordinator
Office: ABL, New York City
Hobbies: Sailing, travelling, basketball, tennis, piano and guitar.
Favourite song: “Wake Me Up” from Avicii, as it brings back special memories for me.

Meet Umberto at IPF24, 22-25 April, New Orleans where ABL will be attending alongside colleagues from the wider ABL Group, with whom we have combined experience supporting +260 offshore wind projects worldwide and +230 GW of offshore wind capacity. Click below to find out more:

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In oil and gas, renewables, maritime and many other industries it has become more important than ever to ensure each component of an asset is continually performing correctly.

In this blog post, we unpackage the important topic of asset integrity management, helping you to better understand what it is, why it is important, the benefits it brings, and how to implement this as effectively as possible…

What is asset integrity management?

Managing an asset’s integrity ensures that all systems and equipment are performing optimally, to ensure operations run continually and smoothly. This also helps extend the life of an asset, to further maximise production and profitability. 

Spanning disciplines such as maintenance, inventory management, process safety, operations, inspection, and more, this multifaceted operation is critical to ensuring an asset, and company’s, overall success. 

Asset integrity management is required throughout the full life cycle of an asset – from the design phase right through to decommissioning, and everything in between. 

Why is asset integrity management so important?

Asset integrity management is becoming even more important, with so many oil and gas assets reaching or exceeding their operational life expectancy, and the ever increasing drive to reduce costs wherever possible. This is key to extending the life of an asset safely and effectively, to increase profitability and delay expensive decommissioning costs, as well as avoiding costly downtime or repairs. 

The complexity of assets within the energy sector, combined with skills shortages across the globe, makes managing integrity an enormous task – with so many companies unfortunately having to neglect or delay important tasks, such as maintenance management, risk assessments and training, and accrue a backlog of important work. 

What are the benefits of asset integrity management?

1) Increased performance

In order for assets throughout the oil and gas industry to perform at their optimum level, they must be monitored, maintained and optimised throughout every stage of their life cycle. Assets can be checked and reviewed for factors such as erosion, corrosion, weakness or fatigue – all of which could compromise operations, and in significant situations, stop operations altogether.  

Asset integrity management focuses on the maintenance and performance of an asset, gathering vital information that can be shared between staff, helping to identify potential issues early or notify if an asset needs to be replaced or fixed. This maximises an asset’s uptime, which ultimately increases production and profitability for the organisation.

2) Reduced risk

Asset integrity management provides teams with critical information required to make more informed decisions, and allows essential work to be conducted to reduce the chances of incidents occurring. This ultimately increases safety for both the people on the asset, as well as the environment around it, and also reduces financial risk for the organisation.

3) Greater efficiencies and reduced costs

A carefully designed and implemented asset integrity management strategy can also bring greater efficiencies to an organisation – from having a greater volume of real-time asset data and documentation available to organise and manage work, to robust processes and procedures in place to optimise planning and scheduling of asset integrity tasks. This ultimately leads to reduced costs and increased performance levels – a win-win situation. 

Another way asset integrity management can bring efficiencies is in the proactive work conducted, such as proactive and preventative maintenance. This type of work is essential for avoiding costly repairs and unplanned downtime, and will save a company a significant amount of money in the long-run.

What are the key challenges of asset integrity management?

Continually monitoring asset performance and maintenance, while conducting important inspections and assessments, managing teams, planning and scheduling work, and more, the role of an asset management professional can be extremely challenging.

One of the most common issues faced is balancing the stages of an asset’s life cycle in terms of costs to the business, for example, capital expenditure, time and labour. With many assets within the oil and gas industry coming to the end of their useful life, managers face a difficult decision on how to manage the degradation of assets. 

Implementing an effective asset integrity management strategy can be a difficult task as managers are often faced with numerous internal and external pressures such as fluctuating oil prices, an ageing workforce and a lack of resources. 

It is inevitable that there will be a trade-off between a number of these factors, however ensuring that a robust asset integrity management system is in place will help to mitigate the impact of these trade-offs and help to align with the company’s activities. 

What are the key components of an effective asset integrity management strategy?

