8 Legged Jacket & Piles
Piper Bravo was built as a replacement for the ill-fated Piper Alpha platform, on which 165 lives were lost in July 1988.
Whilst the design adopted the eight-leg arrangement similar to the Alpha platform which left Ardersier in 1975, the Bravo jacket was 50% heavier than Alpha. Following development of offshore installation equipment and techniques the Bravo jacket design benefited from driving the piles through skirt pile foundations using underwater hammers. During the installation phase in 1976, many months were spent in drilling foundation piles for Alpha.
The Piper Bravo Jacket sailed from the Yard in 1991 and was installed approximately 120 metres from the original Alpha Platform location. Following installation of the Topsides the following year the platform commenced production in 1993.