Corporate News

Aquaterra assist aspiring engineers

Aquaterra Energy has taken part in the Engineering Education Scheme for the second consecutive year. Graduate Engineers Calum MacAulay and Stuart Redpath have led a team of four Year 12 Norwich School students through an engineering project since October. 

The Engineering Education Scheme provides students with an in-depth experience of science, engineering and technology through local companies, to help them make decisions about their future studies and career.

Students at Norwich School applied to take part in the Scheme with Aquaterra Energy by submitting a personal statement explaining their interest in engineering. The successful candidates - David Lovick, Jon Wilde, Lottie Graham and Tom Durrant - were selected based on their academic ability, their understanding of engineering and how well they could work within a team.

The students were tasked with designing a new 7” umbilical completion clamp to secure an electrical or hydraulic umbilical cable to a completed riser system before it is run down a well. Stuart and Calum guided the students from the initial concept through to completion. The students learnt the main steps a design team would take to fabricate a new piece of equipment; involving research into ideas, identifying main needs, design development and drawings, calculations, material testing at laboratories in Cambridge and finally making a prototype to-scale.

To surpass current designs, the installation time on the rig floor, where the tubing and umbilical are fed down-hole, had to be minimised to a few seconds to save valuable rig time and minimise costs. The final design secures a small umbilical to an inner tubular inside the casing and the time spent applying the clamp on the rig floor is less than 10 seconds, meeting the time constraint. The calculations and stress analysis showed that the structure and material fulfilled the physical criteria. All objectives of the project were successfully met.

The Scheme concluded in a high profile Celebration and Assessment Day (CAD) at RAF Honington where the project was assessed by teams of eminent professional engineers. The Norwich School students also presented the completion clamp to Aquaterra Energy on Thursday 30th April which was enthusiastically received.