Site report: How Liftek reached a water bag milestone

Speaking exclusively to ICST, John Alexander, managing director of Liftek, said, “We are proud that this project not only showcased the technical capabilities of the Liftek team in planning and executing a challenging load-test, but also proved the high quality of the waterbags that are made in-house.”

A water bag load test of 2,420 tonne-metres was completed by Liftek, one of the biggest ever conducted

The water bag load test of 2,420 tonne-metres was completed by Liftek, one of the biggest ever conducted. The load test was to verify and certify the revolving capacity of a Sapura 3500 deck crane, owned and operated by Sapura Energy, prior to it being deployed at the Yunlin Offshore wind farm project in Taiwan.

Sapura 3500 is an ABS DP3 Self Propelled Heavy Lift Pipe Laying vessel equipped with a 3500 Metric Tonnes Deck Crane.

Liftek’s Covid-19 planning
Due to travel restrictions from Covid-19, Liftek’s load testing team could not go to Taiwan so frequent virtual meetings and technical discussions between the two companies were done to plan the load test.

Liftek’s involvement on this job included:

• The full rigging and lift plan
• A complete action plan in step-by-step detail
• The method statement
• Supply of allthe certified equipment
• Remote training on equipment usage
• Remoteassistance during load-test through Teams and live-streaming video

Four high volume pumps filled the bags in less than 5 hours and the entire lift was executed in 24 hours.

Catalin Mamaischi, project manager of Sapura Energy, said, “We were impressed with Liftek’s team’s technical knowledge and professionalism and the quality of their waterbags and load test equipment.”

The companies had already worked together previously too in June 2020, when they executed a similar load test of 2,032 tonne-metres in Malaysia for a bespoke lifting beam.

In terms of plans for 2022, Alexander said, “We have the capability and expertise to conduct load-tests upto 3500MT using Liftek waterbags and hoping to execute such a project in 2022. In early 2022 we are launching a range of underwater air-lift bags to serve the subsea market.”