Thickness Gauging for Offshore, Fishing and Aquaculture Vessels in Florø

Inspection services for ships at Florø

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Quays, yard and lay-by berths in Florø

Fjord Base gives a vessel what gauging needs ashore: quay space, cranes, forklifts and room to stage equipment, together with access control that the agent or base arranges. Supply vessels can usually free up bulk, mud and brine tanks between runs if the charterer's schedule allows cleaning, after which the tank surfaces need only local preparation before readings are taken. Subsea vessels mobilising at the base often have deck equipment removed or exchanged, which exposes deck plating and foundations that are normally hidden under machinery.

For hull work below the waterline, the Westcon yard in Florø is the local option, while the larger yards on the Møre coast to the north and around Bergen to the south take bigger ships. Fishing and aquaculture vessels use the town's commercial quays and smaller workshops for routine maintenance, and readings of fish holds, refrigerated seawater tanks and piping can be taken alongside. Vessels laid up in sheltered sounds near the town are reached by workboat, which the owner or the lay-up contractor arranges.

• Fjord Base supply quays — tank, chain-locker and deck gauging on platform supply vessels between offshore runs.
• Fjord Base project quays — deck plating and foundation readings on subsea and construction vessels during mobilisation or demobilisation.
• Westcon's Florø yard — pre-docking, docking-survey and renewal-survey gauging on offshore and coastal vessels, with steel renewal marked for the yard.
• Commercial and fishing quays in the town — fish hold, RSW tank and seawater piping measurement on fishing vessels and well boats.
• Lay-up moorings in sheltered sounds — reactivation gauging on idle offshore vessels, reached by workboat.

Offshore contracts, coastal regulation and new fuels at Florø

Florø lies inside the North Sea emission control area, just south of its northern limit at 62°N, and port state control on foreign ships is carried out by the Norwegian Maritime Authority under the Paris MoU. Most of the vessels working from the base fly the Norwegian flag, and for them the Authority is also the flag administration, with much of the statutory survey work delegated to the classification societies. Vessels on long-term charter to oil companies are audited against the charterer's own requirements, and those audits increasingly look for evidence of structural condition, not only valid class certificates.

The base itself is looking beyond oil and gas. Hydrogen production and ammonia as a marine fuel have both been developed as projects at Fjord Base, alongside its preparations for floating wind. If those plans bring new vessel types and conversions to Florø, gauging will follow: an older supply vessel converted for wind or aquaculture work carries structure designed for another trade, and its owner needs to know the condition of that steel before investing in the conversion. Well boats, meanwhile, keep growing larger and more complex, and their seawater treatment and circulation systems add piping that has to be kept in condition.

Ships trading to Florø are inside a sulphur emission control area, where fuel must not exceed 0.10% sulphur unless an exhaust gas cleaning system (scrubber) is fitted. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it are among the fastest-corroding parts of a modern ship, so they belong in the gauging scope at every docking and, on open-loop systems, between dockings.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Florø

Most of the work on a Florø job happens before the team boards: scope, plan and access are settled first, so the time on board goes on measurement.

Florø Airport lies close to the town and has domestic flights, so the team usually connects through Oslo or Bergen; the alternatives are the road from Bergen or the express passenger boat along the coast. Fjord Base runs access control for its quay area, and the vessel's agent or operator registers the team and its equipment beforehand. Norway is in the Schengen area, so technicians coming from India need Schengen visas, and owners planning work at the base or the yard should give notice as soon as dates are firm.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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