INNOVATION AS AN ASSET

Goriziane Engineering & Construction has almost 40 years’ experience in providing turn-key environmental services and technologies to oilfield, refining, petrochemical and chemical companies around the world. Owner and CEO Pierluigi Zanin discussed the innovative nature of Goriziane, in conversation with Phil Nicholls.

The vision of Goriziane E&C SpA is to offer customers innovative solutions and world-class equipment. This innovation is present not only in the advanced engineering the company produces, but also the way Goriziane positions its products in the market.

“The concept we launched this year is for the pipe finishing machine to be regarded as a long-term asset, instead of being a project investment,” explained Owner and CEO Pierluigi Zanin: “The principle being that the client only buys the machinery once, then uses it for the entire life of the vessel. In this way, Goriziane saves the client money and enables efficient working practices.”

Italian engineering company Goriziane was founded in 1948. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Goriziane pivoted away from a reliance on the defence sector and offered MRO services to the oil and gas industry. By 1992, Goriziane were designing and manufacturing pipeline equipment, which steadily expanded into the current product range.

Within the oil and gas sector, Goriziane is specialised in the design and manufacture of internal line-up clamps, pipe facing machines along with hydraulic power units, pipe bending machines and mandrels. The company also has deep expertise in the design and construction of pipe handling systems such as double and quadruple joint plants manufactured for the onshore and offshore field.

Goriziane builds firing lines and rollers, stingers and stinger rollers. In addition to these standard products, the company engineers and designs special non-standard products, bespoke machines and plants to meet the most demanding customers’ needs. Based in a single factory at Villesse in the Province of Gorizia in northeast Italy, Goriziane has about 130 employees, including a large engineering department.

The innovative mindset at Goriziane is not just restricted to the range of products. Goriziane creatively establish subsidiary companies to help complete individual projects. These single-project companies have been established in Baku, Singapore and China.

“We only open a subsidiary company when the scope of the project is large enough to justify it,” said Mr Zanin. “So, the Chinese vessel took three years, while the Singapore project took more than two years. Once a project is complete, then we will probably keep the company for a couple of years in case there is another challenge in the same area. Otherwise, we close and move on. Goriziane is pretty flexible. Our main capacity is to manage projects.”

Alongside this flexibility, Goriziane’s appeal to customers is based upon the depth of its engineering ability and the creative solutions developed by the company. “Our peculiarity is the technical capability to find the right solution for the customer,” Mr Zanin continued. “We are very fast in terms of our production engineering.”

The final product is a piece of bespoke engineering, such as Goriziane’s delivery of total pipe-laying packages capable of operation across multiple projects. It is this capability of the machinery to operate for several projects that elevates the package into the status of being a long-term asset. While this may take a change of mindset on the part of the client, the quality of Goriziane’s engineering justifies the upgrade.

A fine example of this engineering quality is the pipe-laying vessel De He 5000T of Yantai Salvage Bureau. The project ran from 2014 to 2018 in partnership with a shipyard in Shanghai. Goriziane were responsible for De He’s pipe handling system, welding system and on-board safety plant system, along with the stinger and stinger handling system.

De He, as with every project from Goriziane, benefitted from the dedicated after-sales service team. Many projects at Goriziane enjoy access to Goriziane’s Augmented Reality Tool for Service (GARTS) system. G-ARTS is an innovative piece of IoT equipment which increases productivity and easily connects valued customers to the after-sales team.

Clients access the usual high-quality service but it is enhanced by Augmented Reality. Goriziane’s system consists of a helmet kit and tablet which improve the onsite activities and after-sales services for the customer. G-ARTS optimises time and costs, ensuring continuity of business for the client, even under unforeseen circumstances.

As a relatively small company, Goriziane enjoys close partnerships with its suppliers, according to Mr Zanin: “We strictly follow offshore specifications, so we need the sup- plier to speak the same language. Goriziane has partnerships with other engineering companies, because while we can manage every project, we cannot build everything by ourselves. We just choose a few select partners to work with.”

The Goriziane team are also working on i mproving the sustainability of its products as well as the client’s operation. “In this area, we are moving in two main directions,” explained Mr Zanin. “The first one is to make as many electrical machines as possible, to avoid needing oil-powered engines. The masterpiece of this is our new pipe facing machine we presented at OTC in the US. This is a fully electric bevelling machine –the only one in the world at this moment that can be used offshore with a battery pack; a 20-year battery pack.”

The second aspect of Goriziane’s sustainability drive is the design of flexible machines with a broad range of capabilities. “We design a flexible, wide-ranging machine,” Mr Zanin continued. “So, a customer doesn’t need to order setting kits every time they change to a different pipe, for example. Instead, the customer receives in a single delivery one machine that can perform all the required tasks in one unit.”

To achieve this second aspect of sustainable operation, customers are required to regard Goriziane’s machines as long-term assets, not single project investments. Changing this mindset is one of the main challenges facing Goriziane.

However, the company is not standing still. As the market moves, so Goriziane follows, with expansion into the sustainable energy sector. Likewise, the need for piping hydrogen in the future will see continued demand for Goriziane pipe-handling machines.

Even this diversification is not enough for the innovative engineers at Goriziane. The company is opening an industrial division called Green G, focusing on the production of the ecarry, a fully electric commercial vehicle ready to meet Industry 4.0 requirements.

With so many innovative possibilities at Goriziane, the future looks exciting. “My job is a mission to increase the confidence of people, to help them do their job,” concluded Mr Zanin. “Everyone in the company knows what to do. They just need confidence in their capabilities. My job is to help people feel happy to come to work in the morning.”