Offshore Structure Career

January 22, 2019 By Dr. Mohame A. El-Reedy

When a structural engineer starts work on offshore structure design, construction or maintenance, the offshore structure may appear to be a black box to him. Most engineering faculties, especially those in structural or civil engineering, focus on the design of residential, administrative, hospital and other domestic buildings
from concrete or steel, while other faculty focus on harbor design.
The design of offshore structure platforms is a combination of steel structure design methods and loads applied in harbors, such as waves, current and other parameters. On the other hand, offshore platform design depends on technical practice, which depends on the experience of the engineering company itself.
While the construction of steel structures is familiar to the structural engineer, as anyone can observe construction of a new steel building, the construction and installation of an offshore structure platform are very rarely seen unless one has a direct role in the project, especially because the installation will be in the sea or ocean. There are far fewer offshore structures world-wide than there are steel structures for normal buildings on land, and the major design guidance for offshore structures lies in research and development, which is growing very fast to keep pace with development in the global oil and gas business. Therefore,
all the major oil and gas exploration and production companies support and sponsor
research to enhance the design and reliability of offshore structures, in order to improve revenues from their petroleum projects and their assets.
My online seminars (www.elreedyman.com) and my book aims (www.amazon.com/author/elreedyma) to cover the design, construction and maintenance of offshore platforms in detail, with comprehensive focus on the critical issues in design that
the designer usually faces. I try to provides the simplest design tools, based on the most popular codes (such as API and ISO) and the other technical standards and practices that are usually used in offshore structure design.
In addition, it is important to focus on methods for controlling and reviewing the design
that most engineers will face in the review cycle, so this book covers the whole
range of the offshore structure engineer’s activities.