scope:

General

This recommended practice provides guidelines for inspecting mooring components of mobile offshore drilling units (MODUs) and permanent floating installations. Although this document was primarily developed for the moorings of MODUs and permanent floating installations, some of the guidelines may be applicable to moorings of other floating vessels such as pipe-laying barges and construction vessels. Furthermore, some of the guidelines may be applicable to secondary or emergency moorings such as moorings for jack-up units, shuttle tanker moorings, and dynamic positioning (DP) vessel harbor mooring.

The applicability of this document to the moorings of other floating vessels is left to the discretion of the user.

Purpose

The need for rigorous, effective inspection of mooring hardware is apparent because most of the mooring failures involved faulty mooring components including corroded or physically damaged wire-rope or chain, defective connecting links, or mooring hardware of inferior quality. This document should be useful to engineers and operating personnel concerned with the following:

a) planning a mooring inspection;

b) conducting or supervising a mooring inspection;

c) deciding whether to reject, repair, or replace mooring hardware;

d) communicating with others concerning acceptable mooring hardware.