Education for Offshore Engineering and Application to a Platform Design

This thesis considers some of the patterns and requirements of education available in the United Kingdom for offshore engineering at the level of first degree and postgraduate courses. These requirements are illustrated by a design study for an offshore oil platform and associated steel jacket for waters east of West Malaysia in the South China Sea. Proposals are then made for courses in offshore engineering suitable for Malaysia. The first part of the thesis traces the rise of the offshore industry which is mainly the offshore oil industry and the growth of tertiary education for this industry. It draws attention to the breadth of interests required and the absence of undergraduate courses which treat offshore engineering as a totally distinct branch of engineering under the accreditation procedure of a professional engineering institution. Demand is met by courses which represent sub-specialisation for students who begin in other branch of engineering. A similar pattern exist in the postgraduate education which if anything draws from a wider background. Design of an offshore oil production platform illustrates the breadth of education required although the thesis limits numerical consideration to the design of steel lattice jacket under operational and environmental loadings. The relatively shallow water off the Malaysian coast is less severe compared to the North Sea. The oil industry requires manpower at all levels of expertise and the last part of the thesis considers a pattern for this education for technicians, professional and postgraduate engineers in Malaysia together with appropriate syllabuses