MacGregor Gangway Certified for Transfers Between Two Floating Vessels
DNV approval frees crew changes and walk-to-work from fixed landing points
MacGregor has announced that its Horizon gangway has received DNV certification for floating-to-floating personnel transfer, enabling motion-compensated walkway connections between two vessels moving independently of one another.
The certification was achieved under DNV-ST-0358 following a successful sea acceptance test, and extends the Horizon platform to operating scenarios where no fixed landing point exists.
That scenario is becoming more common. Operators of floating production, storage and offloading units, floating rigs, floating wind arrays and offshore service fleets have until now planned personnel movement around fixed structures or port calls. Certification for vessel-to-vessel transfer means crew changes can be carried out at sea, service campaigns no longer need to be routed around port calls, and walk-to-work access can follow the field's schedule rather than the port's.
The engineering change sits at the gangway tip. A purpose-designed flap replaces the conventional docking head used for landings on fixed structures, and LiDAR-based relative motion tracking feeds the gangway's motion compensation system in real time, maintaining a controlled connection as both vessels move.
"This new capability opens up flexible crewing models for FPSOs and floating facilities, so that crew changes can be carried out at sea, service campaigns don't need to be routed around port calls, and walk-to-work access between vessels can be based on the field's schedule," said Prateek Sadhana, MacGregor product owner for walk-to-work gangways. "In the renewables sector, this supports the service logistics that floating wind operations demand, where there is no fixed structure to land on whatsoever."
The capability is delivered as an extended function of the existing Horizon gangway family rather than as a standalone product, and can be retrofitted or upgraded on units already in operation. Operators already running Horizon gangways gain the new function on a platform they know, with the same control philosophy and no separate qualification process.
"Certification matters commercially as well as technically," Sadhana added. "It gives owners, charterers and insurers an independently verified basis for planning vessel-to-vessel operations, and it gives crews the confidence that the equipment they cross has been designed, tested and certified for exactly this use." For an offshore vessel operator, that verification is what allows the capability to be written into a charter party rather than treated as an operational exception.
