Cost-Effective Offshore Fabric Maintenance Strategies

offshore fabric maintenance

Offshore Fabric Maintenance’s Biggest Challenge

Simply put, today’s coatings are not all they’re cracked up to be. The truth is that most of them fail much quicker than what’s advertised. A system may claim to be designed for 20 to 25 years of offshore use, when the reality is actually more like 2 years. For that reason, maintenance is critical to maximizing the life of your coating. Before getting into some strategies for cost-effective maintenance, let’s take a step back to analyze where costs actually arise so we can properly identify opportunities for savings.

Where Costs Accrue

If you had to give an educated guess, where would you imagine that the greatest costs of offshore fabric maintenance arise? Keep that in mind as we follow the data to get to the real answers.

Coating Costs

When considering cost-savings opportunities for offshore fabric maintenance, opting for a system with a lower up-front cost is sure to be a knee-jerk reaction for many. After all, coatings are engineered to pass the same standards like AMPP, ISO, and NORSOK, so going with the cheapest option is a no-brainer– or is it?

Going with a cheaper system may give you some good numbers up front, but think back to how they actually perform. And consider that when analyzing real data from the Gulf of Mexico, the cost of the coating system itself was found to represent only 2% of offshore fabric maintenance costs on average. Coating selection is definitely not where you want to be cutting corners. That’s not to say you should go out there and buy the most expensive system possible, because higher costs don’t necessarily equate to better performance, either. So if not the coating itself, where do the costs really begin to add up?

Preparation Costs

Let’s turn our attention to preparation. This includes not just surface prep like abrasive blasting, rinsing, and drying, but also other kinds of prep like scaffolding installations for access and blocking off sections for maintenance as needed. The throughline which connects all of these steps to one another is simple: manpower. No matter how you dice it, there are people involved at every single preparation step. Their labor is skilled, and they perform it in a setting that is rife with safety concerns– which is to say that it doesn’t exactly come cheap. Not only that, but these preparations sometimes call for normal operations to come to a halt, depending on the extent of the maintenance and where it takes place. In comparison to the paint itself, the cost of labor that goes into offshore fabric maintenance was found to be upwards of fifty times greater. So by the time prep for even setting down the primer layer has been completed, how much has really been spent?

Application Costs

Finally there’s the matter of applying the coating. If the surface has been sufficiently prepped and the team has been properly equipped, this should be quite straightforward. When it comes to coating application, the work itself isn’t the only factor contributing to costs. It’s important to also keep in mind the daily operations which might be paused as each coat dries. This can be mitigated to a degree through careful planning, but there’s no getting around downtime in some way, shape, or form. Less time operating is less time making money, which translates into greater costs overall. Then once each coat has sufficiently dried, there’s the matter of prepping for the next one. Rinse and repeat this anywhere from 2 to 4 times based on the average 3 to 5 coat system… you get the idea.

With all this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that coating costs are near negligible in comparison to the cost of manpower. While labor costs simply can’t be avoided, they can instead be reduced by employing the following maintenance tactics.

Actionable Strategies for Cost-Effective Maintenance

Keeping maintenance costs down involves achieving 3 things:

  1. Minimize the need for maintenance.
  2. Respond to failures quickly.
  3. Expedite maintenance for max efficiency.

Here are 3 actionable steps that can help with those achievements.

1. Choose Coatings Wisely

Want to do less maintenance? Choose your coating wisely. While many coatings display exceptional properties brand new, many will quickly deteriorate when exposed to certain facets of the offshore environment like heat and UV over time. The best choice you can make to keep maintenance costs low is to invest in a system that displays true durability. After all, the cheapest coating is the one you don’t have to replace.

2. Perform Routine Inspections

Still, no one coating is truly invincible. For that reason, routine inspections are a necessity for proper maintenance. While recurring inspections may help imperfections be identified more quickly, they also come with costs that make a higher frequency unfeasible. For instance, some areas to be inspected may require the installation of access equipment, while other areas may need to be shut down altogether for a proper inspection to take place. And of course, the personnel doing the inspecting is likely taking time away from more value-added tasks. Be sure to schedule maintenance activities in a way that balances frequency with your structure’s needs for the most cost effective routine.

3. Implement Chase Kits

So imagine that you do find imperfections in your coating during an inspection. It’s important to address these faults in a timely fashion to prevent them from rapidly worsening from a cosmetic blemish to a structural hazard. This activity is commonly performed by chase crews. Although the task itself is straightforward, the most cumbersome part is that each person has to carry around bulky containers of product. We’re talking quantities designed for campaign or block work to cover entire areas, which is just excessive when performing touch-ups on areas that are less than 10 square feet (or 1m²) on average.

To help these chase crews work more efficiently, try dedicated chase kits designed for quick deployment, greater mobility,  and easy handling. At Tesla NanoCoatings, our chase crew packsour chase kits feature a much more manageable quantity of just 1 quart of product, while our chase crew tool kits includealong with a spray gun, mixing materials, and all the accessories one might need when performing chase work. This directly increases productivity, reduces waste, and keeps costs per square foot low as a result.

It’s never too early or too late to start employing these strategies in your offshore fabric maintenance. For more information on the industry’s longest lasting coating, our chase crew kits, or even tips on balancing your inspection schedule with your production schedule, contact Tesla NanoCoatings today.