Products & Equipment Lifting Equipment
William Hackett launches offshore subsea lever hoist with quad pawl mechanism

Nov. 18, 2019, Abu Dhabi – William Hackett launched the SSL5, incorporating its patented quad pawl (QP) mechanism.

“It’s a piece of engineering innovation that will transform safety levels globally when lifting offshore and in subsea operations using lever hoists,” says Ben Burgess, director at William Hackett. “We’ve designed this hoist to provide the highest level of safety, with increased levels of redundancy and resilience to failure. Its QP offset load bearing mechanism is the best in the market, and it offers enhanced operating performance compared to twin pawl products.”

The patented QP mechanism synchronizes a set of four pawls which constantly work together to minimize the time and distance travelled to the next point of engagement.

“It overcomes jamming and unintended malfunctions that can be experienced when using other simpler first generation products,” says Burgess. “This helps to minimize project downtime or costly delays to work scopes, providing total peace of mind for operators and marine contractors.”

SSL5 also overcomes the current industry-norm of single use immersion hoists.

“Big savings are achievable with this device,” he says. “The capability of the SSL5 to be immersed multiple times means it can significantly reduce capital investment on new hoists per mobilization by up to 80 per cent.”

Customer controlled field trials reveal William Hackett’s SSL5 hoists were immersed 12 times over a 60-day period. It successfully past a rigorous multi-immersion test, inspection and operation programme witnessed and verified by DNV GL.

“We are helping operators to make better choices and overcome purchasing large quantities of single-use hoists,” says Burgess. “The historic paradigm of single-use hoists, which are often used once and then discarded, is very expensive and not good practice from an environmental perspective. The use of single immersion hoists isn’t sustainable for today’s industry and is representative of an out-dated practice. Customer decision-making criteria is beginning to reflect this.”

The SSL5 innovation is the result of William Hackett’s long term investment strategy. “We’ve worked hard to create a technically-superior lever hoist that saves our customers money, delivers improved cost efficiencies and consistently performs on safety for those valuable payloads.”

• safety: Enhanced built-in failure resilience. Patented quad pawl technology allows the SSL5 to operate safely should individual pawls or springs fail. With double the number of offset pawls in a lever hoist, from two to four, the load is spread securely against the ratchet gear to provide increased redundancy and resilience to failure for the user.

• cost: Eighty per cent reduction in capital spend on new hoists per mobilization with warranted multi-immersion use. SSL5 reduces purchase, servicing and transportation costs, which delivers better cost efficiencies on projects and big savings for operator budgets.

• performance: SSL5’s dual action brake mechanism and intelligent inertia capability improves the user’s safety and rigging productivity in both subsea and topside applications.

• durability: Lighter in weight thanks to the quality of design and materials used, the SSL5’s performance to weight ratio reduces the risk of injury to the user during handling such as in logistics and rigging (due to its reduced unit mass).
• environmental credentials: multi-immersion use reduces the number of hoists needed on a mobilization, resulting in less single-immersion hoists being decommissioned after use, which is better for the environment and a more sustainable solution for industry.
• proven compliance: meets with EN 13157, American Standard ASME B30.16-2012, Australian Standard AS1418.2-1997, NORSOK R-002: 2017, South African Standard SANS 1594:2007, DNV verification for multi immersion and company standard BP (DEV-AAD-SS-SD-BP-0545).