One of the North Sea’s biggest engineering firms has been punished by safety chiefs after the Super Puma helicopter crisis prevented it from doing repair work offshore.
Wood Group has been hit with an improvement notice by the Health and Safety Executive after inspectors found unsafe gratings on the Beatrice Bravo platform.
Last night the firm confirmed the sanction – but revealed that the work was not done because of problems getting engineers offshore.
The EC225 Super Puma model was banned from flying over water after gear-shaft failures led to two ditchings in the North Sea last year.
The fleet remained grounded on July 19 this year when the HSE found the problems on Beatrice.
A spokeswoman for the Wood Group said: “Wood Group Engineering (North Sea) Ltd was appointed as duty holder for the Beatrice and Nigg Complex in December 2008.
“An improvement notice was served on the 19th of July 2013 by the Health and Safety Executive due to the unsafe condition of some of the gratings on the unmanned Beatrice Bravo platform – a ‘Normally Unmanned Installation’ (NUI).
“Remedial work was actually under way to replace the gratings when the Health and Safety Executive visited Beatrice Bravo in July but progress had been hampered due to difficulties in accessing the NUI.
“This was partly due to reduced helicopter availability following the Super Puma incidents. Since this notice was served WGE(NS) is looking to deploy temporary accommodation so essential maintenance can be completed.”
The problems with EC225s first emerged in May last year when a Bond-operated Super Puma went down just 15 minutes into its flight with 14 men on board.
The pilots sent out a mayday, but ditched soon afterwards.
The helicopter had been on its way to Conoco-Phillips’ Jasmine field and was due to drop off workers at the Maersk Resilient and Ensco 102 rigs.
Just five months later, 19 people had to be rescued after another EC225 went down 14 miles west of Fair Isle, between Orkney and Shetland.
The CHC-operated helicopter had been flying from Aberdeen to the West Phoenix drilling rig on behalf of Total when it got into trouble in thick fog.
Super Puma manufacturer Eurocopter has since introduced a series of new measures aimed at preventing and detecting gear-shaft cracks on the EC225 model.
They returned to service in August this year.