Salunda ‘Red Zone’ safety technology to be adopted by bp on its North Sea assets

Salunda, the global leader in digitised solutions for safety critical industries, has secured an agreement to provide bp with its Crew Hawk Red Zone monitoring solution for use across the operator’s North Sea assets.

The regional roll-out has been agreed following successful field trials of the system on bp’s Clair Ridge platform and has been adopted to ensure safer Red Zone management for various hazardous operations. It is the first time the technology has been used for well interventions.

Crew Hawk wirelessly monitors hazardous working environments in real-time, tracking individuals and equipment to provide anonymised feedback that focuses on safe operations and minimising risk.

Alan Finlay, Chief Executive Officer of Salunda, said, “This is an exciting project for Salunda and we are pleased to be deploying our Crew Hawk technology on bp’s North Sea facilities.

“We are committed to continuously improving the welfare of people working in safety-critical industries. To this effect, Crew Hawk has redefined Red Zone monitoring by providing instant updates to the area authority and use of the technology greatly enhances the safety of hazardous operations.”

The Crew Hawk equipment was shipped to Clair Ridge, located west of Shetland, where it was tested for location accuracy, operating modes and reliability to ensure the crew’s individual alarms were activated as programmed.

Crew Hawk, which meets, or surpasses, the industry’s stringent certification requirements (MET, IECEx and ATEX), allows users to set up perimeters in the working environment around areas that pose the greatest risk to personnel.

For dynamic situations, a zone can be triggered around activated equipment or machinery. Individuals then receive direct alerts should they enter these zones.

When an individual enters an exclusion area, or Red Zone, it instantly triggers an alarm, sending notifications to both the individual’s personal locator and the area authority, allowing both parties to take corrective action.

Crew Hawk has already been used to track workforce assets and provide an additional layer of awareness and alerts to operational plans while working with rig control solutions for customers.

Performance dashboards offer an overview of operational and safety statistics, while a playback feature allows for a more in-depth investigation of zone violations or incidents in a work area. Heatmaps of the location of individuals can be used to optimise operating procedures, people placement and area layout.