Global safety products manufacturer and service provider VIKING Life-Saving Equipment has won a contract to supply CNOOC Petroleum Europe Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, with personal protective equipment(PPE) and servicing for approximately 16,000 passengers annually flying to and from the company’s platforms in the North Sea.
VIKING has already begun providing helicopter carry-on safe equipment, survival suits, lifejackets, armbands and helicopter transit bags for the flights.
The customized suits and lifejackets were specially designed to reduce weight and increase comfort, freeing up as much as 40 kg of helicopter payload that can enable the transport of more spare parts or simply fuel cost savings.
“With the new designs, we’ve managed to shave a kilogram off our suits,” says VIKING Business Area Director Alex Kristensen. “Adding RFID tracking and a unique name tag on each suit reduces the whose-suit-is-whose confusion for the journey home, too!”
There’s more to the overall solution design, however, and it’s right in line with VIKING’s agenda to help protect the planet. As well as delivering improvements in payload weight and comfort, it will also help to reduce the use of single-use plastics. Normally, each survival suit arrives in a plastic bag, but now the suits are rolled in a similar way to a yoga mat and secured with re-usable VELCRO® straps instead, saving approximately 16,000 bags per year.
Alex Kristensen is delighted with the result of what has been an intensive solution development journey: “For VIKING, this is a great example of what can be achieved if you can support customers in innovating around the safety aspects of their operations to create new efficiencies.”
The new suits come in a range of sizes, including six designed specifically for women.