Kongsberg Maritime offers new training for DPOs

Kongsberg Maritime’s training centre in Houston, Texas, has become the first maritime training facility in North America to offer the Nautical Institute accredited sea time reduction course for dynamic positioning operators (DPO). Kongsberg Maritime already offers the course at its facility in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – a course that reduces the required time spent at sea in order to achieve the Nautical Institute’s DPO certification by up to 6 weeks. This is achieved through a heavier focus on realistic simulation exercises on a Kongsberg Maritime full-mission K-Sim DP simulator.

K-Sim DP is a proven simulator platform

Sea Time Reduction is an intensive five day simulator course wherein DPOs can earn significant credit towards DP certification. During the course, participants work with practical scenarios based on real operations, training on planning and executing specific operations under varying simulated conditions. The scenarios will be run on a K-Pos DP System Class 3 in a full mission simulator environment, connected to an advanced simulator control. K-Sim DP is a proven simulator platform, providing highly realistic training in terms of operational processes and life-like physical consoles and visual system.

In addition to simulator training on routine and emergency situations, the new course covers the study of DP incidents and the construction and use of worksite diagrams, electronic charts and vessel templates for use in DP operations.

Trainees will also learn how to prepare plans for DP operations, including contingency plans, whilst carrying out risk and safety analysis and defining the DP equipment classes. Moreover, the course places focus on the DP system’s utilisation of position reference measurements and the various position reference systems available.

Kongsberg Maritime also launched a new DPO training initiative. The brand new ‘Kongberyg Training Scheme for DP Operators’ is based on a combination of new and established DNV training standards, with the learning process designed by Kongsberg Maritime. The scheme is a step-change in the critical area of DPO training, with teaching and assessor competence, and the use of advanced simulators forming the platform for training high quality DPOs in a significantly reduced timeframe. 

Providing a high quality simulated environment

“Training for a dynamic positioning operator (DPO) certificate can be a time consuming process, which involves onshore courses and DP watch keeping experience on DP vessels,” said Jon Holvik, President Kongsberg Maritime. “Training DPOs at sea is expensive and may cause risks, so replacing some of the time a trainee spends at the controls of a real ship in a safe, high quality simulated environment is an attractive proposition, especially for operators in the Gulf of Mexico, where there is significant demand for well-trained DPOs.”

Adapted from press release by Cecilia Rehn

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/offshore-and-subsea/24062015/kongsberg-maritime-offers-new-training-for-dpos/