Offshore control room

 

Offshore control rooms can be found as ECR (Engine Control Room) on board ships, but also at many oil and gas platforms in the North Sea. The design of an offshore control room has many similarities with a control room on shore, but there are also clear differences. The control room is often not only used for process supervision tasks, but the area also may serve as coordination centre, control tower to helicopter traffic, meeting room, coffee corner, office, dressing room and mailroom. These features put different demands on the control room, which are complicated by the limited available space.

 

Recently completed projects:

Control room Total offshore production platform K5

ErgoS designed a control room for the Total E&P K5 platform, including spatial layout, workplace design, and lighting plan. We also designed the layout of the large overview screen.

ECR Athena

The work of mechanics on modern ships has clearly changed over the last decade. The emphasis is placed on planned maintenance, in which a larger proportion of the interaction is done through screens. ErgoS developed an ECR layout for the latest ship of dredging company Van Oord in close alignment with these developments. The design is based on a previously carried out task analyses of mechanics/operators. A life-size mock-up of the ECR was created and tested with users.

 

Best practices

Below, we give a small selection of practical tips that might be useful in the design of an offshore control room:

  • Make a complete inventory list and provide all possible objects with a place in the room, including the fire extinguisher and the cookie jar. Offshore control rooms are usually totally built and tested on land and then disassembled and shipped off to its destination. This is done because a renovation at sea is very expensive. Because of that, retroactive changes are also very expensive.
  • Please note that special rules apply at sea on the fire safety of materials. Matters such as flooring, ceilings, and wall coverings can only be applied if an IMO label or offshore certification is available.
  • A large number of optical effects exist to make a small space seem larger. Use them! A lot of space is gained by combining the movement areas of different work areas as much as possible.