At ABL, we have an entire division dedicated to Asset Integrity Management, with highly experienced industry experts across the globe. We focus on the core components of an asset integrity management strategy, which are key to achieving success:

• Asset management
• Asset data optimisation and migration
• Maintenance strategy optimisation
• Inventory, procurement and materials management
• Operations and maintenance support
• Safety integrity and risk management

Get in touch

If you’d like to discuss ABL’s asset and integrity management solutions and how they can support you, fill in the form below and one of our team will reach out.

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The philosophies cascading into the management systems and processes influences all 4 elements of what it takes to be a high performer. Without a meticulously designed and executed CMMS resulting from this, plants are subject to increased risk of equipment failure, loss of production, and excessive maintenance costs – which will directly impact the safety integrity and performance of the plant.

To truly optimise a plant’s maintenance and materials regime and unlock the associated benefits that come with it, it is key to build this regime using reliable, structured, and quality master data. Realising the need to have this in place, ABL were contracted by an international energy company to deliver a global maintenance optimisation project where we were tasked with enriching the CMMS data and optimising the maintenance management regime, and associated spare parts in excess of 1.3 million equipment tags.

The challenge

To assure the right level of preventative and predictive maintenance and inspection, on the right equipment, was being done with the right materials, at the right time – no more, no less. Achieved through:

• Having the means to operate safely, by having complete visibility of what equipment they have, how its classified and risk ranked, how and when it should be maintained, and the materials that are required to do this
• Applying best-in-class maintenance strategies at an optimum frequency to mitigate failure, reduce risk and optimise cost
• Consolidating the client’s approach to maintenance and integrity management by migrating into one standardised global CMMS solution

What we did

The ABL team was contracted to deliver the review, enrichment, and optimisation of their global approach to maintenance and integrity management. This included:

• Equipment identification: to ensure all equipment that requires maintenance was in the CMMS, by establishing and implementing the data standard
• Equipment classification and criticality: to ascertain how critical the equipment’s function is to the asset’s production and safety integrity, to determine the optimal maintenance requirements 
• Equipment strategies: utilising an FMECA based approach and discovering existing pockets of maintenance excellence to apply learnings across assets, ensuring the optimum level of maintenance is assigned to equipment whether that be assurance, preventative, predictive, or contingency
• Equipment task lists: providing high-quality task lists, and a consistent approach to how maintenance is performed by the maintenance team 
• Equipment materials: populating the CMMS with the correct BoMs to ensure the right spares parts are identified to execute the maintenance with consumable and contingency spares
• CMMS implementation: Hassel free CMMS upload templates adhering to the change management process

The result

Having complete visibility of their equipment, and how important it is, has been instrumental in building the foundations for achieving maintenance excellence. The company now has confidence that they are maintaining equipment at an optimum level and ensuring the risk profiles are still being managed. 

Plant reliability and safety integrity of their facilities are of the most noticeable outputs of this project; not only are they setting record reliability statistics, but they are achieving this with optimised levels of maintenance, done at the right time, in a globally consistent manner.

As a by-product of the safety integrity and reliability benefits, this client also benefited from some significant cost savings, including:

• Savings of over $7M per year through the cleansing and net removal of 210,000 tags in CMMS that were duplicates or decommissioned equipment, additional critical tags were also added
• Savings of over $18.5M per year by rationalizing 170,000 annual planned maintenance hours 
• Savings of $7M per year through optimization of annual planned maintenance work orders
• Savings of $14M on planning and efficiencies gains through enrichment of 147,000 Maintenance BoMs

About Effio

ABL’s maintenance optimisation software, Effio, was used to deliver this project in a controlled, collaborative, efficient and cost-effective manner.

Utilising the tools FMEA facilitation and analysis functionality, the team were able to:

• Visualise and interpret the data better to review the assets’ function, how it fails, its functional failures, consequence of failure and probability of failure with ease
• Update critically allocation in a standardised and systematic fashion
• Provide the client with logins to ensure technical authorities were able to attend workshops, review data and sign off on updates in a fully informed and efficient manner

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