FoundOcean, the subsea and offshore grouting specialist for the global energy construction industries with an Offshore Service Base in Livingston, Scotland, has recently appointed local concrete removal firm Henry Gillies to dispose of solid grout used in onshore trials.

As part of its service offering to clients, FoundOcean conducts onshore grout trials at its Offshore Service Base in the lead up to offshore projects. As part of these trials, cement and water is mixed in the grout mixing spread. Once the trial is complete the solid grout must be disposed of.

Mark Boyd, operations manager for the Offshore Service Base, explains: “With the increasing number of onshore trials and demonstrations, we have appointed Henry Gillies to collect, remove and re-use the material in an environmentally friendly manner.”

The grout will be pumped into 1,000kg bags and then transported to a concrete plant where it is crushed and re-used in the construction industry. Henry Gillies will also be taking away unused dry cement powder from silos as well as pre-bagged cement that has gone past its use-by date.

FoundOcean’s most significant onshore trials have included:

  • A full-scale partial project mock-up where an indoor tank was constructed to demonstrate grout penetration into the leg void of a jacket structure
  • A simulation for the Valhall Quarters Platform jacket upgrade operations through grout member strengthening
  • A large underbase grout trial for a gravity base structure whose seabed-simulation area covered 120m², to demonstrate the spread of grout to fill voids up to 16m away in a controlled manner

The first collection saw three 6m x 3m redundant concrete mattresses and nineteen 1,000kg bags removed from the Offshore Service Base.