Key statistics from the installation analysis for Fugro (illustration: AgileTek)

Subsea engineering analysis consultancy, AgileTek, has completed the first use of its revolutionary AELCloud system on a project for geo-intelligence and asset integrity provider, Fugro.

The work required a substantial number of simulations of subsea power cable installation operations to be performed to verify procedures, component sizes and weather windows. Some of the results were required at critical milestones within the larger project, and AELCloud allowed AgileTek to scale server capacity on demand to meet these deadlines.

AELCloud is an online platform developed by AgileTek which runs analysis and simulations on both cloud and the client’s own local servers. It drastically reduces the time traditionally needed to run simulations, and ensures information amassed is high-quality and traceable.

On this subsea installation project alone, AgileTek ran approximately 27,000 OrcaFlex simulations which equated to around 57,000 hours, or just over six years of simulation time. Eight terabytes of simulation file binary data were saved, and AELCloud processed a total of 1.5 billion data points for critical metrics in the system.

Data at this scale cannot be stored on a laptop or processed with Microsoft Excel, which is why AgileTek has invested in a distributed digital data store with built in redundancy and a highly efficient query language.

The true power of AELCloud is that all data transfer, results specification, results post-processing and reporting is performed automatically on a secure web application. This dramatically reduces the number of manual steps required to report the critical results.

AgileTek Managing Director, Steve Rossiter says, “I’d seen too many projects over the years where the time to process simulations resulted in delays that impacted project milestones, production slots and vessel availability.”

“Constraints on storing and processing data also cause analysts to make assumptions about what data is worth processing and what isn’t. In the age of big data, these delays and limitations should not exist and so we built AELCloud to take advantage of this new wave of technology. After a year of development, it’s great to see the system in action on this project with Fugro,” adds Rossiter.

Tags: AgileTek, Fugro