GE100 2023: Leader in innovation

For the last two years, Fugro has been chosen as the Ground Investigation Specialist of the Year at the GE Awards. It has also consistently ranked highly on the GE100 list of top geotechnical firms. While the company has experienced growth in turnover and profit, it is also investing significantly in technology, both in-house and with partners, to improve its performance and to collect better geo-data from various locations, ranging from marine to onshore.

Key drivers for these innovations include:

• Increased safety – the removal of people from the field and reduced manual operation
• The energy transition – technology for renewable, carbon capture and emerging energy projects
• Improved data – better access to and understanding of data for clients.

“We develop the things our clients need,” says Fugro’s nearshore manager Paul Roach.

“We’re focused on robotics, remote operations and analytics – so improved processing of data, artificial intelligence and cloud-based geodata solutions – in order to improve the flow of data from site to the clients making decisions on that data. To do that, we invest quite heavily in web portals and making that data better presentable and easier to make decisions on.”

Fugro has the largest network of remote operations centres and remote equipment for marine applications.

“We have uncrewed remotely operated surface vessels, a large fleet of site characterisation equipment and our seabed equipment – the Blue Snake, Blue Dragon and Deep Drive – that can get remote data from difficult to access places. We gather that data with various technologies that allow us to penetrate the subsurface deeper, more efficiently.”

The acquisition of cone penetration test (CPT) data can be automated, and the data can be accessed anywhere in the world almost instantly. This means it can be processed and made available to clients immediately. “And if agreed upfront, the clients can see that data live as well, so they can make immediate decisions on, not just the design, but the investigation itself,” Roach adds.

Fugro is also moving into remote operation for traditional onshore site investigations.

“I think we’re still at the start of the journey towards better data access,” Roach notes. “There’s lots of different methods of digital delivery that need to be rationalised across our industry. Fugro is doing that with our portals, and we’re using third party suppliers
as well.

“The industry is still gathering analogue data, whether through cable percussive drilling or standard penetration tests (SPTs), and relying on these antiquated methods to deliver soil design parameters for some really significant infrastructure projects. We should take these outdated methods off the table as an industry, both client and contractor, and do better things with digital data, whether it be CPT or just better drilling techniques such as measurement while drilling (MWD) as an example.”

Roach has worked with Fugro in operations management for more than a decade now. “My experience is firstly drilling based, and I then moved into main contractor civil engineering, working for a tunnelling contractor. I got to see the subsurface up close and see the challenges presented by poor acquisition of data.

“I came back into the site investigation industry with a real passion to make sure we’re doing the right thing, so that infrastructure projects are delivered in the correct way, uncertainty is reduced and clients have the right data to reduce risk,”
he explains.

Roach wants to highlight the fact that, in addition to technological innovation, Fugro also invests in its people, creating new opportunities to develop themselves and the business.

“I didn’t stay quiet when I saw things that were screaming out for improvement, so the business invited me into the innovation team to spend a period of time developing better solutions for data acquisition.

“Off the back of that, we’ve delivered a number of innovations.”

Recent developments

In Europe and the Middle East, Fugro has recently provided several jack-up rig solutions to clients to help reduce the work schedule and carbon footprint of projects.

“On projects where we have the choice to execute them with a dynamically positioned vessel or jack-up, we’re now highlighting to our clients the benefits of the jack-up operation, where we’re fixed, elevated on a stable platform and using less fuel and up to a sevenfold reduction in CO₂ emissions in some cases. Our clients can then see the benefit of a lower carbon footprint of the survey,” Roach says.

Fugro is also focused on improved drilling technologies, such as sonic drilling and the use of wireline CPTs in boreholes.

The Fugro Deep Line wireline system has been brought from offshore innovation development into nearshore and now onshore operations.

“That will enable us to get discrete CPT data throughout the borehole profile at any depth. The onshore aspect of deploying that is quite challenging logistically, but we’re looking at a target of replacing the SPT with CPT technology over the coming years,” Roach explains.

“Our nearshore team based in Falmouth has recently brought some of our most recent drilling/CPT technologies together in a sliding drill floor, on our largest in-house jack up barge Excalibur.

“The drill floor can slide to achieve accuracy in drilling location and drill multiple boreholes combining many downhole sampling techniques, while reducing weather downtime at each location. It can achieve higher quality data at each wind turbine foundation location, reducing ground uncertainty for our clients and enabling better engineering foundation designs.”

With its remote and autonomous solutions, Fugro has managed to remove personnel “from the line of fire” and gather data from places that were previously inaccessible. Tailings dams in the mining industry in South America are examples of these locations.

“The tailings industry has seen some quite critical and sensitive incidents there,” Roach says, “and having been involved in that industry and knowing the pain when things go wrong, we felt it was absolutely prudent to use our technology as best as we can to solve the problems in that industry.”

While working for Fugro’s innovation team, Roach led the development of an onshore remote operation solution for tailings dams. “It is a remotely operated CPT rig, using technology that we developed for the seabed,” he explains. “We brought it onshore, created a local remote operation centre, and we then enabled our clients to look at the engineering properties of the structure that they couldn’t access with traditional technology. This enabled them to make better decisions about dam de-characterisation, which is the process of remotely excavating and removing the risk of that unstable structure.

“We’ve been working on that for a couple of years now and will continue to do so to gather data while our client goes through the process of managing the risk to people in and around and downstream of that structure.

“That’s something that we’ve heavily invested in.”

Furthering sustainability

Fugro transitioned to low sulphur fuels for marine vessels ahead of the cut-off date set by the International Maritime Organisation. It has done the same for nearshore vessels and is also developing technology to create a carbon neutral nearshore site investigation solution for clients.

Overall, the company has set itself targets for improving the sustainability of the business and its operations through new technologies. According to Roach, this approach has been driven internally rather than by clients and the market. The firm is thus keen to see clients move sustainability higher up on their agenda.

“We are seeing an increase in projects being scored on environmental sustainability and delivery, but it would be great to see higher ambitions from our clients to drive us on,” Roach notes.

“We want to do things better, and we want the industry to take that forward. In the last five years, there has been a significant increase in sustainable technology that just needs to be adapted and converged in order to deliver for our sector. Let’s not miss that opportunity.”

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