Dolphin Refurbishes Topside Cooler Package for FPSO During Dry-Dock

An FPSO due for scheduled dry-dock needed its topside process cooler package refurbished before the vessel could be recertified for continued service, with seawater-side fouling and corrosion across several coolers identified during the pre-dry-dock condition survey. A dry-dock slot is booked years in advance and cannot be extended on demand, which made the fixed window the hardest constraint on the whole scope.

Dolphin's marine team mobilised to the yard to strip, inspect and recondition the full cooler package, sequencing work across units in parallel so the critical path tracked the single slowest repair rather than the sum of every cooler in the package — the same principle that had kept an earlier jack-up rig cooler overhaul inside its yard window.

“A dry-dock window is fixed the moment it's booked — the only variable left to manage is how the work inside it is sequenced.”

Coolers were assessed against remaining wall thickness and class-society retirement criteria rather than replaced as a blanket policy, keeping scope proportionate to genuine condition while still meeting the documentation standard the vessel's next class survey would require.

The refurbished package was pressure-tested and reinstalled before the vessel left dry-dock, with class-ready documentation handed over in time to support the FPSO's recertification and return to station.