Seabed Scour Control Systems Limited (SSCS™) was established in the early 1980’s in order to meet a requirement from the Offshore Oil and Gas industry to address the impact of seabed scour on platforms, pipelines and similar subsea structures installed in the UK Southern North Sea sector.
Scour is the removal by hydrodynamic forces of granular bed material in the vicinity of submerged structures otherwise known as erosion.
The SSCS Frond Mats are used to provide planned and preventative scour protection for new subsea installations and to rectify scour encountered at existing facilities and provide the only permanent solution to scour available today.
Our first client was Shell International Limited. We installed a substantial quantity of SSCS Frond Mats to remediate seabed erosion which led to exposures and unsupported sections of pipe, also known as freespans. Today, 34 years later, the SSCS Frond Mats are still in place preventing scour. Subsequently we have become the world leader in Frond Scour Protection Systems. After successfully proving the product in the Southern North Sea we have also established an international reputation supporting projects in the USA, Canada, China, Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and many other countries.
Having successfully proven the SSCS Frond Mats in the Offshore Oil & Gas Industry over the past 30+ years we are also providing scour prevention and remediation solutions to the Renewable Energy Market, River Defence and Marine Research Industries where market demand is growing rapidly.
Our offices and manufacturing facilities are located in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk which was recognised as being the UK’s offshore Oil & Gas hub and is now becoming the UK’s Offshore Wind hub. Since the early 1990’s SSCS has diversified its business activities by creating a Lifting and Testing Division from the acquisition of two former well established lifting companies; we have since developed SSCS Lifting into one of the leading lifting service providers in the East of England, boasting a gantry with 80T lift capacity which is the largest in the region as well as being the only local webbing manufacturer. This business development strategy achieved an important milestone when the company had both SSCS Subsea and SSCS Lifting working in harmony on the same offshore projects during 2018.
We are also proud to have been nominated as finalists in three categories in the 2018 GY Sprit of Enterprise Awards, which is a prestigious event recognising the successes of local industry. As part of continued investment in the company we are currently in the process of upgrading our lighting to new LED’s to run a more energy efficient site expected to be completed by January 2019. We have also gained ADIPS (Amusement Device Inspection Procedures Scheme) accreditation allowing us to complete NDT on amusement park rides and devices.
SSCS Lifting is the only manufacturer of polyester Webbing and Roundslings in East Anglia. This allows us to provide bespoke slings within a short timeframe to meet client specific requirements. To date we have manufactured up to 200T 60M circumference Roundslings, however we have the capabilities to manufacture much larger slings if needed.
Subsea
SSCS Subsea designs and manufactures the SSCS Frond Mats for all types of subsea and underwater installations.
The SSCS Frond Mats are used globally for applications including Offshore Wind turbine foundations, cables and other structures; subsea pipelines, platform legs and umbilicals for the offshore Oil & Gas sector; inshore civil sector requirements; environmental projects; and for the protection of archaeological sites.
The SSCS Frond Mats are made in-house and can be manufactured to any shape and size and to suit various deployment methods, including removing the need for diver or ROV (Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle) intervention during installation.
SSCS provides advice and solutions designed for specific projects relating to existing and planned installations, and the use of our ‘self-maintaining’ SSCS Frond Mats eliminates the requirement for ongoing maintenance.
2018 was a successful and innovative year for SSCS Subsea: the continued development of the SSCS Weighted Frond Mat has been well received by industry being implemented on several major offshore and inland projects around the UK and overseas. The SSCS Frond Mats have been used on several UK river scour projects and also to protect a number of offshore installations in UK waters, namely pipeline protection and jack-up rig leg protection at wind farm locations. The significant increase in demand for our edge weighted SSCS Frond Mats resulted in the need to review our production process increase productivity. SSCS designed and developed a new hopper system that was fabricated locally. This new system has resulted in a productivity increase of more than double for the edge weighted tube filling process and has also considerably reduced the manual handling element.
As part of SSCS’s ongoing investment in R&D the company is acting as the lead partner of an InnovateUK backed project for the development of the world’s first self-installing permanent scour protection system for suction bucket foundations to be used in the offshore wind industry. The £1M project is anticipated to save an average wind farm around £8.6m per year, based on 2016’s cost reduction monitoring framework.
Lifting
SSCS Lifting operates as a division of SSCS and combines expertise with many years’ experience and not only manufacturers and supplies lifting products but additionally offers a genuine problem-solving capability for all lifting and lashing problems covering all areas of testing and certification.
The company operates a quality assurance system to BS EN ISO 9001 which is assessed by LRQA and SSCS Lifting is approved to DNV 2.7-1 for the manufacture of lifting sling assemblies for offshore containers as well as being full members of LEEA (Lifting Equipment Engineers Association).
Testing and certification work is supported by a fully computerised certification management system which maintains a comprehensive client database with records of each individual item of equipment and can be used to compile factory, site, vessel, rig or platform registers electronically or in hard copy. All certification is accessible from the company website at www.sscsystems.com which provides clients with 24/7 access to their certification.
An extensive range of test equipment can be offered at the SSCS Lifting premises or alternatively on a call out service to inspect, test and certify lifting equipment and machinery at a client’s site. Additionally, SSCS Lifting offers Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) including Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI) and Dye Penetrant (DP) and other forms of NDT including Visual Weld Testing (VT).
2018 was a successful year for SSCS Lifting, having provided excellent services to our existing clients in addition to expanding and developing our relationship with new clients. We are proud to announce that during 2018, SSCS Lifting were contracted by several large clients for the provision of fully qualified LEEA engineers to inspect and certify equipment on their sites. These customers were highly satisfied with our services and subsequently awarded further contracts to complete routine on-site inspections.
We also upgraded the safe working load on our test gantry from 45 tonnes to 80 tonnes making it the largest in the region. This enables us to service much larger jobs for clients and we are expecting it to be much needed this year for upcoming windfarm work that will start in the East of England, which is fast becoming the hub of Offshore Wind.